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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Pomp of the Lavilettes, v2, by G. Parker
+#43 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: The Pomp of the Lavilettes, Volume 2.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6216]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 27, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POMP OF THE LAVILLETTES, PARKER, V2 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+POMP OF THE LAVILETTES
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 2.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Ferrols's recovery from his injuries was swifter than might have been
+expected.  As soon as he was able to move about Christine was his
+constant attendant.  She had made herself his nurse, and no one had
+seriously interfered, though the Cure had not at all vaguely offered a
+protest to Madame Lavilette.  But Madame Lavilette was now in the humour
+to defy or evade the Cure, whichever seemed the more convenient or more
+necessary.  To be linked by marriage with the nobility would indeed be
+the justification of all her long-baffled hopes.  Meanwhile, the parish
+gossiped, though little of that gossip was heard at the Manor Casimbault.
+By and by the Cure ceased to visit the Manor, but the Regimental Surgeon
+came often, and sometimes stayed late.  He, perhaps, could have given
+Madame Lavilette the best advice and warning; but, in truth, he enjoyed
+what he considered a piquant position.  Once, drawing at his pipe, as
+little like an Englishman as possible, he tried to say with an English
+accent, "Amusing and awkward situation!" but he said, "Damn funny and
+chic!" instead.  He had no idea that any particular harm would be done--
+either by love or marriage; and neither seemed certain.
+
+One day as Ferrol, entirely convalescent, was sitting in an arbour of the
+Manor garden, half asleep, he was awakened by voices near him.
+
+He did not recognise one of the voices; the other was Nic Lavilette's.
+
+The strange voice was saying: "I have collected five thousand dollars--
+all that can be got in the two counties.  It is at the Seigneury.  Here
+is an order on the Seigneur Duhamel.  Go there in two days and get the
+money.  You will carry it to headquarters.  These are General Papineau's
+orders.  You will understand that your men--"
+
+Ferrol heard no more, for the two rebels passed on, their voices becoming
+indistinct.  He sat for a few moments moveless, for an idea had occurred
+to him even as Papineau's agent spoke.
+
+If that money were only his!
+
+Five thousand dollars--how that would ease the situation!  The money
+belonged to whom?  To a lot of rebels: to be used for making war against
+the British Government.  After the money left the hands of the men who
+gave it--Lavilette and the rest--it wasn't theirs.  It belonged to a
+cause.  Well, he was the enemy of that cause.  All was fair in love and
+war!
+
+There were two ways of doing it.  He could waylay Nicolas as he came from
+the house of the old seigneur, could call to him to throw up his hands in
+good highwayman fashion, and, well disguised, could get away with the
+money without being discovered.  Or again, he could follow Nic from the
+Seigneury to the Manor, discover where he kept the money, and devise a
+plan to steal it.
+
+For some time he had given up smoking; but now, as a sort of celebration
+of his plan, he opened his cigar case, and finding two cigars left, took
+one out and lighted it.
+
+"By Jove," he said to himself, "thieving is a nice come-down, I must say!
+But a man has to live, and I'm sick of charity--sick of it.  I've had
+enough."
+
+He puffed his cigar briskly, and enjoyed the forbidden and deadly luxury
+to the full.
+
+Presently he got up, took his stick, came down-stairs, and passed out
+into the garden.  The shoulder which had been lacerated by the bear
+drooped forward some what, and seemed smaller than the other.  Although
+he held himself as erect as possible, you still could have laid your hand
+in the hollow of his left breast, and it would have done no more than
+give it a natural fulness.  Perhaps it was a sort of vanity, perhaps a
+kind of courage, which made him resolutely straighten himself, in spite
+of the deadly weight dragging his shoulder down.  He might be melancholy
+in secret, but in public he was gay and hopeful, and talked of everything
+except himself.  On that interesting topic he would permit no discussion.
+Yet there often came jugs and jars from friendly people, who never spoke
+to him of his disease--they were polite and sensitive, these humble folk
+--but sent him their home-made medicines, with assurances scrawled on
+paper that "it would cure Mr. Ferrol's cold, oh, absolutely."
+
+Before the Lavilettes he smiled, and received the gifts in a debonair
+way, sometimes making whimsical remarks.  At the same time the jugs and
+jars of cordial (whose contents varied from whiskey, molasses and
+boneset, to rum, licorice, gentian and sarsaparilla roots) he carried to
+his room; and he religiously tried them all by turn.  Each seemed to do
+him good for a few days, then to fail of effect; and he straightway tried
+another, with renewed hope on every occasion, and subsequent
+disappointment.  He also secretly consulted the Regimental Surgeon, who
+was too kindhearted to tell him the truth; and he tried his hand at
+various remedies of his own, which did no more than to loosen the cough
+which was breaking down his strength.
+
+As now, he often walked down the street swinging his cane, not as though
+he needed it for walking, but merely for occupation and companionship.
+He did not delude the villagers by these sorrowful deceptions, but they
+made believe he did.  There were a few people who did not like him; but
+they were of that cantankerous minority who put thorns in the bed of the
+elect.
+
+To-day, occupied with his thoughts, he walked down the main road, then
+presently diverged on a side road which led past Magon Farcinelle's house
+to an old disused mill, owned by Magon's father.  He paused when he came
+opposite Magon's house, and glanced up at the open door.  He was tired,
+and the coolness of the place looked inviting.  He passed through the
+gate, and went lightly up the path.  He could see straight through the
+house into the harvest-fields at the back.  Presently a figure crossed
+the lane of light, and made a cheerful living foreground to the blue sky
+beyond the farther door.  The light and ardour of the scene gave him a
+thrill of pleasure, and hurried his footsteps.  The air was palpitating
+with sleepy comfort round him, and he felt a new vitality pass into him:
+his imagination was feeding his enfeebled body; his active brain was
+giving him a fresh counterfeit of health.  The hectic flush on his pale
+face deepened.  He came to the wooden steps of the piazza, or stoop, and
+then paused a moment, as if for breath; but, suddenly conscious of what
+he was doing, he ran briskly up the steps, knocked with his cane upon the
+door jamb, and, without waiting, stepped inside.
+
+Between him and the outer door, against the ardent blue background, stood
+Sophie Farcinelle--the English faced Sophie--a little heavy, a little
+slow, but with the large, long profile which is the type of English
+beauty--docile, healthy, cow-like.  Her face, within her sunbonnet,
+caught the reflected light, and the pink calico of her dress threw a glow
+over her cheeks and forehead, and gave a good gleam to her eyes.  She had
+in her hands a dish of strawberries.  It was a charming picture in the
+eyes of a man to whom the feelings of robustness and health were mostly a
+reminiscence.  Yet, while the first impression was on him, he contrasted
+Sophie with the impetuous, fiery-hearted Christine, with her dramatic
+Gallic face and blood, to the latter's advantage, in spite of the more
+harmonious setting of this picture.
+
+Sophie was in place in this old farmhouse, with its dormer windows, with
+the weaver's loom in the large kitchen, the meat-block by the fireplace,
+and the big bread-tray by the stove, where the yeast was as industrious
+as the reapers beyond in the fields.  She was in keeping with the chromo
+of the Madonna and the Child upon the wall, with the sprig of holy palm
+at the shrine in the corner, with the old King Louis blunderbuss above
+the chimney.
+
+Sophie tried to take off her sunbonnet with one hand, but the knot
+tightened, and it tipped back on her head, giving her a piquant air.  She
+flushed.
+
+"Oh, m'sieu'!" she said in English, "it's kind of you to call.  I am
+quite glad--yes."
+
+Then she turned round to put the strawberries upon a table, but he was
+beside her in an instant and took the dish out of her hands.  Placing it
+on the table, he took a couple of strawberries in his fingers.
+
+"May I?" he asked in French.
+
+She nodded as she whipped off the sunbonnet, and replied in her own
+language:
+
+"Certainly, as many as you want."
+
+He bit into one, but got no further with it.  Her back was turned to him,
+and he threw the berry out of the window.  She felt rather than saw what
+he had done.  She saw that he was fagged.  She instantly thought of a
+cordial she had in the house, the gift of a nun from the Ursuline
+Convent in Quebec; a precious little bottle which she had kept for the
+anniversary of her wedding day.  If she had been told in the morning that
+she would open that bottle now, and for a stranger, she probably would
+have resented the idea with scorn.
+
+His disguised weariness still exciting her sympathy, she offered him a
+chair.
+
+"You will sit down, m'sieu'?" she asked.  "It is very warm."
+
+She did not say: "You look very tired."  She instinctively felt that it
+would suggest the delicate state of his health.
+
+The chair was inviting enough, with its chintz cover and wicker seat, but
+he would never admit fatigue.  He threw his leg half jauntily over the
+end of the table and said:
+
+"No--no, thanks; I'd rather not sit."
+
+His forehead was dripping with perspiration.  He took out his
+handkerchief and dried it.  His eyes were a little heavy, but his
+complexion was a delicate and unnatural pink and white-like a piece of
+fine porcelain.  It was a face without care, without vice, without fear,
+and without morals.  For the absence of vice with the absence of morals
+are not incongruous in a human face.  Sophie went into another room for a
+moment, and brought back a quaint cut-glass bottle of cordial.
+
+"It is very good," she said, as she took the cork out; "better than peach
+brandy or things like that."
+
+He watched her pour it out into a wine-glass, and as soon as he saw the
+colour and the flow of it he was certain of its quality.
+
+"That looks like good stuff," he said, as she handed him a glass brimming
+over; "but you must have one with me.  I can't drink alone, you know."
+
+"Oh, m'sieu', if you please, no," she answered half timidly, flattered by
+the glance of his eye--a look of flattery which was part of his stock-in-
+trade.  It had got him into trouble all his life.
+
+"Ah, madame, but I plead yes!" he answered, with a little encouraging
+nod towards her.  "Come, let me pour it for you."
+
+He took the odd little bottle and poured her glass as full as his own.
+
+"If Magon were only here--he'd like some, I know," she said, vaguely
+struggling with a sense of impropriety, though why, she did not know;
+for, on the surface, this was only dutiful hospitality to a distinguished
+guest.  The impropriety probably lay in the sensations roused by this
+visit and this visitor.  "I intended--"
+
+"Oh, we must try to get along without monsieur," he said, with a little
+cough; "he's a busy gentleman."  The rather rude and flippant sentiment
+seemed hardly in keeping with the fatal token of his disease.
+
+"Of course, he's far away out there in the field, mowing," she said, as
+if in apology for something or other.  "Yes, he's ever so far away," was
+his reply, as he turned half lazily to the open doorway.
+
+Neither spoke for a moment.  The eyes of both were on the distant
+harvest-fields.  Vaguely, not decisively, the hazy, indolent air of
+summer was broken by the lazy droning of the locusts and grasshoppers.
+A driver was calling to his oxen down the dusty road, the warning bark
+of a dog came across the fields from the gap in the fence which he was
+tending, and the blades of tho scythes made three-quarter circles of
+light as the mowers travelled down the wheat-fields.
+
+When their eyes met again, the glasses of cordial were at their lips.
+He held her look by the intentional warmth and meaning of his own,
+drinking very slowly to the last drop; and then, like a bon viveur, drew
+a breath of air through his open mouth, and nodded his satisfaction.
+
+"By Jove, but it is good stuff!" he said.  "Here's to the nun that made
+it," he added, making a motion to drink from the empty glass.
+
+Sophie had not drunk all her cordial.  At least one third of it was still
+in the glass.  She turned her head away, a little dismayed by his toast.
+
+"Come, that's not fair," he said.  "That elixir shouldn't be wasted.
+Voila, every drop of it now!" he added, with an insinuating smile and
+gesture.
+
+"Oh, m'sieu'!" she said in protest, but drank it off.  He still held the
+empty glass in his hand, twisting it round musingly.
+
+"A little more, m'sieu'?" she asked, "just a little?"  Perhaps she was
+surprised that he did not hesitate.  He instantly held out his glass.
+
+"It was made by a saint; the result should be health and piety--I need
+both," he added, with a little note of irony in his voice.
+
+"So, once again, my giver of good gifts--to you!"  He raised his glass
+again, toasting her, but paused.  "No, this won't do; you must join me,"
+he added.
+
+"Oh, no, m'sieu', no!  It is not possible.  I feel it now in my head and
+in all of me.  Oh, I feel so warm all, through, and my heart it beats so
+very fast!  Oh, no, m'sieu', no more!"
+
+Her cheeks were glowing, and her eyes had become softer and more
+brilliant under the influence of the potent liqueur.
+
+"Well, well, I'll let you off this time; but next time--next time,
+remember."
+
+He raised the glass once more, and let the cordial drain down lazily.
+
+He had said, "next time"--she noticed that.  He seemed very fond of this
+strong liqueur.  She placed the bottle on the table, her own glass beside
+it.
+
+"For a minute, a little minute," she said suddenly, and went quickly into
+the other room.
+
+He coolly picked up the bottle of liqueur, poured his glass full once
+more, and began drinking it off in little sips.  Presently he stood up,
+and throwing back his shoulder, with a little ostentation of health, he
+went over to the chintz-covered chair, and sat down in it.  His mood was
+contented and brisk.  He held up the glass of liqueur against the
+sunlight.
+
+"Better than any Benedictine I ever tasted," he said.  "A dozen bottles
+of that would cure this beastly cold of mine.  By Jove! it would.  It's
+as good as the Gardivani I got that blessed day when we chaps of the
+Ninetieth breakfasted with the King of Savoy."  He laughed to himself at
+the reminiscence.  "What a day that was, what a stunning day that was!"
+
+He was still smiling, his white teeth showing humorously, when Sophie
+again entered the room.  He had forgotten her, forgotten all about her.
+As she came in he made a quick, courteous movement to rise--too quick;
+for a sharp pain shot through his breast, and he grew pale about the
+lips.  But he made essay to stand up lightly, nevertheless.
+
+She saw his paleness, came quickly to him, and put out her hand to gently
+force him back into his seat, but as instantly decided not to notice his
+indisposition, and turned towards the table instead.  Taking the bottle
+of cordial, she brought it over, and not looking at him, said:
+
+"Just one more little glass, m'sieu'?"  She had in her other hand a plate
+of seed-cakes.  "But yes, you must sit down and eat a cake," she added
+adroitly.  "They are very nice, and I made them myself.  We are very fond
+of them; and once, when the bishop stayed at our house, he liked them
+too."
+
+Before he sat down he drank off the whole of the cordial in the glass.
+
+She took a chair near him, and breaking a seed-cake began eating it.  His
+tongue was loosened now, and he told her what he was smiling at when she
+came into the room.  She was amused, and there was a little awe to her
+interest also.  To think--she was sitting here, talking easily to a man
+who had eaten at kings' tables--with the king!  Yet she was at ease too--
+since she had drunk the cordial.  It had acted on her like some philtre.
+He begged that she would go on with her work; and she got the dish of
+strawberries, and began stemming them while he talked.
+
+It was much easier talking or listening to him while she was so occupied.
+She had never enjoyed anything so much in her life.  She was not clever,
+like Christine, but she had admiration of ability, and was obedient to
+the charm of temperament.  Whenever Ferrol had met her he had lavished
+little attentions on her, had said things to her that carried weight far
+beyond their intention.  She had been pleased at the time, but they had
+had no permanent effect.
+
+Now everything he said had a different influence: she felt for the first
+time that it was not easy to look into his eyes, and as if she never
+could again without betraying--she knew not what.
+
+So they sat there, he talking, she listening and questioning now and
+then.  She had placed the bottle of liqueur and the seed-cakes at his
+elbow on the windowsill; and as if mechanically, he poured out a
+glassful, and after a little time, still another, and at last, apparently
+unconsciously, poured her out one also, and handed it to her.  She shook
+her head; he still held the glass poised; her eyes met his; she made a
+feeble sort of protest, then took the glass and drank off the liqueur in
+little sips.
+
+"Gad, that puts fat on the bones, and gives the gay heart!" he said.
+"Doesn't it, though?"
+
+She laughed quietly.  Her nature was warm, and she had the animal-like
+fondness for physical ease and content.
+
+"It's as if there wasn't another stroke of work to do in the world," she
+answered, and sat contentedly back in her chair, the strawberries in her
+lap.  Her fingers, stained with red, lay beside the bowl.  All the
+strings of conscious duty were loose, and some of them were flying.  The
+bumble-bee that flew in at the door and boomed about the room contributed
+to the day-dream.
+
+She never quite knew how it happened that a moment later he was bending
+over the back of her chair, with her face upturned to his, and his lips--
+With that touch thrilling her, she sprang to her feet, and turned away
+from him towards the table.  Her face was glowing like a peony, and a
+troubled light came into her eyes.  He came over to her, after a moment,
+and spoke over her shoulders as he just touched her waist with his
+fingers.
+
+"A la bonne heure--Sophie!"
+
+"Oh, it isn't--it isn't right," she said, her body slightly inclining
+from him.
+
+"One minute out of a whole life--What does it matter!  Ce ne fait rien!
+Good-bye-Sophie."
+
+Now she inclined towards him.  He was about to put his arms round her,
+when he heard the distant sound of a horse's hoofs.  He let her go, and
+turned towards the front door.  Through it he saw Christine driving up
+the road.  She would pass the house.
+
+"Good-bye-Sophie," he said again over her shoulder, softly; and, picking
+up his hat and stick, he left the house.
+
+Her eyes followed him dreamily as he went up the road.  She sat down in
+a chair, the trance of the passionate moment still on her, and began to
+brood.  She vaguely heard the rattle of a buggy--Christine's--as it
+passed the house, and her thoughts drifted into a new-discovered
+hemisphere where life was all a somnolent sort of joy and bodily love.
+
+She was roused at last by a song which came floating across the fields.
+The air she knew, and the voice she knew.  The chanson was, "Le Voleur de
+grand Chemin!"  The voice was her husband's.
+
+She knew the words, too; and even before she could hear them, they were
+fitting into the air:
+
+              "Qui va la!  There's some one in the orchard,
+                  There's a robber in the apple-trees;
+               Qui va la!  He is creeping through the doorway.
+                  Ah, allez-vous-en! Va-t'-en!"
+
+She hurriedly put away the cordial and the seed-cakes.  She picked up the
+bottle.  It was empty.  Ferrol had drunk near half a pint of the liqueur!
+She must get another bottle of it somehow.  It would never do for Magon
+to know that the precious anniversary cordial was all gone--in this way.
+
+She hurried towards the other room.  The voice of the farrier-farmer was
+more distinct now.  She could hear clearly the words of the song.  She
+looked out.  The square-shouldered, blue-shirted Magon was skirting the
+turnip field, making a short cut home.  His straw hat was pushed back on
+his head, his scythe was over his shoulder.  He had cut the last swathe
+in the field--now for Sophie.  He was not handsome, and she had known
+that always; but he seemed rough and coarse to-day.  She did not notice
+how well he fitted in with everything about him; and he was so healthy
+that even three glasses of that cordial would have sent him reeling to
+bed.
+
+As she passed into the dining-room, the words of the song followed her:
+
+              "Qui va la!  If you please, I own the mansion,
+                  And this is my grandfather's gun!
+               Qui va la!  Now you're a dead man, robber
+                  Ah, allez-vous-en!  Va-t'-en!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+"I saw you coming," Ferrol said, as Christine stopped the buggy.
+
+"You have been to see Magon and Sophie?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, for a minute," he answered.  "Where are you going?"
+
+"Just for a drive," she replied.  "Come, won't you?" He got in, and she
+drove on.
+
+"Where were you going?" she asked.
+
+"Why, to the old mill," was his reply.  "I wanted a little walk, then a
+rest."
+
+Ten minutes later they were looking from a window of the mill, out upon
+the great wheel which had done all the work the past generations had
+given it to do, and was now dropping into decay as it had long dropped
+into disuse.  Moss had gathered on the great paddles; many of them were
+broken, and the debris had been carried away by the freshets of spring
+and the floods of autumn.
+
+They were silent for a time.  Presently she looked up at him.
+
+"You're much better to-day, "she said; "better than you've been since--
+since that night!"
+
+"Oh, I'm all right," he answered; "right as can be."  He suddenly turned
+on her, put his hand upon her arm, and said:
+
+"Come, now, tell me what there was between you and Vanne Castine--once
+upon a time.
+
+"He was in love with me five years ago," she said.
+
+"And five years ago you were in love with him, eh?" "How dare you say
+that to me!" she answered.  "I never was.  I always hated him."
+
+She told her lie with unscrupulous directness.  He did not believe her;
+but what did that matter!  It was no reason why he should put her at a
+disadvantage, and, strangely enough, he did not feel any contempt for her
+because she told the lie, nor because she had once cared for Castine.
+Probably in those days she had never known anybody who was very much
+superior to Castine.  She was in love with himself now; that was enough,
+or nearly enough, and there was no particular reason why he should demand
+more from her than she demanded from him.  She was lying to him now
+because--well, because she loved him.  Like the majority of men, when
+women who love them have lied to them so, they have seen in it a
+compliment as strong as the act was weak.  It was more to him now that
+this girl should love him than that she should be upright, or moral, or
+truthful.  Such is the egotism and vanity of such men.
+
+"Well, he owes me several years of life.  I put in a bad hour that
+night."
+
+He knew that "several years of life" was a misstatement; but, then, they
+were both sinners.
+
+Her eyes flashed, she stamped her foot, and her fingers clinched.
+
+"I wish I'd killed him when I killed his bear!" she said.
+
+Then excitedly she described the scene exactly as it occurred.  He
+admired the dramatic force of it.  He thrilled at the direct simplicity
+of the tale.  He saw Vanne Castine in the forearms of the huge beast,
+with his eyes bulging from his head, his face becoming black, and he saw
+blind justice in that death grip; Christine's pistol at the bear's head,
+and the shoulder in the teeth of the beast, and then!
+
+"By the Lord Harry," he said, as she stood panting, with her hands fixed
+in the last little dramatic gesture, "what a little spitfire and brick
+you are!"
+
+All at once he caught her away from the open window and drew her to him.
+Whether what he said that moment, and what he did then, would have been
+said and done if it were not for the liqueur he had drunk at Sophie's
+house would be hard to tell; but the sum of it was that she was his and
+he was hers.  She was to be his until the end of all, no matter what the
+end might be.  She looked up at him, her face glowing, her bosom beating
+--beating, every pulse in her tingling.
+
+"You mean that you love me, and that--that you want-to marry me?" she
+said; and then, with a fervent impulse, she threw her arms round his neck
+and kissed him again and again.
+
+The directness of her question dumfounded him for the moment; but what
+she suggested (though it might be selfish in him to agree to it) would be
+the best thing that could happen to him.  So he lied to her, and said:
+
+"Yes, that's what I meant.  But, then, to tell you the sober truth, I'm
+as poor as a church mouse."
+
+He paused.  She looked up at him with a sudden fear in her face.
+
+"You're not married?" she asked, "you're not married?" then, breaking
+off suddenly: "I don't care if you are, I don't!  I love you--love you!
+Nobody would look after you as I would.  I don't; no, I don't care."
+
+She drew up closer and closer to him.
+
+"No, I don't mean that I was married," he said.  "I meant--what you know
+--that my life isn't worth, perhaps, a ten-days' purchase."
+
+Her face became pale again.
+
+"You can have my life," she said; "have it just as long as you live, and
+I'll make you live a year--yes, I'll make you live ten years.  Love can
+do anything; it can do everything.  We'll be married to-morrow."
+
+"That's rather difficult," he answered.  "You see, you're a Catholic,
+and I'm a Protestant, and they wouldn't marry us here, I'm afraid; at
+least not at once, perhaps not at all.  You see, I--I've only one lung."
+
+He had never spoken so frankly of his illness before.  "Well, we can go
+over the border into the English province--into Upper Canada," she
+answered.  "Don't you see?  It's only a few miles' drive to a village.
+I can go over one day, get the licence; then, a couple of days after, we
+can go over together and be married.  And then, then--"
+
+He smiled.  "Well, then it won't make much difference, will it?  We'll
+have to fit in one way or another, eh?"
+
+"We could be married afterwards by the Cure, if everybody made a fuss.
+The bishop would give us a dispensation.  It's a great sin to marry a
+heretic, but--"
+
+"But love--eh, ma cigale!"  Then he took her eagerly, tenderly into his
+arms; and probably he had then the best moment in his life.
+
+Sophie Farcinelle saw them driving back together.  She was sitting at
+early supper with Magon, when, raising her head at the sound of wheels,
+she saw Christine laughing and Ferrol leaning affectionately towards her.
+Ferrol had forgotten herself and the incident of the afternoon.  It meant
+nothing to him.  With her, however, it was vital: it marked a change in
+her life.  Her face flushed, her hands trembled, and she arose hurriedly
+and went to get something from the kitchen, that Magon might not see her
+face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Twenty men had suddenly disappeared from Bonaventure on the day that
+Ferrol visited Sophie Farcinelle, and it was only the next morning that
+the cause of their disappearance was generally known.
+
+There had been many rumours abroad that a detachment of men from the
+parish were to join Papineau.  The Rebellion was to be publicly declared
+on a certain date near at hand, but nothing definite was known; and
+because the Cure condemned any revolt against British rule, in spite of
+the evils the province suffered from bad government, every recruit who
+joined Nic Lavilette's standard was sworn to secrecy.  Louis Lavilette
+and his wife knew nothing of their son's complicity in the rumoured
+revolt--one's own people are generally the last to learn of one's
+misdeeds.  Madame would have been sorely frightened and chagrined if
+she had known the truth, for she was partly English.  Besides, if the
+Rebellion did not succeed, disgrace must come, and then good-bye to the
+progress of the Lavilettes, and goodbye, maybe, to her son!
+
+In spite of disappointments and rebuffs in many quarters, she still kept
+faith with her ambitions, and, fortunately for herself, she did not see
+the abject failure of many of her schemes.  Some of the gentry from the
+neighbouring parishes had called, chiefly, she was aware, because of Mr.
+Ferrol.  She was building the superstructure of her social ambitions on
+that foundation for the present.  She told Louis sometimes, with tears
+of joy in her eyes, that a special Providence had sent Mr. Ferrol to
+them, and she did not know how to be grateful enough.  He suggested a
+gift to the church in token of gratitude, but her thanksgiving did not
+take that form.
+
+Nic was entirely French at heart, and ignored his mother's nationality.
+He resented the English blood in his veins, and atoned for it by
+increased loyalty to his French origin.  This was probably not so much
+a principle as a fancy.  He had a kind of importance also in the parish,
+and in his own eyes, because he made as much in three months by buying
+and selling horses as most people did in a year.  The respect of
+Bonaventure for his ability was considerable; and though it had no marked
+admiration for his character, it appreciated his drolleries, and was
+attracted by his high spirits.  He had always been erratic, so that when
+he disappeared for days at a time no one thought anything of it, and when
+he came home to the Manor at unearthly hours it created no peculiar
+notice.
+
+He had chosen very good men for his recruits; for, though they talked
+much among themselves, they drew a cordon of silence round their little
+society of revolution.  They vanished in the night, and Nic with them;
+but he returned the next afternoon when the fire of excitement was at its
+height.  As he rode through the streets, people stopped him and poured
+out questions; but he only shrugged his shoulders, and gave no
+information, and neither denied nor affirmed anything.
+
+Acting under orders, he had marched his company to make conjunction with
+other companies at a point in the mountains twenty miles away, but had
+himself returned to get the five thousand dollars gathered by Papineau's
+agent.  Now that the Rebellion was known, Nicolas intended to try and win
+his father and his father's money and horses over to the cause.
+
+Because Ferrol was an Englishman he made no confidant of him, and because
+he was a dying man he saw in him no menace to the cause.  Besides, was
+not Ferrol practically dependent upon their hospitality?  If he had
+guessed that his friend knew accurately of his movements since the night
+he had seen Vanne Castine hand him his commission from Papineau, he would
+have felt less secure: for, after all, love--or prejudice--of country is
+a principle in the minds of most men deeper than any other.  When all
+other morals go, this latent tendency to stand by the blood of his clan
+is the last moral in man that bears the test without treason.  If he had
+known that Ferrol had written to the Commandant at Quebec, telling him of
+the imminence of the Rebellion, and the secret recruiting and drilling
+going on in the parishes, his popular comrade might have paid a high
+price for his disclosure.
+
+That morning at sunrise, Christine, saying she was going upon a visit to
+the next parish, started away upon her mission to the English province.
+Ferrol had urged her to let him go, but she had refused.  He had not yet
+fully recovered from his adventure with the bear, she said.  Then he said
+they might go together; but she insisted that she must make the way
+clear, and have everything ready.  They might go and find the minister
+away, and then--voila, what a chance for cancan!  So she went alone.
+
+From his window he watched her depart; and as she drove away in the fresh
+morning he fell to thinking what it might seem like if he had to look
+forward to ten, twenty, or forty years with just such a woman as his
+wife.  Now she was at her best (he did not deceive himself), but in
+ten years or less the effects of her early life would show in many ways.
+She had once loved Vanne Castine!  and now vanity and cowardice, or
+unscrupulousness, made her lie about it.  He would have her at her best
+--a young, vigorous radiant nature--for his short life, and then, good-
+bye, my lover, good-bye!  Selfish?  Of course.  But she would rather--
+she had said it--have him for the time he had to live than not at all.
+Position?  What was his position?  Cast off by his family, forgotten by
+his old friends, in debt, penniless--let position be hanged!  Self-
+preservation was the first law.  What was the difference between this
+girl and himself?  Morals?  She was better than himself, anyhow.  She had
+genuine passions, and her sins would be in behalf of those genuine
+passions.  He had kicked over the moral traces many a time from absolute
+selfishness.  She had clean blood in her veins, she was good-looking,
+she had a quick wit, she was an excellent horse-woman--what then?  If she
+wasn't so "well bred," that was a matter of training and opportunity
+which had never quite been hers.  What was he himself?  A loafer, "a
+deuced unfortunate loafer," but still a loafer.  He had no trade and no
+profession.  Confound it!  how much better off, and how much better in
+reality, were these people who had trades and occupations.  In the vigour
+and lithe activity of that girl's body was the force of generations of
+honest workers.  He argued and thought--as every intelligent man in his
+position would have done--until he had come into the old life again, and
+into the presence of the old advantages and temptations!
+
+Christine pulled up for a moment on a little hill, and waved her whip.
+He shook his handkerchief from the window.  That was their prearranged
+signal.  He shook it until she had driven away beyond the hill and was
+lost to sight, and still stood there at the window looking out.
+
+Presently Madame Lavilette appeared in the garden below, and he was sure,
+from the way she glanced up at the window, and from her position in the
+shrubbery, that she had seen the signal.  Madame did not look displeased.
+On the contrary, though an alliance with Christine now seemed unlikely,
+because of the state of Ferrol's health and his religion and nationality,
+it pleased her to think that it might have been.
+
+When she had passed into the house, Ferrol sat down on the broad window-
+sill, and looked out the way Christine had gone.  He was thinking of the
+humiliation of his position, and how it would be more humiliating when he
+married Christine, should the Lavilettes turn against them--which was
+quite possible.  And from outside: the whole parish--a few excepted--
+sympathised with the Rebellion, and once the current of hatred of the
+English set in, he would be swept down by it.  There were only three
+English people in the place.  Then, if it became known that he had given
+information to the authorities, his life would be less uncertain than it
+was just now.  Yet, confound the dirty lot of little rebels, it served
+them right!  He couldn't sit by and see a revolt against British rule
+without raising a hand.  Warn Nic?  To what good?  The result would be
+just the same.  But if harm came to this intended brother-in-law-well,
+why borrow trouble?  He was not the Lord in Heaven, that he could have
+everything as he wanted it!  It was a toss-up, and he would see the sport
+out.  "Have to cough your way through, my boy!" he said, as he swayed
+back and forth, the hard cough hacking in his throat.
+
+As he had said yesterday, there was only one thing to do: he must have
+that five thousand dollars which was to be handed over by the old
+seigneur.  This time he did not attempt to find excuses; he called the
+thing by its proper name.
+
+"Well, it's stealing, or it's highway robbery, no matter how one looks at
+it," he said to himself.  "I wonder what's the matter with me.  I must
+have got started wrong somehow.  Money to spend, playing at soldiering,
+made to believe I'd have a pot of money and an estate, and then told one
+fine day that a son and heir, with health in form and feature, was come,
+and Esau must go.  No profession, except soldiering, debt staring me in
+the face, and a nasty mess of it all round.  I wonder why it is that I
+didn't pull myself together, be honest to a hair, and fight my way
+through?  I suppose I hadn't it in me.  I wasn't the right metal at the
+start.  There's always been a black sheep in our family, a gentleman or
+a lady, born without morals, and I happen to be the gentleman this
+generation.  I always knew what was right, and liked it, and I always did
+what was wrong, and liked it--nearly always.  But I suppose I was fated.
+I was bound to get into a hole, and I'm in it now, with one lung, and a
+wife in prospect to support.  I suppose if I were to write down all the
+decent things I've thought in my life, and put them beside the indecent
+things I've done, nobody would believe the same man was responsible for
+them.  I'm one of the men who ought to be put above temptation; be well
+bridled, well fed, and the mere cost of comfortable living provided, and
+then I'd do big things.  But that isn't the way of the world; and so I
+feel that a morning like this, and the love of a girl like that" (he
+nodded towards the horizon into which Christine had gone) "ought to make
+a man sing a Te Deum.  And yet this evening, or to-morrow evening, or the
+next, I'll steal five thousand dollars, if it can be done, and risk my
+neck in doing it--to say nothing of family honour, and what not."
+
+He got up from the window, went to his trunk, opened it, and, taking out
+a pistol, examined it carefully, cocking and uncorking it, and after
+loading it, and again trying the trigger, put it back again.  There came
+a tap at the door, and to his call a servant entered with a glass of milk
+and whiskey, with which he always began the day.
+
+The taste of the liquid brought back the afternoon of the day before, and
+he suddenly stopped drinking, threw back his head, and laughed softly.
+
+"By Jingo, but that liqueur was stunning--and so was-Sophie .  .  .
+Sophie!  That sounds compromisingly familiar this morning, and very
+improper also!  But Sophie is a very nice person, and I ought to be well
+ashamed of myself.  I needed the bit and curb both yesterday.  It'll
+never do at all.  If I'm going to marry Christine, we must have no family
+complications.  'Must have'!" he exclaimed.  "But what if Sophie
+already?--good Lord!"
+
+It was a strange sport altogether, in which some people were bound to get
+a bad fall, himself probably among the rest.  He intended to rob the
+brother, he had set the government going against the brother's
+revolutionary cause, he was going to marry one sister, and the other
+--the less thought and said about that matter the better.
+
+The afternoon brought Nic, who seemed perplexed and excited, but was most
+friendly.  It seemed to Ferrol as if Nic wished to disclose something;
+but he gave him no opportunity.  What he knew he knew, and he could make
+use of; but he wanted no further confidences.  Ever since the night of
+the fight with the bear there had been nothing said on matters concerning
+the Rebellion.  If Nicolas disclosed any secret now, it must surely be
+about the money, and that must not be if he could prevent it.  But he
+watched his friend, nevertheless.
+
+Night came, and Christine did not return; eight o'clock, nine o'clock.
+Lavilette and his wife were a little anxious; but Ferrol and Nicolas made
+excuses for her, and, in the wild talk and gossip about the Rebellion,
+attention was easily shifted from her.  Besides, Christine was well used
+to taking care of herself.
+
+Lavilette flatly refused to give Nic a penny for "the cause," and stormed
+at his connection with it; but at last became pacified, and agreed it was
+best that Madame Lavilette should know nothing about Nic's complicity
+just yet.  At half past nine o'clock Nic left the house and took the road
+towards the Seigneury.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+About half-way between the Seigneury and the main street of the village
+there was a huge tree, whose limbs stretched across the road and made a
+sort of archway.  In the daytime, during the summer, foot travellers,
+carts and carriages, with their drivers, loitered in its shade as they
+passed, grateful for the rest it gave; but at night, even when it was
+moonlight, the wide branches threw a dark and heavy shadow, and the
+passage beneath them was gloomy travel.  Many a foot traveller hesitated
+to pass into that umbrageous circle, and skirted the fence beyond the
+branches on the further side of the road instead.
+
+When Nicolas Lavilette, returning from the Seigneury with the precious
+bag of gold for Papineau, came hurriedly along the road towards the
+village, he half halted, with sudden premonition of danger, a dozen feet
+or so from the great tree.  But like most young people, who are inclined
+to trust nothing but their own strong arms and what their eyes can see,
+he withstood the temptation to skirt the fence; and with a little half-
+scornful laugh at himself, yet a little timidity also (or he would not
+have laughed at all), he hurried under the branches.  He had not gone
+three steps when the light of a dark lantern flashed suddenly in his
+face, and a pistol touched his forehead.  All he could see was a figure
+clothed entirely in black, even to hands and face, with only holes for
+eyes, nose and mouth.
+
+He stood perfectly still; the shock was so sudden.  There was something
+determined and deadly in the pose of the figure before him, in the touch
+of the weapon, in the clearness of the light.  His eyes dropped, and
+fixed involuntarily upon the lantern.
+
+He had a revolver with him; but it was useless to attempt to defend
+himself with it.  Not a word had been spoken.  Presently, with the
+fingers that held the lantern, his assailant made a motion of Hands up!
+There was no reason why he should risk his life without a chance of
+winning, so he put up his hands.  At another motion he drew out the bag
+of gold with his left hand, and, obeying the direction of another
+gesture, dropped it on the ground.  There was a pause, then another
+gesture, which he pretended not to understand.
+
+"Your pistol!" said the voice in a whisper through the mask.
+
+He felt the cold steel at his forehead press a little closer; he also
+felt how steady it was.  He was no fool.  He had been in trouble before
+in his lifetime; he drew out the pistol, and passed it, handle first, to
+three fingers stretched out from the dark lantern.
+
+The figure moved to where the money and the pistol were, and said, in a
+whisper still:
+
+"Go!"
+
+He had one moment of wild eagerness to try his luck in a sudden assault,
+but that passed as suddenly as it came; and with the pistol still
+covering him, he moved out into the open road, with a helpless anger on
+him.
+
+A crescent moon was struggling through floes of fleecy clouds, the stars
+were shining, and so the road was not entirely dark.  He went about
+thirty steps, then turned and looked back.  The figure was still standing
+there, with the pistol and the light.  He walked on another twenty or
+thirty steps, and once again looked back.  The light and the pistol were
+still there.  Again he walked on.  But now he heard the rumble of buggy
+wheels behind.  Once more he looked back: the figure and the light had
+gone.  The buggy wheels sounded nearer.  With a sudden feeling of
+courage, he turned round and ran back swiftly.  The light suddenly
+flashed again.
+
+"It's no use," he said to himself, and turned and walked slowly along the
+road.
+
+The sound of the buggy wheels came still nearer.  Presently it was
+obscured by passing under the huge branches of the tree.  Then the horse,
+buggy and driver appeared at the other side, and in a few moments had
+overtaken him.  He looked up sharply, scrutinisingly.  Suddenly he burst
+out:
+
+"Holy mother, Chris, is that you!  Where've you been?  Are you all
+right?"
+
+She had whipped up her horse at first sight of him, thinking he might be
+some drunken rough.
+
+"Mais, mon dieu, Nic, is that you?  I thought at first you were a
+highwayman!"
+
+"No, you've passed the highwayman!  Come, let me get in."
+
+Five minutes afterwards she knew exactly what had happened to him.
+
+"Who could it be?" she asked.
+
+"I thought at first it was that beast Vanne Castine!" he answered; "he's
+the only one that knew about the money, besides the agent and the old
+seigneur.  He brought word from Papineau.  But it was too tall for him,
+and he wouldn't have been so quiet about it.  Just like a ghost.  It
+makes my flesh creep now!"
+
+It did not seem such a terrible thing to her at the moment, for she had
+in her pocket the licence to marry the Honourable Tom Ferrol upon the
+morrow, and she thought, with joy, of seeing him just as soon as she set
+foot in the doorway of the Manor Casimbault.
+
+It was something of a shock to her that she did not see him for quite a
+half hour after she arrived home, and that was half past ten o'clock.
+But women forget neglect quickly in the delight of a lover's presence;
+so her disappointment passed.  Yet she could not help speaking of it.
+
+"Why weren't you at the door to meet me when I came back to-night with
+that-that in my pocket?" she asked him, his arm round her.
+
+"I've got a kicking lung, you know," he said, with a half ironical, half
+self-pitying smile.
+
+"Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Tom, my love!" she said as she buried her
+face on his breast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Before he left for the front next morning to join his company and march
+to Papineau's headquarters, Nic came to Ferrol, told him, with rage and
+disappointment, the story of the highway robbery, and also that he hoped
+Ferrol would not worry about the Rebellion, and would remain at the Manor
+Casimbault in any case.
+
+"Anyhow," said he, "my mother's half English; so you're not alone.  We're
+going to make a big fight for it.  We've stood it as long as we can.  But
+we're friends in this, aren't we, Ferrol?"
+
+There was a pause, in which Ferrol sipped his whiskey and milk, and
+continued dressing.  He set the glass down, and looked towards the open
+window, through which came the smell of the ripe orchard and the
+fragrance of the pines.  He turned to.  Lavilette at last and said, as he
+fastened his collar:
+
+"Yes, you and I are friends, Nic; but I'm a Britisher, and my people have
+been Britishers since Edward the Third's time; and for this same Quebec
+two of my great-grand-uncles fought and lost their lives.  If I were
+sound of wind and limb I'd fight, like them, to keep what they helped to
+get.  You're in for a rare good beating, and, see, my friend--while I
+wouldn't do you any harm personally, I'd crawl on my knees from here to
+the citadel at Quebec to get a pot-shot at your rag-tag-and-bobtail
+'patriots.'  You can count me a first-class enemy to your 'cause,' though
+I'm not a first-class fighting man.  And now, Nic, give me a lift with my
+coat.  This shoulder jibs a bit since the bear-baiting."
+
+Lavilette was naturally prejudiced in Ferrol's favour; and this
+deliberate and straightforward patriotism more pleased than offended him.
+His own patriotism was not a deep or lasting thing: vanity and a restless
+spirit were its fountains of inspiration.  He knew that Ferrol was
+penniless--or he was so yesterday--and this quiet defiance of events in
+the very camp of the enemy could not but appeal to his ebullient, Gallic
+chivalry.  Ferrol did not say these things because he had five thousand
+dollars behind him, for he would have said them if he were starving and
+dying--perhaps out of an inherent stubbornness, perhaps because this
+hereditary virtue in him would have been as hard to resist as his sins.
+
+"That's all right, Ferrol," answered Lavilette.  "I hope you'll stay here
+at the Manor, no matter what comes.  You're welcome.  Will you?"
+
+"Yes, I'll stay, and glad to.  I can't very well do anything else.  I'm
+bankrupt.  Haven't got a penny--of my own," he added, with daring irony.
+"Besides, it's comfortable here, and I feel like one of the family; and,
+anyhow, Life is short and Time is a pacer!"  His wearing cough emphasised
+the statement.
+
+"It won't be easy for you in Bonaventure," said Nicolas, walking
+restlessly up and down.  "They're nearly all for the cause, all except
+the Cure.  But he can't do much now, and he'll keep out of the mess.
+By the time he has a chance to preach against it, next Sunday, every man
+that wants to 'll be at the front, and fighting.  But you'll be all
+right, I think.  They like you here."
+
+"I've a couple of good friends to see me through," was the quiet reply.
+
+"Who are they?"
+
+Ferrol went to his trunk, took out a pair of pistols, and balanced them
+lightly in his hands.  "Good to confuse twenty men," he said.  "A brace
+of 'em are bound to drop, and they don't know which one."
+
+He raised a pistol lazily, and looked out along its barrel through the
+open, sunshiny window.  Something in the pose of the body, in the curve
+of the arm, struck Nicolas strangely.  He moved almost in front of
+Ferrol.  There came back to him mechanically the remembrance of a piece
+of silver on the butt of one of the highwayman's pistols!
+
+The same piece of silver was on the butt of Ferrol's pistol.  It
+startled him; but he almost laughed to him self at the absurdity of the
+suggestion.  Ferrol was the last man in the world to play a game like
+that, and with him.
+
+Still he could not resist a temptation.  He stepped in front of the
+pistol, almost touching it with his forehead, looking at Ferrol as he had
+looked at the highwayman last night.
+
+"Look out, it's loaded!" said Ferrol, lowering the weapon coolly, and
+not showing by sign or muscle that he understood Lavilette's meaning.
+"I should think you'd had enough of pistols for one twenty-four hours."
+
+"Do you know, Ferrol, you looked just then so like the robber last night
+that, for one moment, I half thought!--And the pistol, too, looks just
+the same--that silver piece on the butt!"
+
+"Oh, yes, this piece for the name of the owner!" said Ferrol, in a
+laughing brogue, and he coughed a little.  "Well, maybe some one did use
+this pistol last night.  It wouldn't be hard to open my trunk.  Let's
+see; whom shall we suspect?"
+
+Lavilette was entirely reassured, if indeed he needed reassurance.
+Ferrol coughed still more, and was obliged to sit down on the side
+of the bed and rest himself against the foot-board.
+
+"There's a new jug of medicine or cordial come this morning from
+Shangois, the notary," said Lavilette.  "I just happened to think of it.
+What he does counts.  He knows a lot."
+
+Ferrol's eyes showed interest at once.
+
+"I'll try it.  I'll try it.  The stuff Gatineau the miller sent doesn't
+do any good now."
+
+"Shangois is here--he's downstairs--if you want to see him."
+
+Ferrol nodded.  He was tired of talking.
+
+"I'm going," said Lavilette, holding out his hand.  "I'll join my company
+to-day, and the scrimmage 'll begin as soon as we reach Papineau.  We've
+got four hundred men."
+
+Ferrol tried to say something, but he was struggling with the cough in
+his throat.  He held out his hand, and Nicolas took it.  At last he was
+able to say:
+
+"Good luck to you, Nic, and to the devil with the Rebellion!  You're in
+for a bad drubbing."
+
+Nicolas had a sudden feeling of anger.  This superior air of Ferrol's was
+assumed by most Englishmen in the country, and it galled him.
+
+"We'll not ask quarter of Englishmen; no-sacre!" he said in a rage.
+
+"Well, Nic, I'm not so sure of that.  Better do that than break your
+pretty neck on a taut rope," was the lazy reply.
+
+With an oath, Lavilette went out, banging the door after him.  Ferrol
+shrugged his shoulder with a stoic ennui, and put away the pistols in the
+trunk.  He was thinking how reckless he had been to take them out; and
+yet he was amused, too, at the risk he had run.  A strange indifference
+possessed him this morning--indifference to everything.  He was suffering
+reaction from the previous day's excitement.  He had got the five
+thousand dollars, and now all interest in it seemed to have departed.
+
+Suddenly he said to himself, as he ran a brush around his coat-collar:
+
+"'Pon my soul, I forgot; this is my wedding day!--the great day in a
+man's life, the immense event, after which comes steady happiness or the
+devil to pay."
+
+He stepped to the window and looked out.  It was only six o'clock as yet.
+He could see the harvesters going to their labours in the fields of wheat
+and oats, the carters already bringing in little loads of hay.  He could
+hear their marche-'t'-en!  to the horses.  Over by a little house on the
+river bank stood an old woman sharpening a sickle.  He could see the
+flash of the steel as the stone and metal gently clashed.
+
+Presently a song came up to him, through the garden below, from the
+house.  The notes seemed to keep time to the hand of the sickle-
+sharpener.  He had heard it before, but only in snatches.  Now it seemed
+to pierce his senses and to flood his nerves with feeling.
+
+The air was sensuous, insinuating, ardent.  The words were full of summer
+and of that dramatic indolence of passion which saved the incident at
+Magon Farcinelle's from being as vulgar as it was treacherous.  The voice
+was Christine's, on her wedding day.
+
+              "Oh, hark how the wind goes, the wind goes
+               (And dark goes the stream by the mill!)
+               Oh, see where the storm blows, the storm blows
+               (There's a rider comes over the hill!)
+
+              "He went with the sunshine one morning
+               (Oh, loud was the bugle and drum!)
+               My soldier, he gave me no warning
+               (Oh, would that my lover might come!)
+
+              "My kisses, my kisses are waiting
+               (Oh, the rider comes over the hill!)
+               In summer the birds should be mating
+               (Oh, the harvest goes down to the mill!)
+
+              "Oh, the rider, the rider he stayeth
+               (Oh, joy that my lover hath come!)
+               We will journey together he sayeth
+               (No more with the bugle and drum!)"
+
+He caught sight of Christine for a moment as she passed through the
+garden towards the stable.  Her gown was of white stuff, with little
+spots of red in it, and a narrow red ribbon was shot through the collar.
+Her hat was a pretty white straw, with red artificial flowers upon it.
+She wore at her throat a medallion brooch: one of the two heirlooms of
+the Lavilette family.  It had belonged to the great-grandmother of
+Monsieur Louis Lavilette, and was the one security that this ambitious
+family did not spring up, like a mushroom, in one night.  It had always
+touched Christine's imagination as a child.  Some native instinct in, her
+made her prize it beyond everything else.  She used to make up wonderful
+stories about it, and tell them to Sophie, who merely wondered, and was
+not sure but that Christine was wicked; for were not these little
+romances little lies?  Sophie's imagination was limited.  As the years
+went on Christine finally got possession of the medallion, and held it
+against all opposition.  Somehow, with it on this morning, she felt
+diminish the social distance between herself and Ferrol.
+
+Ferrol himself thought nothing of social distance.  Men, as a rule, get
+rather above that sort of thing.  The woman: that was all that was in his
+mind.  She was good to look at: warm, lovable, fascinating in her little
+daring wickednesses; a fiery little animal, full of splendid impulses,
+gifted with a perilous temperament: and she loved him.  He had a kind of
+exultation at the very fierceness of her love for him, of what she had
+done to prove her love: her fury at Vanne Castine, the slaughter of the
+bear, and the intention to kill Vanne himself; and he knew that she would
+do more than that, if a great test came.  Men feel surer of women than
+women feel of men.
+
+He sat down on the broad window-ledge, still sipping his whiskey and
+milk, as he looked at her.  She was very good to see.  Presently she had
+to cross a little plot of grass.  The dew was still on it.  She gathered
+up her skirts and tip-toed quickly across it.  The action was attractive
+enough, for she had a lithe smoothness of motion.  Suddenly he uttered an
+exclamation of surprise.
+
+"White stockings--humph!" he said.
+
+Somehow those white stockings suggested the ironical comment of the world
+upon his proposed mesalliance; then he laughed good-humouredly.
+
+"Taste is all a matter of habit, anyhow," said he to himself.  "My own
+sister wouldn't have had any better taste if she hadn't been taught.  And
+what am I?
+
+"What am I?  I drink more whiskey in a day than any three men in the
+country.  I don't do a stroke of work; I've got debts all over the world;
+I've mulcted all my friends; I've made fools of two or three women in my
+time; I've broken every commandment except--well, I guess I've broken
+every one, if it comes to that, in spirit, anyhow.  I'm a thief, a fire-
+eating highwayman, begad, and here I am, with a perforated lung, going to
+marry a young girl like that, without one penny in the world except what
+I stole!  What beasts men are!  The worst woman may be worse than the
+worst man, but all men are worse than most women.  But she wants to marry
+me.  She knows exactly what I am in health and prospects; so why
+shouldn't I?"
+
+He drew himself up, thinking honestly.  He believed that he would live if
+he married Christine; that his "cold" would get better; that the hole in
+his lung would heal.  It was only a matter of climate; he was sure of it.
+Christine had a few hundred dollars--she had told him so.  Suppose he
+took three hundred dollars of the five thousand dollars: that would leave
+four thousand seven hundred dollars for his sister.  He could go away
+south with Christine, and could live on five or six hundred dollars a
+year; then he'd be fit for something.  He could go to work.  He could
+join the Militia, if necessary.  Anyhow, he could get something to do
+when he got well.
+
+He drank some more whiskey and milk.  "Self-preservation, that's the
+thing; that's the first law," he said.  "And more: if the only girl I
+ever loved, ever really loved--loved from the crown of her head to the
+sole of her feet--were here to-day, and Christine stood beside her,
+little plebeian with a big heart, by Heaven, I'd choose Christine.
+I can trust her, though she is a little liar.  She loves, and she'll
+stick; and she's true where she loves.  Yes; if all the women in the
+world stood beside Christine this morning, I'd look them all over, from
+duchess to danseuse, and I'd say, 'Christine Lavilette, I'm a scoundrel.
+I haven't a penny in the world.  I'm a thief; a thief who believes in
+you.  You know what love is; you know what fidelity is.  No matter what I
+did, you would stand by me to the end.  To the last day of my life, I'll
+give you my heart and my hand; and as you are faithful to me, so I will
+be faithful to you, so help me God!'
+
+"I don't believe I ever could have run straight in life.  I couldn't have
+been more than four years old when I stole the peaches from my mother's
+dressing-table; and I lied just as coolly then as I could now.  I made
+love to a girl when I was ten years old."  He laughed to himself at the
+remembrance.  "Her father had a foundry.  She used to wear a red dress,
+I remember, and her hair was brown.  She sang like a little lark.  I was
+half mad about her; and yet I knew that I didn't really love her.  Still,
+I told her that I did.  I suppose it was the cursed falseness of my whole
+nature.  I know that whenever I have said most, and felt most, something
+in me kept saying all the time: 'You're lying, you're lying, you're
+lying!'  Was I born a liar?
+
+I wonder if the first words I ever spoke were a lie?  I wonder, when I
+kissed my mother first, and knew that I was kissing her, if the same
+little devil that sits up in my head now, said then: 'You're lying,
+you're lying, you're lying.'  It has said so enough times since.  I loved
+to be with my mother; yet I never felt, even when she died--and God knows
+I felt bad enough then!
+
+I never felt that my love was all real.  It had some infernal note of
+falseness somewhere, some miserable, hollow place where the sound of my
+own voice, when I tried to speak the truth, mocked me!  I wonder if the
+smiles I gave, before I was able to speak at all, were only blarney?
+I wonder, were they only from the wish to stand well with everybody,
+if I could?  It must have been that; and how much I meant, and how much
+I did not mean, God alone knows!
+
+"What a sympathy I have always had for criminals!  I have always wanted,
+or, anyhow, one side of me has always wanted, to do right, and the other
+side has always done wrong.  I have sympathised with the just, but I have
+always felt that I'd like to help the criminal to escape his punishment.
+If I had been more real with that girl in New York, I wonder whether she
+wouldn't have stuck to me?  When I was with her I could always convince
+her; but, I remember, she told me once that, when I was away from her,
+she somehow felt that I didn't really love her.  That's always been the
+way.  When I was with people, they liked me; when I was away from them,
+I couldn't depend upon them.  No; upon my soul, of all the friends I've
+ever had, there's not one that I know of that I could go to now--except
+my sister, poor girl!--and feel sure that no matter what I did, they'd
+stick to me to the end.  I suppose the fault is mine.  If I'd been worth
+the standing by, I'd have been the better stood by.  But this girl, this
+little French provincial, with a heart of fire and gold, with a touch of
+sin in her, and a thumping artery of truth, she would walk with me to the
+gallows, and give her life to save my life--yes, a hundred times.  Well,
+then, I'll start over again; for I've found the real thing.  I'll be true
+to her just as long as she's true to me.  I'll never lie to her; and I'll
+do something else--something else.  I'll tell her--"
+
+He reached out, picked a wild rose from the vine upon the wall, and
+fastened it in his button-hole, with a defiant sort of smile, as there
+came a tap to his door.  "Come in," he said.
+
+The door opened, and in stepped Shangois, the notary.  He carried a jug
+under his arm, which, with a nod, he set down at the foot of the bed.
+
+"M'sieu'," said he, "it is a thing that cured the bishop; and once, when
+a prince of France was at Quebec, and had a bad cold, it cured him.  The
+whiskey in it I made myself--very good white wine."  Ferrol looked at the
+little man curiously.  He had only spoken with him once or twice, but he
+had heard the numberless legends about him, and the Cure had told him
+many of his sayings, a little weird and sometimes maliciously true to the
+facts of life.
+
+Ferrol thanked the little man, and motioned to a chair.  There was,
+however, a huge chest against the wall near the window, and Shangois sat
+down on this, with his legs hunched up to his chin, looking at Ferrol
+with steady, inquisitive eyes.  Ferrol laughed outright.  A grotesque
+thought occurred to him.  This little black notary was exactly like the
+weird imp which, he had always imagined, sat high up in his brain,
+dropping down little ironies and devilries--his personified conscience;
+or, perhaps, the truth left out of him at birth and given this form, to
+be with him, yet not of him.
+
+Shangois did not stir, nor show by even the wink of an eyelid that he
+recognised the laughter, or thought that he was being laughed at.
+
+Presently Ferrol sat down and looked at Shangois without speaking, as
+Shangois looked at him.  He smiled more than once, however, as the
+thought recurred to him.
+
+"Well?" he said at last.
+
+"What if she finds out about the five thousand dollars--eh, m'sieu'?"
+
+Ferrol was completely dumfounded.  The brief question covered so much
+ground--showed a knowledge of the whole case.  Like Conscience itself,
+the little black notary had gone straight to the point, struck home.
+He was keen enough, however, had sufficient self-command, not to betray
+himself, but remained unmoved outwardly, and spoke calmly.
+
+"Is that your business--to go round the parish asking conundrums?" he
+said coolly.  "I can't guess the answer to that one, can you?"
+
+Shangois hated cowards, and liked clever people--people who could answer
+him after his own fashion.  Nearly everybody was afraid of his tongue and
+of him.  He knew too much; which was a crime.
+
+"I can find out," he replied, showing his teeth a little.
+
+"Then you're not quite sure yourself, little devilkin?"
+
+"The girl is a riddle.  I am not the great reader of riddles."
+
+"I didn't call you that.  You're only a common little imp."
+
+Shangois showed his teeth in a malicious smile.
+
+"Why did you set me the riddle, then?" Ferrol continued, his eyes fixed
+with apparent carelessness on the other's face.
+
+"I thought she might have told you the answer."
+
+"I never asked her the puzzle.  Have you?"
+
+By instinct, and from the notary's reputation, Ferrol knew that he was in
+the presence of an honest man at least, and he waited most anxiously for
+an answer, for his fate might hang on it.
+
+"M'sieu', I have not seen her since yesterday morning."
+
+"Well, what would you do if you found out about the five thousand
+dollars?"
+
+"I would see what happened to it; and afterwards I would see that a girl
+of Bonaventure did not marry a Protestant, and a thief."
+
+Ferrol rose from his chair, coughing a little.  Walking over to Shangois,
+he caught him by both ears and shook the shaggy head back and forth.
+
+"You little scrap of hell," he said in a rage, "if you ever come within
+fifty feet of me again I'll send you where you came from!"
+
+Though Shangois's eyes bulged from his head, he answered:
+
+"I was only ten feet away from you last night under the elm!"
+
+Suddenly Ferrol's hand slipped down to Shangois's throat.  Ferrol's
+fingers tightened, pressed inwards.
+
+"Now, see, I know what you mean.  Some one has robbed Nicolas Lavilette
+of five thousand dollars.  You dare to charge me with it, curse you.  Let
+me see if there's any more lies on your tongue!"
+
+With the violence of the pressure Shangois's tongue was forced out of his
+mouth.
+
+Suddenly a paroxysm of coughing seized Ferrol, and he let go and
+staggered back against the window ledge.  Shangois was transformed--an
+animal.  No human being had ever seen him as he was at this moment.  The
+fingers of his one hand opened and shut convulsively, his arms worked up
+and down, his face twitched, his teeth showed like a beast's as he glared
+at Ferrol.  He looked as though he were about to spring upon the now
+helpless man.  But up from the garden below there came the sound of a
+voice--Christine's--singing.
+
+His face quieted, and his body came to its natural pose again, though his
+eyes retained an active malice.  He turned to go.
+
+"Remember what I tell you," said Ferrol: "if you publish that lie, you'll
+not live to hear it go about.  I mean what I say."  Blood showed upon his
+lips, and a tiny little stream flowed down the corner of his mouth.
+Whenever he felt that warm fluid on his tongue he was certain of his
+doom, and the horror of slowly dying oppressed him, angered him.  It
+begot in him a desire to end it all.  He had a hatred of suicide; but
+there were other ways.  "I'll have your life, or you'll have mine.  I'm
+not to be played with," he added.
+
+The sentences were broken by coughing, and his handkerchief was wet and
+red.
+
+"It is no concern of the world," answered Shangois, stretching up his
+throat, for he still felt the pressure of Ferrol's fingers--"only of the
+girl and her brother.  The girl--I saved her once before from your friend
+Vanne Castine, and I will save her from you--but, yes!  It is nothing to
+the world, to Bonaventure, that you are a robber; it is everything to
+her.  You are all robbers--you English--cochons!"
+
+He opened the door and went out.  Ferrol was about to follow him, but he
+had a sudden fit of weakness, and he caught up a pillow, and, throwing it
+on the chest where Shangois had sat, stretched himself upon it.  He lay
+still for quite a long time, and presently fell into a doze.  In those
+days no event made a lasting impression on him.  When it was over it
+ended, so far as concerned any disturbing remembrances of it.  He was
+awakened (he could not have slept for more than fifteen minutes) by a
+tapping at his door, and his name spoken softly.  He went to the door and
+opened it.  It was Christine.  He thought she seemed pale, also that she
+seemed nervous; but her eyes were full of light and fire, and there was
+no mistaking the look in her face: it was all for him.  He set down her
+agitation to the adventure they were about to make together.  He stepped
+back, as if inviting her to enter, but she shook her head.
+
+"No, not this morning.  I will meet you at the old mill in half an hour.
+The parish is all mad about the Rebellion, and no one will notice or talk
+of anything else.  I have the best pair of horses in the stable; and we
+can drive it in two hours, easy."
+
+She took a paper from her pocket.
+
+"This is--the--license," she added, and she blushed.  Then, with a sudden
+impulse, she stepped inside the room, threw her arms about his neck and
+kissed him, and he clasped her to his breast.
+
+"My darling Tom!" she said, and then hastened away, with tears in her
+eyes.
+
+He saw the tears.  "I wonder what they were for?" he said musingly, as
+he opened up the official blue paper.  "For joy?" He laughed a little
+uneasily as he said it.  His eyes ran through the document.
+
+"The Honourable Tom Ferrol, of Stavely Castle, County Galway, Ireland,
+bachelor, and Christine Marie Lavilette, of the Township of Bonaventure,
+in the Province of Lower Canada, spinster, Are hereby granted," etc.,
+etc., etc., "according to the laws of the Province of Upper Canada,"
+etc., etc., etc.
+
+He put it in his pocket.
+
+"For better or for worse, then," he said, and descended the stairs.
+
+Presently, as he went through the village, he noticed signs of hostility
+to himself.  Cries of Vive la Canada!  Vive la France!  a bas l'Anglais!
+came to him out of the murmuring and excitement.  But the Regimental
+Surgeon took off his cap to him, very conspicuously advancing to meet
+him, and they exchanged a few words.
+
+"By the way, monsieur," the Regimental Surgeon added, as he took his
+leave, "I knew of this some days ago, and, being a justice of the peace,
+it was my duty to inform the authorities--yes of course!  One must do
+one's duty in any case," he said, in imitation of English bluffness, and
+took his leave.
+
+Ten minutes later Christine and Ferrol were on their way to the English
+province to be married.
+
+That afternoon at three o'clock, as they left the little English-speaking
+village man and wife, they heard something which startled them both.  It
+was a bear-trainer, singing to his bear the same weird song, without
+words, which Vanne Castine sang to Michael.  Over in another street they
+could see the bear on his hind feet, dancing, but they could not see the
+man.
+
+Christine glanced at Ferrol anxiously, for she was nervous and excited,
+though her face had also a look of exultant happiness.
+
+"No, it's not Castine!" he said, as if in reply to her look.
+
+In a vague way, however, she felt it to be ominous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The village had no thought or care for anything except the Rebellion and
+news of it; and for several days Ferrol and Christine lived their new
+life unobserved by the people of the village, even by the household of
+Manor Casimbault.
+
+It almost seemed that Ferrol's prophecy regarding himself was coming
+true, for his cheek took on a heightened colour, his step a greater
+elasticity, and he flung his shoulders out with a little of the old
+military swagger: cheerful, forgetful of all the world, and buoyant in
+what he thought to be his new-found health and permanent happiness.
+
+Vague reports came to the village concerning the Rebellion.  There were
+not a dozen people in the village who espoused the British cause; and
+these few were silent.  For the moment the Lavilettes were popular.
+Nicolas had made for them a sort of grand coup.  He had for the moment
+redeemed the snobbishness of two generations.
+
+After his secret marriage, Ferrol was not seen in the village for some
+days, and his presence and nationality were almost forgotten by the
+people: they only thought of what was actively before their eyes.  On the
+fifth day after his marriage, which was Saturday, he walked down to the
+village, attracted by shouting and unusual excitement.  When he saw the
+cause of the demonstration he had a sudden flush of anger.  A flag-staff
+had been erected in the centre of the village, and upon it had been run
+up the French tricolour.  He stood and looked at the shouting crowd a
+moment, then swung round and went to the office of the Regimental
+Surgeon, who met him at the door.  When he came out again he carried a
+little bundle under his left arm.  He made straight for the crowd, which
+was scattered in groups, and pushed or threaded his way to the flag-
+staff.  He was at least a head taller than any man there, and though he
+was not so upright as he had been, the lines of his figure were still
+those of a commanding personality.  A sort of platform had been erected
+around the flag-staff and on it a drunken little habitant was talking
+treason.  Without a word, Ferrol stepped upon the platform, and,
+loosening the rope, dropped the tricolour half-way down the staff before
+his action was quite comprehended by the crowd.  Presently a hoarse shout
+proclaimed the anger and consternation of the habitants.
+
+"Leave that flag alone," shouted a dozen voices.  "Leave it where it is!"
+others repeated with oaths.
+
+He dropped it the full length of the staff, whipped it off the string,
+and put his foot upon it.  Then he unrolled the bundle which he had
+carried under his arm.  It was the British flag.  He slipped it upon the
+string, and was about to haul it up, when the drunken orator on the
+platform caught him by the arm with fiery courage.
+
+"Here, you leave that alone: that's not our flag, and if you string it
+up, we'll string you up, bagosh!" he roared.
+
+Ferrol's heavy walking-stick was in his right hand.  "Let go my arm-
+quick!" he said quietly.
+
+He was no coward, and these people were, and he knew it.  The habitant
+drew back.
+
+"Get off the platform," he said with quiet menace.
+
+He turned quickly to the crowd, for some had sprung towards the platform
+to pull him off.  Raising his voice, he said:
+
+"Stand back, and hear what I've got to say.  You're a hundred to one.
+You can probably kill me; but before you do that I shall kill three or
+four of you.  I've had to do with rioters before.  You little handful of
+people here--little more than half a million--imagine that you can defeat
+thirty-five millions, with an army of half a million, a hundred battle-
+ships, ten thousand cannon and a million rifles.  Come now, don't be
+fools.  The Governor alone up there in Montreal has enough men to drive
+you all into the hills of Maine in a week.  You think you've got the
+start of Colborne?  Why, he has known every movement of Papineau and your
+rebels for the last two months.  You can bluster and riot to-day, but
+look out for to-morrow.  I am the only Englishman here among you.  Kill
+me; but watch what your end will be!  For every hair of my head there
+will be one less habitant in this province.  You haul down the British
+flag, and string up your tricolour in this British village while there is
+one Britisher to say, 'Put up that flag again!'--You fools!"
+
+He suddenly gave the rope a pull, and the flag ran up half-way; but as
+he did so a stone was thrown.  It flew past his head, grazing his temple.
+A sharp point lacerated the flesh, and the blood flowed down his cheek.
+He ran the flag up to its full height, swiftly knotted the cord and put
+his back against the pole.  Grasping his stick he prepared himself for an
+attack.
+
+"Mind what I say," he cried; "the first man that comes will get what
+for!"
+
+There was a commotion in the crowd; consternation and dismay behind
+Ferrol, and excitement and anger in front of him.  Three men were pushing
+their way through to him.  Two of them were armed.  They reached the
+platform and mounted it.  It was the Regimental Surgeon and two British
+soldiers.  The Regimental Surgeon held a paper in his hand.
+
+"I have here," he said to the crowd, "a proclamation by Sir John
+Colborne.  The rebels have been defeated at three points, and half of
+the men from Bonaventure who joined Papineau have been killed.  The
+ringleader, Nicolas Lavilette, when found, will be put on trial for his
+life.  Now, disperse to your homes, or every man of you will be arrested
+and tried by court-martial."
+
+The crowd melted away like snow, and they hurried not the less because
+the stone which some one had thrown at Ferrol had struck a lad in the
+head, and brought him senseless and bleeding to the ground.
+
+Ferrol picked up the tricolour and handed it to the Regimental Surgeon.
+
+"I could have done it alone, I believe," he said; "and, upon my soul, I'm
+sorry for the poor devils.  Suppose we were Englishmen in France, eh?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The fight was over.  The childish struggle against misrule had come to a
+childish end.  The little toy loyalists had been broken all to pieces.  A
+few thousand Frenchmen, with a vague patriotism, had shied some harmless
+stones at the British flag-staff on the citadel: that was all.  Obeying
+the instincts of blood, religion, race, and language, they had made a
+haphazard, sidelong charge upon their ancient conquerors, had spluttered
+and kicked a little, and had then turned tail upon disaster and defeat.
+An incoherent little army had been shattered into fugitive factors, and
+every one of these hurried and scurried for a hole of safety into which
+he could hide.  Some were mounted, but most were on foot.
+
+Officers fared little better than men.  It was "Save who can": they were
+all on a dead level of misfortune.  Hundreds reached no cover, but were
+overtaken and driven back to British headquarters.  In their terror,
+twenty brave rebels of two hours ago were to be captured by a single
+British officer of infantry speaking bad French.
+
+Two of these hopeless fugitives were still fortunate enough to get a
+start of the hounds of retaliation and revenge.  They were both mounted,
+and had far to go to reach their destination.  Home was the one word in
+the mind of each; and they both came from Bonaventure.
+
+The one was a tall, athletic young man, who had borne a captain's
+commission in Papineau's patriot army.  He rode a sorel horse--a great,
+wiry raw-bone, with a lunge like a moose, and legs that struck the ground
+with the precision of a piston-rod.  As soon as his nose was turned
+towards Bonaventure he smelt the wind of home in his nostrils; his
+hatchet head jerked till he got the bit straight between his teeth; then,
+gripping it as a fretful dog clamps the bone which his master pretends to
+wrest from him, he leaned down to his work, and the mud, the new-fallen
+snow and the slush flew like dirty sparks, and covered man and horse.
+
+Above, an uncertain, watery moon flew in and out among the shifting
+clouds; and now and then a shot came through the mist and the half dusk,
+telling of some poor fugitive fighting, overtaken, or killed.
+
+The horse neither turned head nor slackened gait.  He was like a living
+machine, obeying neither call nor spur, but travelling with an unchanging
+speed along the level road, and up and down hill, mile after mile.
+
+In the rider's heart were a hundred things; among them fear, that
+miserable depression which comes with the first defeats of life, the
+falling of the mercury from passionate activity to that frozen numbness
+which betrays the exhausted nerve and despairing mind.  The horse could
+not go fast enough; the panic of flight was on him.  He was conscious of
+it, despised himself for it; but he could not help it.  Yet, if he were
+overtaken, he would fight; yes, fight to the end, whatever it might be.
+Nicolas Lavilette had begun to unwind the coil of fortune and ambition
+which his mother had long been engaged in winding.
+
+A mile or two behind was another horse and another rider.  The animal was
+clean of limb, straight and shapely of body, with a leg like a lady's,
+and heart and wind to travel till she dropped.  This mare the little
+black notary, Shangois, had cheerfully stolen from beside the tent of the
+English general.  The bridle-rein hung upon the wrist of the notary's
+palsied left hand, and in his right hand he carried the long sabre of an
+artillery officer, which he had picked up on the battlefield.  He rode
+like a monkey clinging to the back of a hound, his shoulder hunched, his
+body bent forward even with the mare's neck, his knees gripping the
+saddle with a frightened tenacity, his small, black eyes peering into the
+darkness before him, and his ears alert to the sound of pursuers.
+
+Twenty men of the British artillery were also off on a chase that pleased
+them well.  The hunt was up.  It was not only the joy of killing, but the
+joy of gain, that spurred them on; for they would have that little black
+thief who stole the general's brown mare, or they would know the reason
+why.
+
+As the night wore on, Lavilette could hear hoof-beats behind him; those
+of the mare growing clearer and clearer, and those of the artillerymen
+remaining about the same, monotonously steady.  He looked back, and saw
+the mare lightly leaning to her work, and a little man hanging to her
+back.  He did not know who it was; and if he had known he would have
+wondered.  Shangois had ridden to camp to fetch him back to Bonaventure
+for two purposes: to secure the five thousand dollars from Ferrol, and to
+save Nic's sister from marrying a highwayman.  These reasons he would
+have given to Nic Lavilette, but other ulterior and malicious ideas were
+in his mind.  He had no fear, no real fear.  His body shrank, but that
+was because he had been little used to rough riding and to peril.  But he
+loved this game too, though there was a troop of foes behind him; and as
+long as they rode behind him he would ride on.
+
+He foresaw a moment when he would stop, slide to the ground, and with his
+sabre kill one man--or more.  Yes, he would kill one man.  He had a
+devilish feeling of delight in thinking how he would do it, and how red
+the sabre would look when he had done it.  He wished he had a hundred
+hands and a hundred sabres in those hands.  More than once he had been in
+danger of his life, and yet he had had no fear.
+
+He had in him the power of hatred; and he hated Ferrol as he had never
+hated anything in his life.  He hated him as much as, in a furtive sort
+of way, he loved the rebellious, primitive and violent Christine.
+
+As he rode on a hundred fancies passed through his brain, and they all
+had to do with killing or torturing.  As a boy dreams of magnificent
+deeds of prowess, so he dreamed of deeds of violence and cruelty.  In his
+life he had been secret, not vicious; he had enjoyed the power which
+comes from holding the secrets of others, and that had given him pleasure
+enough.  But now, as if the true passion, the vital principle, asserted
+itself at the very last, so with the shadow of death behind him, his real
+nature was dominant.  He was entirely sane, entirely natural, only
+malicious.
+
+The night wore on, and lifted higher into the sky, and the grey dawn
+crept slowly up: first a glimmer, then a neutral glow, then a sort of
+darkness again, and presently the candid beginning of day.
+
+As they neared the Parish of Bonaventure, Lavilette looked back again,
+and saw the little black notary a few hundred yards behind.  He
+recognised him this time, waved a hand, and then called to his own fagged
+horse.  Shangois's mare was not fagged; her heart and body were like
+steel.
+
+Not a quarter of a mile behind them both were three of the twenty
+artillerymen.  Lavilette came to the bridge shouting for Baby, the
+keeper.  Baby recognised him, and ran to the lever even as the sorel
+galloped up.  For the first time in the ride, Nic stuck spurs harshly
+into the sorel's side.  With a grunt of pain the horse sprang madly on.
+A half-dozen leaps more and they were across, even as the bridge began to
+turn; for Baby had not recognised the little black notary, and supposed
+him to be one of Nic's pursuers; the others he saw further back in the
+road.  It was only when Shangois was a third of the way across, that he
+knew the mare's rider.  There was no time to turn the bridge back, and
+there was no time for Shangois to stop the headlong pace of the mare.
+She gave a wild whinny of fright, and jumped cornerwise, clear out across
+the chasm, towards the moving bridge.  Her front feet struck the timbers,
+and then, without a cry, mare and rider dropped headlong down to the
+river beneath, swollen by the autumn rains.
+
+Baby looked down and saw the mare's head thrust above the water, once,
+twice; then there was a flash of a sabre--and nothing more.
+
+Shangois, with his dreams of malice and fighting, and the secrets of a
+half-dozen parishes strapped to his back, had dropped out of Bonaventure,
+as a stone crumbles from a bank into a stream, and many waters pass over
+it, and no one inquires whither it has gone, and no one mourns for it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ON Sunday morning Ferrol lay resting on a sofa in a little room off the
+saloon.  He had suffered somewhat from the bruise on his head, and while
+the Lavilettes, including Christine, were at mass, he remained behind,
+alone in the house, save for two servants in the kitchen.  From where he
+lay he could look down into the village.  He was thinking of the tangle
+into which things had got.  Feeling was bitter against him, and against
+the Lavilettes also, now that the patriots were defeated.  It had gone
+about that he had warned the Governor.  The habitants, in their blind
+way, blamed him for the consequences of their own misdoing.  They blamed
+Nicolas Lavilette.  They blamed the Lavilettes for their friend ship with
+Ferrol.  They talked and blustered, yet they did not interfere with the
+two soldiers who kept guard at the home of the Regimental Surgeon.  It
+was expected that the Cure would speak of the Rebellion from the altar
+this morning.  It was also rumoured that he would have something to say
+about the Lavilettes; and Christine had insisted upon going.  He laughed
+to think of her fury when he suggested that the Cure would probably have
+something unpleasant to say about himself.  She would go and see to that
+herself, she said.  He was amused, and yet he was not in high spirits,
+for he had coughed a great deal since the incident of the day before, and
+his strength was much weakened.
+
+Presently he heard a footstep in the room, and turned over so that he
+might see.  It was Sophie Farcinelle.
+
+Before he had time to speak or to sit up, she had dropped a hand on his
+shoulder.  Her face was aflame.
+
+"You have been badly hurt, and I'm very sorry," she said.  "Why haven't
+you been to see me?  I looked for you.  I looked every day, and you
+didn't come, and--and I thought you had forgotten.  Have you?  Have you,
+Mr. Ferrol?"
+
+He had raised himself on his elbow, and his face was near hers.  It was
+not in him to resist the appealing of a pretty woman, and he had scarcely
+grasped the fact that he was a married man, his clandestine meetings with
+his wife having had, to this point, rather an air of adventure and
+irresponsibility.  It is hard to say what he might have done or left
+undone; but, as Sophie's face was within an inch of his own, the door of
+the room suddenly opened, and Christine appeared.  The indignation that
+had sent her back from mass to Ferrol was turned into another indignation
+now.
+
+Sophie, frightened, turned round and met her infuriated look.  She did
+not move, however.
+
+"Leave this room at once.  What do you want here?" Christine said,
+between gasps of anger.
+
+"The room is as much mine as yours," answered Sophie, sullenly.
+
+"The man isn't," retorted Christine, with a vicious snap of her teeth.
+
+"Come, come," said Ferrol, in a soothing tone, rising from the sofa and
+advancing.
+
+"What's he to you?" said Sophie, scornfully.
+
+"My husband: that's all!" answered Christine.  "And now, if you please,
+will you go to yours?  You'll find him at mass.  He'll have plenty of
+praying to do if he prays for you both--voila!"
+
+
+"Your husband!" said Sophie, in a husky voice, dumfounded and miserable.
+"Is that so?" she added to Ferrol.  "Is she-your wife?"
+
+"That's the case," he answered, "and, of course," he added in a
+mollifying tone, "being my sister as well as Christine's, there's no
+reason why you shouldn't be alone with me in the room a few moments.
+Is there now?" he added to Christine.
+
+The acting was clever enough, but not quite convincing, and Christine was
+too excited to respond to his blarney.
+
+"He can't be your real husband," said Sophie, hardly above a whisper.
+"The Cure didn't marry you, did he?" She looked at Ferrol doubtfully.
+
+"Well, no," he said; "we were married over in Upper Canada."
+
+"By a Protestant?" asked Sophie.
+
+Christine interrrupted.  "What's that to you?  I hope I'll never see your
+face again while I live.  I want to be alone with my husband, and your
+husband wants to be alone with his wife: won't you oblige us and him--
+Hein?"
+
+Sophie gave Ferrol a look which haunted him while he lived.  One idle
+afternoon he had sowed the seeds of a little storm in the heart of a
+woman, and a whirlwind was driving through her life to parch and make
+desolate the green fields of her youth and womanhood.  He had loitered
+and dallied without motive; but the idle and unmeaning sinner is the most
+dangerous to others and to himself, and he realised it at that moment,
+so far as it was in him to realise anything of the kind.
+
+Sophie's figure as it left the room had that drooping, beaten look which
+only comes to the stricken and the incurably humiliated.
+
+"What have you said to her?" asked Christine of Ferrol, "what have you
+done to her?"
+
+"I didn't do a thing, upon my soul.  I didn't say a thing.  She'd only
+just come in."
+
+"What did she say to you?"
+
+"As near as I can remember, she said: 'You have been hurt, and I'm very
+sorry.  Why haven't you been to see me?  I looked for you; but you didn't
+come, and I thought you had forgotten me.'"
+
+"What did she mean by that?  How dared she!"
+
+"See here, Christine," he said, laying his hand on her quivering
+shoulder, "I didn't say much to her.  I was over there one afternoon, the
+afternoon I asked you to marry me.  I drank a lot of liqueur; she looked
+very pretty, and before she had a chance to say yes or no about it I
+kissed her.  Now that's a fact.  I've never spent five minutes with her
+alone since; I haven't even seen her since, until this morning.  Now
+that's the honest truth.  I know it was scampish; but I never pretended
+to be good.  It is nothing for you to make a fuss about, because,
+whatever I am--and it isn't much one way or another--I am all yours,
+straight as a die, Christine.  I suppose, if we lived together fifty
+years, I'd probably kiss fifty women--once a year isn't a high average;
+but those kisses wouldn't mean anything; and you, you, my girl"--he bent
+his head down to her "why, you mean everything to me, and I wouldn't give
+one kiss of yours for a hundred thousand of any other woman's in the
+world!  What you've done for me, and what you'd do for me--"
+
+There was a strange pathos in his voice, an uncommon thing, because his
+usual eloquence was, as a rule, more pleasing than touching.  A quick
+change of feeling passed over her, and her eyes filled with tears.  He
+ran his arm round her shoulder.
+
+"Ah, come, come!" he said, with a touch of insinuating brogue, and
+kissed her.  "Come, it's all right.  I didn't mean anything, and she
+didn't mean anything; and let's start fresh again."
+
+She looked up at him with quick intelligence.  "That's just what we'll
+have to do," she said.  "The Cure this morning at mass scolded the people
+about the Rebellion, and said that Nic and you had brought all this
+trouble upon Bonaventure; and everybody looked at our pew and snickered.
+Oh, how I hate them all!  Then I jumped up--"
+
+"Well?" asked Ferrol, "and what then?"
+
+"I told them that my brother wasn't a coward, and that you were my
+husband."
+
+"And then--then what happened?"
+
+"Oh, then there was a great fuss in the church, and the Cure said ugly
+things, and I left and came home quick.  And now--"
+
+"Well, and now?" Ferrol interrupted.
+
+"Well, now we'll have to do something."
+
+"You mean, to go away?" he asked, with a little shrug of his shoulder.
+She nodded her head.
+
+He was depressed: he had had a hemorrhage that morning, and the road
+seemed to close in on him on all sides.
+
+"How are we to live?" he asked, with a pitiful sort of smile.
+
+She looked up at him steadily for a moment, without speaking.  He did not
+understand the look in her eyes, until she said:
+
+"You have that five thousand dollars!"
+
+He drew back a step from her, and met her unwavering look a little
+fearfully.  She knew that--she--!  "When did you find it out?" he asked.
+
+"The morning we were married," she replied.
+
+"And you--you, Christine, you married me, a thief!"  She nodded again.
+
+"What difference could it make?" she asked.  "I wouldn't have been happy
+if I hadn't married you.  And I loved you!"
+
+"Look here, Christine," he said, "that five thousand dollars is not for
+you or for me.  You will be safe enough if anything should happen to me;
+your people would look after you, and you have some money in your own
+right.  But I've a sister, and she's lame.  She never had to do a stroke
+of work in her life, and she can't do it now.  I have shared with her
+anything I have had since times went wrong with us and our family.  I
+needed money badly enough, but I didn't care very much whether I got it
+for myself or not--only for her.  I wanted that five thousand dollars for
+her, and to her it shall go; not one penny to you, or to me, or to any
+other human being.  The Rebellion is over: that money wouldn't have
+altered things one way or another.  It's mine, and if anything happens to
+me--"
+
+He suddenly stooped down and caught her hands, looking her in the eyes
+steadily.
+
+"Christine," he said, "I want you never to ask me to spend a penny of
+that money; and I want you to promise me, by the name of the Virgin Mary,
+that you'll see my sister gets it, and that you'll never let her or any
+one else know where it came from.  Come, Christine, will you do it for
+me?  I know it's very little indeed I give you, and you're giving me
+everything; but some people are born to be debtors in this world, and
+some to be creditors, and some give all and get little, because--"
+
+She interrupted him.
+
+"Because they love as I love you," she said, throwing her arms round his
+neck.  "Show me where the money is, and I'll do all you say, if--"
+
+"Yes, if anything happens to me," he said, and dropped his hand
+caressingly upon her head.  He loved her in that moment.
+
+She raised her eyes to his.  He stooped and kissed her.  She was still in
+his arms as the door opened and Monsieur and Madame Lavilette entered,
+pale and angry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+That night the British soldiers camped in the village.  All over the
+country the rebels had been scattered and beaten, and Bonaventure had
+been humbled and injured.  After the blind injustice of the fearful and
+the beaten, Nicolas Lavilette and his family were blamed for the miseries
+which had come upon the place.  They had emerged from their isolation to
+tempt popular favour, had contrived many designs and ambitions, and in
+the midst of their largest hopes were humiliated, and were followed by
+resentment.  The position was intolerable.  In happy circumstances,
+Christine's marriage with Ferrol might have been a completion of their
+glory, but in reality it was the last blow to their progress.
+
+In the dusk, Ferrol and Christine sat in his room: she, defiant,
+indignant, courageous; he hiding his real feelings, and knowing that all
+she now planned and arranged would come to naught.  Three times that day
+he had had violent paroxysms of coughing; and at last had thrown himself
+on his bed, exhausted, helplessly wishing that something would end it
+all.  Illusion had passed for ever.  He no longer had a cold, but a
+mortal trouble that was killing him inch by inch.  He remembered how a
+brother officer of his, dying of an incurable disease, and abhorring
+suicide, had gone into a cafe and slapped an unoffending bully and
+duellist in the face, inviting a combat.  The end was sure, easy and
+honourable.  For himself--he looked at Christine.  Not all her abounding
+vitality, her warm, healthy body, or her overwhelming love, could give
+him one extra day of life, not one day.  What a fool he had been to think
+that she could do so!  And she must sit and watch him--she, with her
+primitive fierceness of love, must watch him sinking, fading helplessly
+out of life, sight and being.
+
+A bottle of whiskey was beside him.  During the two hours just gone he
+had drunk a whole pint of it.  He poured out another half-glass, filled
+it up with milk, and drank it off slowly.  At that moment a knock came
+to the door.  Christine opened it, and admitted one of the fugitives of
+Nicolas's company of rebels.  He saw Ferrol, and came straight to him.
+
+"A letter for M'sieu' the Honourable," said he "from M'sieu' le Capitaine
+Lavilette."
+
+Ferrol opened the paper.  It contained only a few lines.  Nicolas was
+hiding in the store-room of the vacant farmhouse, and Ferrol must assist
+him to escape to the State of New York.
+
+He had stolen into the village from the north, and, afraid to trust any
+one except this faithful member of his company, had taken refuge in a
+place where, if the worst came to the worst, he could defend himself,
+for a time at least.  Twenty rifles of the rebels had been stored in the
+farmhouse, and they were all loaded!  Ferrol, of course, could go where
+he liked, being a Britisher, and nobody would notice him.  Would he not
+try to get him away?
+
+While Christine questioned the fugitive, Ferrol thought the matter over.
+One thing he knew: the solution of the great problem had come; and the
+means to the solution ran through his head like lightning.  He rose to
+his feet, drank off a few mouthfuls of undiluted whiskey, filled a flask
+and put it in his pocket.  Then he found his pistols, and put on his
+greatcoat, muffler and cap, before he spoke a word.
+
+Christine stood watching him intently.
+
+"What are you going to do, Tom?" she said quietly.  "I am going to save
+your brother, if I can," was his reply, as he handed her Nic's letter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Half an hour later, as Ferrol was passing from Louis Lavilette's stables
+into the road leading to the Seigneury he met Sophie Farcinelle, face to
+face.  In a vague sort of way he was conscious that a look of despair and
+misery had suddenly wasted the bloom upon her cheek, and given to the
+large, cow-like eyes an expression of child-like hopelessness.  An apathy
+had settled upon his nerves.  He saw things as in a dream.  His brain
+worked swiftly, but everything that passed before his eyes was, as it
+were, in a kaleidoscope, vivid and glowing, but yet intangible.  His
+brain told him that here before him was a woman into whose life he had
+brought its first ordeal and humiliation.  But his heart only felt a
+reflective sort of pity: it was not a personal or immediate realisation,
+that is, not at first.
+
+He was scarcely conscious that he stood and looked at her for quite two
+minutes, without motion or speech on the part of either; but the dumb,
+desolate look in her eyes--a look of appeal, astonishment, horror and
+shame combined, presently clarified his senses, and he slowly grew to
+look at her as at his punishment, the punishment of his life.  Before
+--always before--Sophie had been vague and indistinct: seen to-day,
+forgotten tomorrow; and previous to meeting her scores had affected his
+senses, affected them not at all deeply.
+
+She was like a date in history to a boy who remembers that it meant
+something, but what, is not quite sure.  But the meaning and definiteness
+were his own.  Out of the irresponsibility of his nature, out of the
+moral ineptitude to which he had been born, moral knowledge came to him
+at last.  Love had not done it; neither the love of Christine, as strong
+as death, nor the love of his sister, the deepest thing he ever knew--but
+the look of a woman wronged.  He had inflicted on her the deepest wrong
+that may be done a woman.  A woman can forgive passion and ruin, and
+worse, if the man loves her, and she can forgive herself, remembering
+that to her who loved much, much was forgiven.  But out of wilful
+idleness, the mere flattery of the senses, a vampire feeding upon the
+spirits and souls of others, for nothing save emotion for emotion's sake
+--that was shameless, it was the last humiliation of a woman.  As it
+were, to lose joy, and glow, and fervour of young, sincere and healthy
+life, to whip up the dying vitality and morbid brain of a consumptive!
+
+All in a flash he saw it, realised it, and hated himself for it.  He knew
+that as long as he lived, an hour or ten years, he never could redeem
+himself; never could forgive himself, and never buy back the life that he
+had injured.  Many a time in his life he had kissed and ridden away, and
+had been unannoyed by conscience.  But in proportion as conscience had
+neglected him before, it ground him now between the stones, and he saw
+himself as he was.  Come of a gentleman's family, he knew he was no
+gentleman.  Having learned the forms and courtesies of life, having
+infused his whole career with a spirit of gay bonhomie, he knew that in
+truth he was a swaggerer; that bad taste, infamous bad taste, had marked
+almost everything that he had done in his life.  He had passed as one of
+the nobility, but he knew that all true men, all he had ever met, must
+have read him through and through.  He had understood this before to a
+certain point, had read himself to a certain mark of gauge, but he had
+never been honestly and truly a man until this moment.  His soul was
+naked before his eyes.  It had been naked before, but he had laughed.
+Born without real remorse, he felt it at last.  The true thing started
+within him.  God, the avenger, the revealer and the healer, had held up
+this woman as a glass to him that he might see himself.
+
+He saw her as she had been, a docile, soft-eyed girl, untouched by
+anything that defames or shames, and all in a moment the man that had
+never been in him until now, from the time he laughed first into his
+mother's eyes as a babe, spoke out as simply as a child would have
+spoken, and told the truth.  There were no ameliorating phrases to soften
+it to her ears; there was no tact, there was no blarney, there was no
+suave suggestion now, no cheap gaiety, no cynicism of the social vampire
+--only the direct statement of a self-reproachful, dying man.
+
+"I didn't fully know what I was doing," he said to her.  "If I had
+understood then as I do now, I would never have come near you.  It was
+the worst wickedness I ever did."
+
+The new note in his voice, the new fashion of his words, the new look of
+his eyes, startled her, confused her.  She could scarcely believe he was
+the same man.  The dumb desolation lifted a little, and a look of under
+standing seemed to pierce her tragic apathy.  As if a current of thought
+had been suddenly sent through her, she drew herself up with a little
+shiver, and looked at him as if she were about to speak; but instead of
+doing so, a strange, unhappy smile passed across her lips.
+
+He saw that all the goodness of her nature was trying to arouse itself
+and assure him of forgiveness.  It did not deceive him in the least.
+
+"I won't be so mean now as to say I was weak," he added.  "I was not
+weak; I was bad.  I always felt I was born a liar and a thief.  I've lied
+to myself all my life; and I've lied to other people because I never was
+a true man."
+
+"A thief!" she said at last, scarcely above a whisper, and looking at him
+with a flash of horror in her eyes.  "A thief!"
+
+It was no use; he could not allow her to think he meant a thief in the
+vulgar, common sense, though that was what he was: just a common
+criminal.
+
+"I have stolen the kind thoughts and love of people to whom I gave
+nothing in return," he said steadily.  "There is nothing good in me.
+I used to think I was good-natured; but I was not, or I wouldn't have
+brought misery to a girl like you."
+
+His truth broke down the barriers of her anger and despair.  Something
+welled up in her heart: it may have been love, it may have been inherent
+womanliness.
+
+"Why did you marry Christine?" she asked.
+
+All at once he saw that she never could quite understand.  Her stand-
+point would still, in the end, be the stand-point of a woman.  He saw
+that she would have forgiven him, even had he not loved her, if he had
+not married Christine.  For the first time he knew something, the real
+something, of a woman's heart.  He had never known it before, because he
+had been so false himself.  He might have been evil and had a conscience
+too; then he would have been wise.  But he had been evil, and had had no
+conscience or moral mentor from the beginning; so he had never known
+anything real in his life.  He thought he had known Christine, but now he
+saw her in a new light, through the eyes of her sister from whose heart
+he had gathered a harvest of passion and affection, and had burnt the
+stubble and seared the soil forever.  Sophie could never justify herself
+in the eyes of her husband, or in her own eyes, because this man did not
+love her.  Even as he stood before her there, declaring himself to her as
+wilfully wicked in all that he had said and done, she still longed
+passionately for the thing that was denied her: not her lost truth back,
+but the love that would have compensated for her suffering, and in some
+poor sense have justified her in years to come.  She did not put it into
+words, but the thought was bluntly in her mind.  She looked at him, and
+her eyes filled with tears, which dropped down her cheek to the ground.
+
+He was about to answer her question, when, all at once, her honest eyes
+looked into his mournfully, and she said with an incredible pathos and
+simplicity:
+
+"I don't know how I am going to live on with Magon.  I suppose I'll have
+to keep pretending till I die!"
+
+The bell in the church was ringing for vespers.  It sounded peaceful and
+quiet, as though no war, or rebellion, or misery and shame, were anywhere
+within the radius of its travel.
+
+Just where they stood there was a tall calvary.  Behind it was some
+shrubbery.  Ferrol was going to answer her, when he saw, coming along the
+road, the Cure in his robes, bearing the host.  In front of him trotted
+an acolyte, swinging the censer.
+
+Ferrol quickly drew Sophie aside behind the bushes, where they should not
+be seen; for he was no longer reckless.  He wished to be careful for the
+woman's sake.
+
+The Curb did not turn his head to the right or left, but came along
+chanting something slowly.  The smell of the incense floated past them.
+When the priest and the lad reached the calvary they turned towards it,
+bowed, crossed themselves, and the lad rang a little silver bell.  Then
+the two passed on, the lad still ringing.  When they were out of sight
+the sound of the bell came softly, softly up the road, while the bell in
+the church tower still called to prayer.
+
+The words the priest chanted seemed to ring through the air after he had
+gone.
+
+              "God have mercy upon the passing soul!
+               God have mercy upon the passing soul!
+               Hear the prayer of the sinner, O Lord;
+               Listen to the voice of those that mourn;
+               Have mercy upon the sinner, O Lord!"
+
+When Ferrol turned to Sophie again, both her hands were clasping the
+calvary, and she had dropped her head upon them.
+
+"I must go," he said.  She did not move.
+
+Again he spoke to her; but she did not lift her head.  Presently,
+however, as he stood watching her, she moved away from the calvary, and,
+with her back still turned to him, stepped out into the road and hurried
+on towards her home, never once turning her head.
+
+He stood looking after her for a moment, then turned and, sitting on a
+log behind the shrubbery, he tore a few pieces of paper out of a note-
+book and began writing.  He wrote swiftly for about twenty minutes or
+more, then, arising, he moved on towards the village, where crowds had
+gathered--excited, fearful, tumultuous; for the British soldiers had just
+entered the place.
+
+Ferrol seemed almost oblivious of the threatening crowd, which once or
+twice jostled him more than was accidental.  He came into the post-
+office, got an envelope, put his letter inside it, stamped it, addressed
+it to Christine, and dropped it into the letter-box.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+An hour later he stood among a few companies of British soldiers in front
+of the massive stone store-house of the Lavilettes' abandoned farmhouse,
+with its thick shuttered windows and its solid oak doors.  It was too
+late to attempt the fugitive's escape, save by strategy.  Over half an
+hour Nic had kept them at bay.  He had made loopholes in the shutters and
+the door, and from these he fired upon his assailants.  Already he had
+wounded five and killed two.
+
+Men had been sent for timber to batter down the door and windows.
+Meanwhile, the troops stood at a respectful distance, out of the range of
+Nic's firing, awaiting developments.
+
+Ferrol consulted with the officers, advising a truce and parley, offering
+himself as mediator to induce Nic to surrender.  To this the officers
+assented, but warned him that his life might pay the price of his
+temerity.  He laughed at this.  He had been talking, with his head and
+throat well muffled, and the collar of his greatcoat drawn about his
+ears.  Once or twice he coughed, a hacking, wrenching cough, which struck
+the ears of more than one of the officers painfully; for they had known
+him in his best and gayest days at Quebec.
+
+It was arranged that he should advance, holding out a flag of truce.
+Before he went he drew aside one of the younger lieutenants, in whose
+home at Quebec his sister had always been a welcome visitor, and told him
+briefly the story of his marriage, of his wife and of Nicolas.  He sent
+Christine a message, that she should not forget to carry his last token
+to his sister!  Then turning, he muffled up his face against the crisp,
+harsh air (there was design in this also), and, waving a white
+handkerchief, advanced to the door of the store-room.
+
+The soldiers waited anxiously, fearing that Nic would fire, in spite of
+all; but presently a spot of white appeared at one of the loopholes; then
+the door was slowly opened.  Ferrol entered, and it was closed again.
+
+Nicolas Lavilette grasped his hand.
+
+"I knew you wouldn't go back on me," said he.  "I knew you were my
+friend.  What the devil do they want out there?"
+
+"I am more than your friend: I'm your brother," answered Ferrol,
+meaningly.  Then, quickly taking off his greatcoat, cap, muffler and
+boots: "Quick, on with these!" he said.  "There's no time to lose!"
+
+"What's all this?" asked Nic.
+
+"Never mind; do exactly as I say, and there's a chance for you."
+
+Nic put on the overcoat.  Ferrol placed the cap on his head, and muffled
+him up exactly as he himself had been, then made him put on his own top-
+boots.
+
+"Now, see," he said, "everything depends upon how you do this thing.
+You are about my height.  Pass yourself off for me.  Walk loose and long
+as I do, and cough like me as you go."
+
+There was no difficulty in showing him what the cough was like: he
+involuntarily offered an illustration as he spoke.
+
+"As soon as I shut the door and you start forward, I'll fire on them.
+That'll divert their attention from you.  They'll take you for me, and
+think I've failed in persuading you to give yourself up.  Go straight on-
+don't hurry--coughing all the time; and if you can make the dark, just
+beyond the soldiers, by the garden bench, you'll find two men.  They'll
+help you.  Make for the big tree on the Seigneury road--you know: where
+you were robbed.  There you'll find the fastest horse from your father's
+stables.  Then ride, my boy, ride for your life to the State of New
+York!"
+
+"And you--you?" asked Nicolas.  Ferrol laughed.
+
+"You needn't worry about me, Nic.  I'll get out of this all right; as
+right as rain!  Are you ready?  Steady now, steady.  Let me hear you
+cough."  Nic coughed.
+
+"No, that isn't it.  Listen and watch."  Ferrol coughed.  "Here," he
+said, taking something from his pocket, "open your mouth."  He threw some
+pepper down the other's throat.  "Now try it."
+
+Nic coughed almost convulsively.
+
+"Yes, that's it, that's it!  Just keep that up.  Come along now.  Quick-
+not a moment to lose!  Steady!  You're all right, my boy; you've got
+nerve, and that's the thing.  Good-bye, Nic, good luck to you!"
+
+They grasped hands: the door opened swiftly, and Nic stepped outside.  In
+an instant Ferrol was at the loophole.  Raising a rifle, he fired, then
+again and again.  Through the loophole he could see a half-dozen men lift
+a log to advance on the door as Nic passed a couple of officers, coughing
+hard, and making spasmodic motions with his hand, as though exhausted and
+unable to speak.
+
+He fired again, and a soldier fell.  The lust of fighting was on him now.
+It was not a question of country or of race, but only a man crowding the
+power of old instincts into the last moments of his life.  The vigour and
+valour of a reconquered youth seemed to inspire him; he felt as he did
+when a mere boy fighting on the Danube.  His blood rioted in his veins;
+his eyes flashed.  He lifted the flask of whiskey and gulped down great
+mouthfuls of it, and fired again and again, laughing madly.
+
+"Let them come on, let them come on," he cried.  "By God, I'll settle
+them!"  The frenzy of war possessed him.  He heard the timber crash
+against the door--once, twice, thrice, and then give away.  He swung
+round and saw men's faces glowing in the light of the fire, and then
+another face shot in before the others--that of Vanne Castine.
+
+With a cry of fury he ran forward into the doorway.  Castine saw him at
+the same moment.  With a similar instinct each sprang for the other's
+throat, Castine with a knife in his hand.
+
+A cry of astonishment went up from the officers and the men without.
+They had expected to see Nic; but Nic was on his way to the horse beneath
+the great elm tree, and from the elm tree to the State of New York--and
+safety.
+
+The men and the officers fell back as Castine and Ferrol clinched in a
+death struggle.  Ferrol knew that his end had come.  He had expected it,
+hoped for it.  But, before the end, he wanted to kill this man, if he
+could.  He caught Castine's head in his hands, and, with a last effort,
+twisted it back with a sudden jerk.
+
+All at once, with the effort, blood spurted from his mouth into the
+other's face.  He shivered, tottered and fell back, as Castine struck
+blindly into space.  For a moment Ferrol swayed back and forth, stretched
+out his hands convulsively and gasped, trying to speak, the blood welling
+from his lips.  His eyes were wild, anxious and yearning, his face deadly
+pale and covered with a cold sweat.  Presently he collapsed, like a
+loosened bundle, upon the steps.
+
+Castine, blinded with blood, turned round, and the light of the fire upon
+his open mouth made him appear to grin painfully--an involuntary grimace
+of terror.
+
+At that instant a rifle shot rang out from the shrubbery, and Castine
+sprang from the ground and fell at Ferrol's feet.  Then, with a
+contortive shudder, he rolled over and over the steps, and lay face
+downward upon the ground-dead.
+
+A girl ran forward from the trees, with a cry, pushing her way through to
+Ferrol's body.  Lifting up his head, she called to him in an agony of
+entreaty.  But he made no answer.
+
+"That's the woman who fired the shot!" said a subaltern officer
+excitedly.  "I saw her!"
+
+"Shut up, you fool--it was his wife!" exclaimed the young captain to
+whom Ferrol had given his last message for Christine.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+After which comes steady happiness or the devil to pay (wedding)
+All men are worse than most women
+I always did what was wrong, and liked it--nearly always
+Men feel surer of women than women feel of men
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POMP OF THE LAVILETTES, BY PARKER, V2 ***
+
+************* This file should be named 6216.txt or 6216.zip *************
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