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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Mrs. Falchion, by Gilbert Parker, v2
+#21 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: Mrs. Falchion, Volume 2.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [Etext #6193]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 6, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. FALCHION, BY PARKER, V2 ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger [widger@cecomet.net]
+Extensive proofreading done by Andrew Sly
+
+
+
+
+
+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
+All he has to do is to be vague, and look prodigious (Scientist)
+Death is not the worst of evils
+Every true woman is a mother, though she have no child
+Fear a woman are when she hates, and when she loves
+He didn't always side with the majority
+He had neither self-consciousness nor fear
+Her own suffering always set her laughing at herself
+Learned what fools we mortals be
+Love can outlive slander
+Men do not steal up here: that is the unpardonable crime
+She had provoked love, but had never given it
+"Still the end of your existence," I rejoined--"to be amused?"
+The happy scene of the play before the villain comes in
+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
+Would look back and not remember that she had a childhood
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. FALCHION, BY PARKER, V2 ***
+
+******** This file should be named 6193.txt or 6193.zip *********
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