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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Lane That Had No Turning, by Parker, v1
+#64 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: The Lane That Had No Turning, Volume 1.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6237]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 17, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LANE HAD NO TURNING, PARKER, V1 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 1.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+Volume 1.
+THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING
+
+Volume 2.
+THE ABSURD ROMANCE OF P'TITE LOUISON
+THE LITTLE BELL OF HONOUR
+A SON OF THE WILDERNESS
+A WORKER IN STONE
+
+Volume 3.
+THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF ANNETTE
+THE MARRIAGE OF THE MILLER
+MATHURIN
+THE STORY OF THE LIME-BURNER
+THE WOODSMAN'S STORY OF THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF
+UNCLE JIM
+THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH
+PARPON THE DWARF
+
+Volume 4.
+TIMES WERE HARD IN PONTIAC
+MEDALLION'S WHIM
+THE PRISONER
+AN UPSET PRICE
+A FRAGMENT OF LIVES
+THE MAN THAT DIED AT ALMA
+THE BARON OF BEAUGARD
+THE TUNE McGILVERAY PLAYED
+
+
+
+
+
+The Right Hon. Sir Wilfrid Laurier G.C.M.G.
+
+Dear Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Since I first began to write these tales in
+1892, I have had it in my mind to dedicate to you the "bundle of life"
+when it should be complete.  It seemed to me--and it seems so still--that
+to put your name upon the covering of my parcel, as one should say, "In
+care of," when it went forth, was to secure its safe and considerate
+delivery to that public of the Empire which is so much in your debt.
+
+But with other feelings also do I dedicate this volume to yourself.  For
+many years your name has stood for a high and noble compromise between
+the temperaments and the intellectual and social habits of two races; and
+I am not singular in thinking that you have done more than most other men
+to make the English and French of the Dominion understand each other
+better.  There are somewhat awkward limits to true understanding as yet,
+but that sympathetic service which you render to both peoples, with a
+conscientious striving for impartiality, tempers even the wind of party
+warfare to the shorn lamb of political opposition.
+
+In a sincere sympathy with French life and character, as exhibited in the
+democratic yet monarchical province of Quebec, or Lower Canada (as,
+historically, I still love to think of it), moved by friendly
+observation, and seeking to be truthful and impartial, I have made this
+book and others dealing with the life of the proud province, which a
+century and a half of English governance has not Anglicised.  This series
+of more or less connected stories, however, has been the most cherished
+of all my labours, covering, as it has done, so many years, and being the
+accepted of my anxious judgment out of a much larger gathering, so many
+numbers of which are retired to the seclusion of copyright, while
+reserved from publication.  In passing, I need hardly say that the
+"Pontiac" of this book is an imaginary place, and has no association with
+the real Pontiac of the Province.
+
+I had meant to call the volume, "Born with a Golden Spoon," a title
+stolen from the old phrase, "Born with a golden spoon in the mouth"; but
+at the last moment I have given the book the name of the tale which is,
+chronologically, the climax of the series, and the end of my narratives
+of French Canadian life and character.  I had chosen the former title
+because of an inherent meaning in it relation to my subject.  A man born
+in the purple--in comfort wealth, and secure estate--is said to have the
+golden spoon in his mouth.  In the eyes of the world, however, the phrase
+has a some what ironical suggestiveness, and to have luxury, wealth, and
+place as a birthright is not thought to be the most fortunate incident of
+mortality.  My application of the phrase is, therefore, different.
+
+I have, as you know, travelled far and wide during the past seventeen
+years, and though I have seen people as frugal and industrious as the
+French Canadians, I have never seen frugality and industry associated
+with so much domestic virtue, so much education and intelligence, and so
+deep and simple a religious life; nor have I ever seen a priesthood at
+once so devoted and high-minded in all the concerns the home life of
+their people, as in French Canada.  A land without poverty and yet
+without riches, French Canada stands alone, too well educated to have a
+peasantry, too poor to have an aristocracy; as though in her the ancient
+prayer had been answered "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but feed me
+with food convenient for me."  And it is of the habitant of Quebec,
+before a men else, I should say, "Born with the golden spoon in his
+mouth."
+
+To you I come with this book, which contains the first thing I ever wrote
+out of the life of the Province so dear to you, and the last things also
+that I shall ever write about it.  I beg you to receive it as the loving
+recreation of one who sympathises with the people of who you come, and
+honours their virtues, and who has no fear for the unity, and no doubt as
+to the splendid future, of the nation, whose fibre is got of the two
+great civilising races of Europe.
+
+Lastly, you will know with what admiration and regard I place your name
+on the fore page of my book, and greet in you the statesman, the
+litterateur, and the personal friend.
+
+               Believe me,
+                    Dear Sir Wilfrid Laurier,
+                         Yours very sincerely,
+                              GILBERT PARKER.
+
+20 CARLTON HOUSE TERRACE,
+     LONDON, S.  W.,
+          14th August, 1900.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+The story with which this book opens, 'The Lane That Had No Turning',
+gives the title to a collection which has a large share in whatever
+importance my work may possess.  Cotemporaneous with the Pierre series,
+which deal with the Far West and the Far North, I began in the
+'Illustrated London News', at the request of the then editor, Mr. Clement
+K. Shorter, a series of French Canadian sketches of which the first was
+'The Tragic Comedy of Annette'.  It was followed by 'The Marriage of the
+Miller, The House with the Tall Porch, The Absurd Romance of P'tite
+Louison, and The Woodsman's Story of the Great White Chief'.  They were
+begun and finished in the autumn of 1892 in lodgings which I had taken on
+Hampstead Heath.  Each--for they were all very short--was written at a
+sitting, and all had their origin in true stories which had been told me
+in the heart of Quebec itself.  They were all beautifully illustrated in
+the Illustrated London News, and in their almost monosyllabic narrative,
+and their almost domestic simplicity, they were in marked contrast to the
+more strenuous episodes of the Pierre series.  They were indeed in
+keeping with the happily simple and uncomplicated life of French Canada
+as I knew it then; and I had perhaps greater joy in writing them and the
+purely French Canadian stories that followed them, such as 'Parpon the
+Dwarf, A Worker in Stone, The Little Bell of Honour, and The Prisoner',
+than in almost anything else I have written, except perhaps 'The Right of
+Way and Valmond', so far as Canada is concerned.
+
+I think the book has harmony, although the first story in it covers
+eighty-two pages, while some of the others, like 'The Marriage of the
+Miller', are less than four pages in length.  At the end also there are
+nine fantasies or stories which I called 'Parables of Provinces'.  All of
+these, I think, possessed the spirit of French Canada, though all are
+more or less mystical in nature.  They have nothing of the simple realism
+of 'The Tragic Comedy of Annette', and the earlier series.  These nine
+stories could not be called popular, and they were the only stories I
+have ever written which did not have an immediate welcome from the
+editors to whom they were sent.  In the United States I offered them to
+'Harper's Magazine', but the editor, Henry M. Alden, while, as I know,
+caring for them personally, still hesitated to publish them.  He thought
+them too symbolic for the every-day reader.  He had been offered four of
+them at once because I declined to dispose of them separately, though the
+editor of another magazine was willing to publish two of them.  Messrs.
+Stone & Kimball, however, who had plenty of fearlessness where literature
+was concerned, immediately bought the series for The Chap Book, long
+since dead, and they were published in that wonderful little short-lived
+magazine, which contained some things of permanent value to literature.
+They published four of the series, namely: 'The Golden Pipes, The
+Guardian of the Fire, By that Place Called Peradventure, The Singing of
+the Bees, and The Tent of the Purple Mat'.  In England, because I would
+not separate the first five, and publish them individually, two or three
+of the editors who were taking the Pierre series and other stories
+appearing in this volume would not publish them.  They, also, were
+frightened by the mystery and allusiveness of the tales, and had an
+apprehension that they would not be popular.
+
+Perhaps they were right.  They were all fantasies, but I do not wish them
+other than they are.  One has to write according to the impulse that
+seizes one and after the fashion of one's own mind.  This at least can be
+said of all my books, that not a page of them has ever been written to
+order, and there is not a story published in all the pages bearing my
+name which does not represent one or two other stories rejected by
+myself.  The art of rejection is the hardest art which an author has to
+learn; but I have never had a doubt as to my being justified in
+publishing these little symbolic things.
+
+Eventually the whole series was published in England.  W. E. Henley gave
+'There Was a Little City' a home in 'The New Review', and expressed
+himself as happy in having it.  'The Forge in the Valley' was published
+by Sir Wemyss Reid in the weekly paper called 'The Speaker', now known as
+'The Nation', in which 'Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch' made his name and
+helped the fame of others.  'There Was a Little City' was published in
+'The Chap Book' in the United States, but 'The Forge in the Valley' had
+(I think) no American public until it appeared within the pages of 'The
+Lane That Had No Turning'.  The rest of the series were published in the
+'English Illustrated Magazine', which was such a good friend to my work
+at the start.  As was perhaps natural, there was some criticism, but very
+little, in French Canada itself, upon the stories in this volume.  It
+soon died away, however, and almost as I write these words there has come
+to me an appreciation which I value as much as anything that has befallen
+me in my career, and that is, the degree of Doctor of Letters from the
+French Catholic University of Laval at Quebec.  It is the seal of French
+Canada upon the work which I have tried to do for her and for the whole
+Dominion.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE RETURN OF MADELINETTE
+
+His Excellency the Governor--the English Governor of French Canada--was
+come to Pontiac, accompanied by a goodly retinue; by private secretary,
+military secretary, aide-de-camp, cabinet minister, and all that.  He was
+making a tour of the Province, but it was obvious that he had gone out of
+his way to visit Pontiac, for there were disquieting rumours in the air
+concerning the loyalty of the district.  Indeed, the Governor had arrived
+but twenty-four hours after a meeting had been held under the presidency
+of the Seigneur, at which resolutions easily translatable into sedition
+were presented.  The Cure and the Avocat, arriving in the nick of time,
+had both spoken against these resolutions; with the result that the new-
+born ardour in the minds of the simple habitants had died down, and the
+Seigneur had parted from the Cure and the Avocat in anger.
+
+Pontiac had been involved in an illegal demonstration once before.
+Valmond, the bizarre but popular Napoleonic pretender, had raised his
+standard there; the stones before the parish church had been stained with
+his blood; and he lay in the churchyard of St. Saviour's forgiven and
+unforgotten.  How was it possible for Pontiac to forget him?  Had he not
+left his little fortune to the parish? and had he not also left twenty
+thousand francs for the musical education of Madelinette Lajeunesse, the
+daughter of the village forgeron, to learn singing of the best masters in
+Paris?  Pontiac's wrong-doings had brought it more profit than penalty,
+more praise than punishment: for, after five years in France in the care
+of the Little Chemist's widow, Madelinette Lajeunesse had become the
+greatest singer of her day.  But what had put the severest strain upon
+the modesty of Pontiac was the fact that, on the morrow of Madelinette's
+first triumph in Paris, she had married M. Louis Racine, the new Seigneur
+of Pontiac.
+
+What more could Pontiac wish?  It had been rewarded for its mistakes; it
+had not even been chastened, save that it was marked Suspicious as to its
+loyalty, at the headquarters of the English Government in Quebec.  It
+should have worn a crown of thorns, but it flaunted a crown of roses.  A
+most unreasonable good fortune seemed to pursue it.  It had been led to
+expect that its new Seigneur would be an Englishman, one George Fournel,
+to whom, as the late Seigneur had more than once declared, the property
+was devised by will; but at his death no will had been found, and Louis
+Racine, the direct heir in blood, had succeeded to the property and the
+title.
+
+Brilliant, enthusiastic, fanatically French, the new Seigneur had set
+himself to revive certain old traditions, customs, and privileges of
+the Seigneurial position.  He was reactionary, seductive, generous,
+and at first he captivated the hearts of Pontiac.  He did more than that.
+He captivated Madelinette Lajeunesse.  In spite of her years in Paris--
+severe, studious years, which shut out the social world and the
+temptations of Bohemian life--Madelinette retained a strange simplicity
+of heart and mind, a desperate love for her old home which would not be
+gainsaid, a passionate loyalty to her past, which was an illusory attempt
+to arrest the inevitable changes that come with growth; and, with a
+sudden impulse, she had sealed herself to her past at the very outset of
+her great career by marriage with Louis Racine.
+
+On the very day of their marriage Louis Racine had made a painful
+discovery.  A heritage of his fathers, which had skipped two generations,
+suddenly appeared in himself: he was becoming a hunchback.
+
+Terror, despair, gloom, anxiety had settled upon him.  Three months later
+Madelinette had gone to Paris alone.  The Seigneur had invented excuses
+for not accompanying her, so she went instead in the care of the Little
+Chemist's widow, as of old Louis had promised to follow within another
+three months, but had not done so.  The surgical operation performed upon
+him was unsuccessful; the strange growth increased.  Sensitive, fearful,
+and morose, he would not go to Europe to be known as the hunchback
+husband of Lajeunesse, the great singer.  He dreaded the hour when
+Madelinette and he should meet again.  A thousand times he pictured her
+as turning from him in loathing and contempt.  He had married her because
+he loved her, but he knew well enough that ten thousand other men could
+love her just as well, and be something more than a deformed Seigneur of
+an obscure manor in Quebec.
+
+As his gloomy imagination pictured the future, when Madelinette should
+return and see him as he was and cease to love him--to build up his
+Seigneurial honour to an undue importance, to give his position a
+fictitious splendour, became a mania with him.  No ruler of a
+Grand Duchy ever cherished his honour dearer or exacted homage more
+persistently than did Louis Racine in the Seigneury of Pontiac.
+Coincident with the increase of these futile extravagances was the
+increase of his fanatical patriotism, which at last found vent in
+seditious writings, agitations, the purchase of rifles, incitement to
+rebellion, and the formation of an armed, liveried troop of dependants at
+the Manor.  On the very eve of the Governor's coming, despite the Cure's
+and the Avocat's warnings, he had held a patriotic meeting intended to
+foster a stubborn, if silent, disregard of the Governor's presence
+amongst them.
+
+The speech of the Cure, who had given guarantee for the good behaviour of
+his people to the Government, had been so tinged with sorrowful appeal,
+had recalled to them so acutely the foolish demonstration which had ended
+in the death of Valmond; that the people had turned from the exasperated
+Seigneur with the fire of monomania in his eyes, and had left him alone
+in the hall, passionately protesting that the souls of Frenchmen were not
+in them.
+
+Next day, upon the church, upon the Louis Quinze Hotel, and elsewhere,
+the Union Jack flew--the British colours flaunted it in Pontiac with
+welcome to the Governor.  But upon the Seigneury was another flag--it of
+the golden-lilies.  Within the Manor House M. Louis Racine sat in the
+great Seigneurial chair, returned from the gates of death.  As he had
+come home from the futile public meeting, galloping through the streets
+and out upon the Seigneury road in the dusk, his horse had shied upon a
+bridge, where mischievous lads waylaid travellers with ghostly heads made
+of lighted candles in hollowed pumpkins, and horse and man had been
+plunged into the stream beneath.  His faithful servant Havel had seen the
+accident and dragged his insensible master from the water.
+
+Now the Seigneur sat in the great arm-chair glowering out upon the
+cheerful day.  As he brooded, shaken and weak and bitter--all his
+thoughts were bitter now--a flash of scarlet, a glint of white plumes
+crossed his line of vision, disappeared, then again came into view, and
+horses' hoofs rang out on the hard road below.  He started to his feet,
+but fell back again, so feeble was he, then rang the bell at his side
+with nervous insistence.  A door opened quickly behind him, and his voice
+said imperiously:
+
+"Quick, Havel--to the door.  The Governor and his suite have come.  Call
+Tardif, and have wine and cake brought at once.  When the Governor
+enters, let Tardif stand at the door, and you beside my chair.  Have the
+men-at-arms get into livery, and make a guard of honour for the Governor
+when he leaves.  Their new rifles too--and let old Fashode wear his
+medal!  See that Lucre is not filthy--ha! ha!  very good.  I must let the
+Governor hear that.  Quick--quick, Havel.  They are entering the grounds.
+Let the Manor bell be rung, and every one mustered.  He shall see that to
+be a Seigneur is not an empty honour.  I am something in the state,
+something by my own right."  His lips moved restlessly; he frowned; his
+hands nervously clasped the arms of the chair.  "Madelinette too shall
+see that I am to be reckoned with, that I am not a nobody.  By God, then,
+but she shall see it!" he added, bringing his clasped hand down hard
+upon the wood.
+
+There was a stir outside, a clanking of chains, a champing of bits, and
+the murmurs of the crowd who were gathering fast in the grounds.
+Presently the door was thrown open and Havel announced the Governor.
+Louis Racine got to his feet, but the Governor hastened forward, and,
+taking both his hands, forced him gently back into the chair.
+
+"No, no, my dear Seigneur.  You must not rise.  This is no state visit,
+but a friendly call to offer congratulations on your happy escape, and
+to inquire how you are."
+
+The Governor said his sentences easily, but he suddenly flushed and was
+embarrassed, for Louis Racine's deformity, of which he had not known--
+Pontiac kept its troubles to itself--stared him in the face; and he felt
+the Seigneur's eyes fastened on him with strange intensity.
+
+"I have to thank your Excellency," the Seigneur said in a hasty nervous
+voice.  "I fell on my shoulders--that saved me.  If I had fallen on my
+head I should have been killed, no doubt.  My shoulders saved me!" he
+added, with a petulant insistence in his voice, a morbid anxiety in his
+face.
+
+"Most providential," responded the Governor.  "It grieves me that it
+should have happened on the occasion of my visit.  I missed the
+Seigneur's loyal public welcome.  But I am happy," he continued, with
+smooth deliberation, "to have it here in this old Manor House, where
+other loyal French subjects of England have done honour to their
+Sovereign's representative."
+
+"This place is sacred to hospitality and patriotism, your Excellency,"
+said Louis Racine, nervousness passing from his voice and a curious hard
+look coming into his face.
+
+The Governor was determined not to see the double meaning.  "It is a
+privilege to hear you say so.  I shall recall the fact to her Majesty's
+Government in the report I shall make upon my tour of the province.
+I have a feeling that the Queen's pleasure in the devotion of her
+distinguished French subjects may take some concrete form."
+
+The Governor's suite looked at each other significantly, for never before
+in his journeys had his Excellency hinted so strongly that an honour
+might be conferred.  Veiled as it was, it was still patent as the sun.
+Spots of colour shot into the Seigneur's cheeks.  An honour from the
+young English Queen--that would mate with Madelinette's fame.  After all,
+it was only his due.  He suddenly found it hard to be consistent.  His
+mind was in a whirl.  The Governor continued:
+
+"It must have given you great pleasure to know that at Windsor her
+Majesty has given tokens of honour to the famous singer, the wife of a
+notable French subject, who, while passionately eager to keep alive
+French sentiment, has, as we believe, a deep loyalty to England."
+
+The Governor had said too much.  He had thought to give the Seigneur an
+opportunity to recede from his seditious position there and then, and to
+win his future loyalty.  M. Racine's situation had peril, and the
+Governor had here shown him the way of escape.  But he had said one thing
+that drove Louis Racine mad.  He had given him unknown information about
+his own wife.  Louis did not know that Madelinette had been received by
+the Queen, or that she had received "tokens of honour."  Wild with
+resentment, he saw in the Governor's words a consideration for himself
+based only on the fact that he was the husband of the great singer.  He
+trembled to his feet.
+
+At that moment there was a cheering outside--great cheering--but
+he did not heed it; he was scarcely aware of it.  If it touched his
+understanding at all, it only meant to him a demonstration in honour of
+the Governor.
+
+"Loyalty to the flag of England, your Excellency!" he said, in a hoarse
+acrid voice--"you speak of loyalty to us whose lives for two centuries--"
+He paused, for he heard a voice calling his name.
+
+"Louis!  Louis!  Louis!"
+
+The fierce words he had been about to utter died on his lips, his eyes
+stared at the open window, bewildered and even frightened.
+
+"Louis!  Louis!"
+
+Now the voice was inside the house.  He stood trembling, both hands
+grasping the arms of the chair.  Every eye in the room was now turned
+towards the door.  As it opened, the Seigneur sank back in the chair, a
+look of helpless misery, touched by a fierce pride, covering his face.
+
+"Louis!"
+
+It was Madelinette, who, disregarding the assembled company, ran forward
+to him and caught both his hands in hers.
+
+"O Louis, I have heard of your accident, and--" she stopped suddenly
+short.  The Governor turned away his head.  Every person in the room did
+the same.  For as she bent over him--she saw.  She saw for the first
+time; for the first time knew!
+
+A look of horrified amazement, of shrinking anguish, crossed over her
+face.  He felt the lightning-like silence, he knew that she had seen;
+he struggled to his feet, staring fiercely at her.
+
+That one torturing instant had taken all the colour from her face, but
+there was a strange brightness in her eyes, a new power in her bearing.
+She gently forced him into the seat again.
+
+"You are not strong enough, Louis.  You must be tranquil."
+
+She turned now to the Governor.  He made a sign to his suite, who,
+bowing, slowly left the room.  "Permit me to welcome you to your native
+land again, Madame," he said.  "You have won for it a distinction it
+could never have earned, and the world gives you many honours."
+
+She was smiling and still, and with one hand clasping her husband's, she
+said:
+
+"The honour I value most my native land has given me: I am lady of the
+Manor here, and wife of the Seigneur Racine."
+
+Agitated triumph came upon Louis Racine's face; a weird painful vanity
+entered into him.  He stood up beside his wife, as she turned and looked
+at him, showing not a sign that what she saw disturbed her.
+
+"It is no mushroom honour to be Seigneur of Pontiac, your Excellency," he
+said, in a tone that jarred.  "The barony is two hundred years old.  By
+rights granted from the crown of France, I am Baron of Pontiac."
+
+"I think England has not yet recognised the title," said the Governor
+suggestively, for he was here to make peace, and in the presence of this
+man, whose mental torture was extreme, he would not allow himself to be
+irritated.
+
+"Our baronies have never been recognised," said the Seigneur harshly.
+"And yet we are asked to love the flag of England and--"
+
+"And to show that we are too proud to ask for a right that none can take
+away," interposed Madelinette graciously and eagerly, as though to
+prevent Louis from saying what he intended.  All at once she had had to
+order her life anew, to replace old thoughts by new ones.  "We honour and
+obey the rulers of our land, and fly the English flag, and welcome the
+English Governor gladly when he comes to us--will your Excellency have
+some refreshment?" she added quickly, for she saw the cloud on the
+Seigneur's brow.  "Louis," she added quickly, "will you--"
+
+"I have ordered refreshment," said the Seigneur excitedly, the storm
+passing from his face, however.  "Havel, Tardif--where are you, fellows!"
+He stamped his foot imperiously.
+
+Havel entered with a tray of wine and glasses, followed by Tardif loaded
+with cakes and comfits, and set them on the table.
+
+Ten minutes later the Governor took his leave.  At the front door he
+stopped surprised, for a guard of honour of twenty men were drawn up.
+He turned to the Seigneur.
+
+"What soldiers are these?" he asked.
+
+"The Seigneury company, your Excellency," replied Louis.
+
+"What uniform is it they wear?" he asked in an even tone, but with a
+black look in his eye, which did not escape Madelinette.
+
+"The livery of the Barony of Pontiac," answered the Seigneur.
+
+The Governor looked at them a moment without speaking.  "It is French
+uniform of the time of Louis Quinze," he said.  "Picturesque, but
+informal," he added.
+
+He went over, and taking a carbine from one of the men, examined it.
+"Your carbines are not so unconventional and antique," he said meaningly,
+and with a frosty smile.  "The compromise of the centuries--hein?" he
+added to the Cure, who, with the Avocat, was now looking on with some
+trepidation.  "I am wondering if it is quite legal.  It is charming to
+have such a guard of honour, but I am wondering--wondering--eh, monsieur
+l'avocat, is it legal?"
+
+The Avocat made no reply, but the Cure's face was greatly troubled.  The
+Seigneur's momentary placidity passed.
+
+"I answer for their legality, your Excellency," he said, in a high,
+assertive voice.
+
+"Of course, of course, you will answer for it," said the Governor,
+smiling enigmatically.  He came forward and held out his hand to
+Madelinette.
+
+"Madame, I shall remember your kindness, and I appreciate the simple
+honours done me here.  Your arrival at the moment of my visit is a happy
+circumstance."
+
+There was a meaning in his eye--not in his voice--which went straight to
+Madelinette's understanding.  She murmured something in reply, and a
+moment afterwards the Governor, his suite, and the crowd were gone; and
+the men-at-arms-the fantastic body of men in their antique livery-armed
+with the latest modern weapons, had gone back to civic life again.
+
+Inside the house once more, Madelinette laid her hand upon Louis' arm
+with a smile that wholly deceived him for a moment.  He thought now that
+she must have known of his deformity before she came--the world was so
+full of tale-bearers--and no doubt had long since reconciled herself to
+the painful fact.  She had shown no surprise, no shrinking.  There had
+been only the one lightning instant in which he had felt a kind of
+suspension of her breath and being, but when he had looked her in the
+face, she was composed and smiling.  After all his frightened
+anticipation the great moment had come and gone without tragedy.  With
+satisfaction he looked in the mirror in the hall as they passed inside
+the house.  He saw no reason to quarrel with his face.  Was it possible
+that the deformity did not matter after all?
+
+He felt Madelinette's hand on his arm.  He turned and clasped her to his
+breast.
+
+He did not notice that she kept her hands under her chin as he drew her
+to him, that she did not, as had been her wont, put them on his
+shoulders.  He did not feel her shrink, and no one, seeing, could have
+said that she shrank from him in ever so little.
+
+"How beautiful you are!" he said, as he looked into her face.
+
+"How glad I am to be here again, and how tired I am, Louis!" she said.
+"I've driven thirty miles since daylight."  She disengaged herself.  "I
+am going to sleep now," she added.  "I am going to turn the key in my
+door till evening.  Please tell Madame Marie so, Louis."
+
+Inside her room alone she flung herself on her bed in agony and despair.
+
+"Louis--Oh, my God!" she cried, and sobbed and sobbed her strength away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHEN THE RED-COATS CAME
+
+A month later there was a sale of the household effects, the horses and
+general possessions of Medallion the auctioneer, who, though a Protestant
+and an Englishman, had, by his wits and goodness of heart, endeared
+himself to the parish.  Therefore the notables among the habitants had
+gathered in his empty house for a last drink of good-fellowship--Muroc
+the charcoalman, Duclosse the mealman, Benoit the ne'er-do-weel, Gingras
+the one-eyed shoemaker, and a few others.  They had drunk the health of
+Medallion, they had drunk the health of the Cure, and now Duclosse the
+mealman raised his glass.  "Here's to--"
+
+"Wait a minute, porridge-pot," cried Muroc.  "The best man here should
+raise the glass first and say the votre sante.  'Tis M'sieu' Medallion
+should speak and sip now."
+
+Medallion was half-sitting on the window-sill, abstractedly listening.
+He had been thinking that his ships were burned behind him, and that in
+middle-age he was starting out to make another camp for himself in the
+world, all because of the new Seigneur of Pontiac.  Time was when he had
+been successful here, but Louis Racine had changed all that.  His hand
+was against the English, and he had brought a French auctioneer to
+Pontiac.  Medallion might have divided the parish as to patronage, but he
+had other views.
+
+So he was going.  Madelinette had urged him to stay, but he had replied
+that it was too late.  The harm was not to be undone.
+
+As Muroc spoke, every one turned towards Medallion.  He came over and
+filled a glass at the table, and raised it.
+
+"I drink to Madelinette, daughter of that fine old puffing forgeron
+Lajeunesse," he added, as the big blacksmith now entered the room.
+Lajeunesse grinned and ducked his head.  "I knew Madelinette, as did you
+all, when I could take her on my knee and tell her English stories, and
+listen to her sing French chansons--the best in the world.  She has gone
+on; we stay where we were.  But she proves her love to us, by taking her
+husband from Pontiac and coming back to us.  May she never find a spot so
+good to come to and so hard to leave as Pontiac!"
+
+He drank, and they all did the same.  Draining his glass, Medallion let
+it fall on the stone floor.  It broke into a score of pieces.
+
+He came and shook hands with Lajeunesse.  "Give her my love," he said.
+"Tell her the highest bidder on earth could not buy one of the kisses
+she gave me when she was five and I was twenty."
+
+Then he shook hands with them all and went into the next room.
+
+"Why did he drop his glass?" asked Gingras the shoemaker.
+
+"That's the way of the aristocrats when it's the damnedest toast that
+ever was," said Duclosse the mealman.  "Eh, Lajeunesse, that's so, isn't
+it?"
+
+"What the devil do I know about aristocrats!" said Lajeunesse.
+
+"You're among the best of the land, now that Madelinette's married to the
+Seigneur.  You ought to wear a collar every day."
+
+"Bah!" answered the blacksmith.  "I'm only old Lajeunesse the
+blacksmith, though she's my girl, dear lads.  I was Joe Lajeunesse
+yesterday, and I'll be Joe Lajeunesse to-morrow, and I'll die Joe
+Lajeunesse the forgeron--bagosh!  So you take me as you find me.  M'sieu'
+Racine doesn't marry me.  And Madelinette doesn't take me to Paris and
+lead me round the stage and say, 'This is M'sieu' Lajeunesse, my father.'
+No.  I'm myself, and a damn good blacksmith and nothing else am I"
+
+"Tut, tut, old leather-belly," said Gingras the shoemaker, whose liquor
+had mounted high, "you'll not need to work now.  Madelinette's got double
+fortune.  She gets thousands for a song, and she's lady of the Manor
+here.  What's too good for you, tell me that, my forgeron?"
+
+"Not working between meals--that's too good for me, Gingras.  I'm here to
+earn my bread with the hands I was born with, and to eat what they earn,
+and live by it.  Let a man live according to his gifts--bagosh!  Till I'm
+sent for, that's what I'll do; and when time's up I'll take my hand off
+the bellows, and my leather apron can go to you, Gingras, for boots for a
+bigger fool than me."
+
+"There's only one," said Benolt, the ne'er-do-weel, who had been to
+college as a boy.
+
+"Who's that?" said Muroc.
+
+"You wouldn't know his name.  He's trying to find eggs in last year's
+nest," answered Benolt with a leer.
+
+"He means the Seigneur," said Muroc.  "Look to your son-in-law,
+Lajeunesse.  He's kicking up a dust that'll choke Pontiac yet.
+It's as if there was an imp in him driving him on."
+
+"We've had enough of the devil's dust here," said Lajeunesse.  "Has he
+been talking to you, Muroc?"
+
+Muroc nodded.  "Treason, or thereabouts.  Once, with him that's dead in
+the graveyard yonder, it was France we were to save and bring back the
+Napoleons--I have my sword yet.  Now it's save Quebec.  It's stand alone
+and have our own flag, and shout, and fight, maybe, to be free of
+England.  Independence--that's it!  One by one the English have had
+to go from Pontiac.  Now it's M'sieu' Medallion."
+
+"There's Shandon the Irishman gone too.  M'sieu' sold him up and shipped
+him off," said Gingras the shoemaker.
+
+"Tiens! the Seigneur gave him fifty dollars when he left, to help him
+along.  He smacks and then kisses, does M'sieu' Racine."
+
+"We've to pay tribute to the Seigneur every year, as they did in the days
+of Vaudreuil and Louis the Saint," said Duclosse.  "I've got my notice--a
+bag of meal under the big tree at the Manor door."
+
+"I've to bring a pullet and a bag of charcoal," said Muroc.  "'Tis the
+rights of the Seigneur as of old."
+
+"Tiens!  it is my mind," said Benoit, "that a man that nature twists in
+back, or leg, or body anywhere, gets a twist in's brain too.  There's
+Parpon the dwarf--God knows, Parpon is a nut to crack!"
+
+"But Parpon isn't married to the greatest singer in the world, though
+she's only the daughter of old leather-belly there," said Gingras.
+
+"Something doesn't come of nothing, snub-nose," said Lajeunesse.  "Mark
+you, I was born a man of fame, walking bloody paths to glory; but, by the
+grace of Heaven and my baptism, I became a forgeron.  Let others ride to
+glory, I'll shoe their horses for the gallop."
+
+"You'll be in Parliament yet, Lajeunesse," said Duclosse the mealman, who
+had been dozing on a pile of untired cart-wheels.
+
+"I'll be hanged first, comrade."
+
+"One in the family at a time," said Muroc.  "There's the Seigneur.  He's
+going into Parliament."
+
+"He's a magistrate--that's enough," said Duclosse.  "He's started the
+court under the big tree, as the Seigneurs did two hundred years ago.
+He'll want a gibbet and a gallows next."
+
+"I should think he'd stay at home and not take more on his shoulders!"
+said the one-eyed shoemaker.  Without a word, Lajeunesse threw a dish of
+water in Gingras's face.  This reference to the Seigneur's deformity was
+unpalatable.
+
+Gingras had not recovered from his discomfiture when all were startled by
+the distant blare of a bugle.  They rushed to the door, and were met by
+Parpon the dwarf, who announced that a regiment of soldiers was marching
+on the village.
+
+"'Tis what I expected after that meeting, and the Governor's visit, and
+the lily-flag of France on the Manor, and the body-guard and the
+carbines," said Muroc nervously.
+
+"We're all in trouble again-sure," said Benoit, and drained his glass to
+the last drop.  "Some of us will go to gaol."
+
+The coming of the militia had been wholly unexpected by the people of
+Pontiac, but the cause was not far to seek.  Ever since the Governor's
+visit there had been sinister rumours abroad concerning Louis Racine,
+which the Cure and the Avocat and others had taken pains to contradict.
+It was known that the Seigneur had been requested to disband his
+so-called company of soldiers with their ancient livery and their modern
+arms, and to give them up.  He had disbanded the corps, but he had not
+given up the arms, and, for reasons unknown, the Government had not
+pressed the point, so far as the world knew.  But it had decided to hold
+a district drill in this far-off portion of the Province; and this summer
+morning two thousand men marched 'upon the town and through it, horse,
+foot, and commissariat, and Pontiac was roused out of the last-century
+romance the Seigneur had sought to continue, to face the actual presence
+of modern force and the machinery of war.  Twice before had British
+soldiers marched into the town, the last time but a few years agone, when
+blood had been shed on the stones in front of the parish church.  But
+here were large numbers of well-armed men from the Eastern parishes,
+English and French, with four hundred regulars to leaven the mass.
+Lajeunesse knew only too well what this demonstration meant.
+
+Before the last soldier had passed through the street, he was on his way
+to the Seigneury.
+
+He found Madelinette alone in the great dining-room, mending a rent in
+the British flag, which she was preparing for a flag-staff.  When she saw
+him, she dropped the flag, as if startled, came quickly to him, took both
+his hands in hers, and kissed his cheek.
+
+"Wonder of wonders!" she said.
+
+"It's these soldiers," he replied shortly.  "What of them?" she asked
+brightly.
+
+"Do you mean to say you don't know what their coming here means?" he
+asked.
+
+"They must drill somewhere, and they are honouring Pontiac," she replied
+gaily, but her face flushed as she bent over the flag again.
+
+He came and stood in front of her.  "I don't know what's in your mind;
+I don't know what you mean to do; but I do know that M'sieu' Racine is
+making trouble here, and out of it you'll come more hurt than anybody."
+
+"What has Louis done?"
+
+"What has he done!  He's been stirring up feeling against the British.
+What has he done!--Look at the silly customs he's got out of old coffins,
+to make us believe they're alive.  Why did he ever try to marry you?  Why
+did you ever marry him?  You are the great singer of the world.  He's a
+mad hunchback habitant seigneur!"
+
+She stamped her foot indignantly, but presently she ruled herself to
+composure, and said quietly: "He is my husband.  He is a brave man, with
+foolish dreams."  Then with a sudden burst of tender feeling, she said:
+"Oh, father, father, can't you see, I loved him--that is why I married
+him.  You ask me what I am going to do?  I am going to give the rest of
+my life to him.  I am going to stay with him, and be to him all that he
+may never have in this world, never--never.  I am going to be to him what
+my mother was to you, a slave to the end--a slave who loved you, and who
+gave you a daughter who will do the same for her husband--"
+
+"No matter what he does or is--eh?"
+
+"No matter what he is."
+
+Lajeunesse gasped.  "You will give up singing!  Not sing again before
+kings and courts, and not earn ten thousand dollars a month--more than
+I've earned in twenty years?  You don't mean that, Madelinette."
+
+He was hoarse with feeling, and he held out his hand pleadingly.  To him
+it seemed that his daughter was mad; that she was throwing her life away.
+
+"I mean that, father," she answered quietly.  "There are things worth
+more than money."
+
+"You don't mean to say that you can love him as he is.  It isn't natural.
+But no, it isn't."
+
+"What would you have said, if any one had asked you if you loved my
+mother that last year of her life, when she was a cripple, and we wheeled
+her about in a chair you made for her?"
+
+"Don't say any more," he said slowly, and took up his hat, and kept
+turning it round in his hand.  "But you'll prevent him getting into
+trouble with the Gover'ment?" he urged at last.
+
+"I have done what I could," she answered.  Then with a little gasp: "They
+came to arrest him a fortnight ago, but I said they should not enter the
+house.  Havel and I prevented them--refused to let them enter.  The men
+did not know what to do, and so they went back.  And now this--!" she
+pointed to where the soldiers were pitching their tents in the valley
+below.  "Since then Louis has done nothing to give trouble.  He only
+writes and dreams.  If he would but dream and no more--!" she added,
+half under her breath.
+
+"We've dreamt too much in Pontiac already," said Lajeunesse, shaking his
+head.
+
+Madelinette reached up her hand and laid it on his shaggy black hair.
+"You are a good little father, big smithy-man," she said lovingly.  "You
+make me think of the strong men in the Niebelungen legends.  It must be a
+big horse that will take you to Walhalla with the heroes," she added.
+
+"Such notions--there in your head," he laughed.  "Try to frighten me with
+your big names-hein?"  There was a new look in the face of father and of
+daughter.  No mist or cloud was between them.  The things they had long
+wished to say were uttered at last.  A new faith was established between
+them.  Since her return they had laughed and talked as of old when they
+had met, though her own heart was aching, and he was bitter against the
+Seigneur.  She had kept him and the whole parish in good humour by her
+unconventional ways, as though people were not beginning to make
+pilgrimages to Pontiac to see her--people who stared at the name over
+the blacksmith's door, and eyed her curiously, or lay in wait about the
+Seigneury, that they might get a glimpse of Madame and her deformed
+husband.  Out in the world where she was now so important, the newspapers
+told strange romantic tales of the great singer, wove wild and wonderful
+legends of her life.  To her it did not matter.  If she knew, she did not
+heed.  If she heeded it--even in her heart--she showed nothing of it
+before the world.  She knew that soon there would be wilder tales still
+when it was announced that she was bidding farewell to the great working
+world, and would live on in retirement.  She had made up her mind quite
+how the announcement should read, and, once it was given out, nothing
+would induce her to change her mind.  Her life was now the life of the
+Seigneur.
+
+A struggle in her heart went on, but she fought it down.  The lure of a
+great temptation from that far-off outside world was before her, but she
+had resolved her heart against it.  In his rough but tender way her
+father now understood, and that was a comfort to her.  He felt what he
+could not reason upon or put into adequate words.  But the confidence
+made him happy, and his eyes said so to her now.
+
+"See, big smithy-man," she said gaily, "soon will be the fete of St. Jean
+Baptiste, and we shall all be happy then.  Louis has promised me to make
+a speech that will not be against the English, but only words which will
+tell how dear the old land is to us."
+
+"Ten to one against it!" said Lajeunesse anxiously.  Then he brightened
+as he saw a shadow cross her face.  "But you can make him do anything--as
+you always made me," he added, shaking his tousled head and taking with a
+droll eagerness the glass of wine she offered him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+"MAN TO MAN AND STEEL TO STEEL"
+
+One evening a fortnight later Louis Racine and George Fournel, the
+Englishman, stood face to face in the library of the Manor House.  There
+was antagonism and animosity in the attitude of both.  Apart from the
+fact that Louis had succeeded to the Seigneury promised to Fournel, and
+sealed to him by a reputed will which had never been found, there was
+cause for hatred on the Englishman's part.  Fournel had been an
+incredibly successful man.  Things had come his way--wealth, and the
+power that wealth brings.  He had but two set-backs, and the man before
+him in the Manor House of Pontiac was the cause of both.  The last rebuff
+had been the succession to the Seigneury, which, curious as it might
+seem, had been the cherished dream of the rich man's retirement.  It had
+been his fancy to play the Seigneur, the lord magnificent and bountiful,
+and he had determined to use wealth and all manner of influence to have
+the title of Baron of Pontiac revived--it had been obsolete for a hundred
+years.  He leaned towards the grace of an hereditary dignity, as other
+retired millionaires cultivate art and letters, vainly imagining that
+they can wheedle civilisation and the humanities into giving them what
+they do not possess by nature, and fool the world at the same time.
+
+The loss of the Seigneury had therefore cut deep, but there had been a
+more hateful affront still.  Four years before, Louis Racine, when
+spasmodically practising law in Quebec, had been approached by two poor
+Frenchmen, who laid claim to thousands of acres of land which a Land
+Company, whereof George Fournel was president, was publicly exploiting
+for the woods and valuable minerals discovered on it.  The Land Company
+had been composed of Englishmen only.  Louis Racine, reactionary and
+imaginative, brilliant and free from sordidness, and openly hating the
+English, had taken up the case, and for two years fought it tooth and
+nail without pay or reward.  The matter had become a cause celebre, the
+Land Company engaging the greatest lawyers in both the English and French
+province.  In the Supreme Court the case was lost to Louis' clients.
+Louis took it over to the Privy Council in London, and carried it
+through triumphantly and alone, proving his clients' title.  His two poor
+Frenchmen regained their land.  In payment he would accept nothing save
+the ordinary fees, as though it were some petty case in a county court.
+He had, however, made a reputation, which he had seemed not to value,
+save as a means of showing hostility to the governing race, and the
+Seigneury of Pontiac, when it fell to him, had more charms for him than
+any celebrity to be won at the bar.  His love of the history of his
+country was a mania with him, and he looked forward, on arriving at
+Pontiac, to being the apostle of French independence on the continent.
+Madelinette had crossed his path in his most enthusiastic moment, when
+his brilliant tongue and great dreams surrounded him with a kind of
+glamour.  He had caught her to himself out of the girl's first triumph,
+when her nature, tried by the strain of her first challenge to the
+judgment of the world, cried out for rest, for Pontiac and home,
+and all that was of the old life among her people.
+
+Fournel's antipathy had only been increased by the fact that Louis Racine
+had married the now famous Madelinette, and his animosity extended to
+her.
+
+It was not in him to understand the nature of the Frenchman, volatile,
+moody, chivalrous, unreasonable, the slave of ideas, the victim of
+sentiment.  Not understanding, when he began to see that he could not
+attain the object of his visit, which was to secure some relics of the
+late Seigneur's household, he chose to be disdainful.
+
+"You are bound to give me these things I ask for, as a matter of justice
+--if you know what justice means," he said at last.
+
+"You should be aware of that," answered the Seigneur, with a kindling
+look.  He felt every glance of Fournel's eye a contemptuous comment upon
+his deformity, now so egregious and humiliating.  "I taught you justice
+once."
+
+Fournel was not to be moved from his phlegm.  He knew he could torture
+the man before him, and he was determined to do so, if he did not get his
+way upon the matter of his visit.
+
+"You can teach me justice twice and be thanked once," he answered.
+"These things I ask for were much prized by my friend, the late Seigneur.
+I was led to expect that this Seigneury and all in it and on it should be
+mine.  I know it was intended so.  The law gives it you instead.  Your
+technical claim has overridden my rights--you have a gift for making
+successful technical claims.  But these old personal relics, of no
+monetary value--you should waive your avaricious and indelicate claim to
+them."  He added the last words with a malicious smile, for the hardening
+look in Racine's face told him his request was hopeless, and he could not
+resist the temptation to put the matter with cutting force.  Racine rose
+to the bait with a jump.
+
+"Not one single thing--not one single solitary thing--!"
+
+"The sentiment is strong if the grammar is bad," interrupted Fournel,
+meaning to wound wherever he found an opportunity, for the Seigneur's
+deformity excited in him no pity; it rather incensed him against the man,
+as an affront to decency and to his own just claims to the honours the
+Frenchman enjoyed.  It was a petty resentment, but George Fournel had set
+his heart upon playing the grand-seigneur over the Frenchmen of Pontiac,
+and of ultimately leaving his fortune to the parish, if they all fell
+down and worshipped him and his "golden calf."
+
+"The grammar is suitable to the case," retorted the Seigneur, his voice
+rising.  "Everything is mine by law, and everything I will keep.  If you
+think different, produce a will--produce a will!"
+
+Truth was, Louis Racine would rather have parted with the Seigneury
+itself than with these relics asked for.  They were reminiscent of the
+time when France and her golden-lilies brooded over his land, of the
+days when Louis Quatorze was king.  He cherished everything that had
+association with the days of the old regime, as a miner hugs his gold,
+or a woman her jewels.  The request to give them up to this unsympathetic
+Englishman, who valued them because they had belonged to his friend the
+late Seigneur, only exasperated him.
+
+"I am ready to pay the highest possible price for them, as I have said,"
+urged the Englishman, realising as he spoke that it was futile to urge
+the sale upon that basis.
+
+"Money cannot buy the things that Frenchmen love.  We are not a race of
+hucksters," retorted the Seigneur.
+
+"That accounts for your envious dispositions then.  You can't buy what
+you want--you love such curious things, I assume.  So you play the dog in
+the manger, and won't let other decent folk buy what they want."  He
+wilfully distorted the other's meaning, and was delighted to see the
+Seigneur's fingers twitch with fury.  "But since you can't buy the things
+you love--and you seem to think you should--how do you get them?  Do you
+come by them honestly?  or do you work miracles?  When a spider makes
+love to his lady he dances before her to infatuate her, and then in a
+moment of her delighted aberration snatches at her affections.  Is it the
+way of the spider then?"
+
+With a snarl as of a wild beast, Louis Racine sprang forward and struck
+Fournel in the face with his clinched fist.  Then, as Fournel, blinded,
+staggered back upon the book-shelves, he snatched two antique swords from
+the wall.  Throwing one on the floor in front of the Englishman, he ran
+to the door and locked it, and turned round, the sword grasped firmly in
+his hand, and white with rage.
+
+"Spider!  Spider!  By Heaven, you shall have the spider dance before
+you!" he said hoarsely.  He had mistaken Fournel's meaning.  He had put
+the most horrible construction upon it.  He thought that Fournel referred
+to his deformity, and had ruthlessly dragged in Madelinette as well.
+
+He was like a being distraught.  His long brown hair was tossed over his
+blanched forehead and piercing black eyes.  His head was thrown forward
+even more than his deformity compelled, his white teeth showed in a
+grimace of hatred; he was half-crouched, like an animal ready to spring.
+
+"Take up the sword, or I'll run you through the heart where you stand,"
+he continued, in a hoarse whisper.  "I will give you till I can count
+three.  Then by the God in Heaven--!"
+
+Fournel felt that he had to deal with a man demented.  The blow he had
+received had laid open the flesh on his cheek-bone, and blood was flowing
+from the wound.  Never in his life before had he been so humiliated.  And
+by a Frenchman--it roused every instinct of race-hatred in him.  Yet he
+wanted not to go at him with a sword, but with his two honest hands,
+and beat him into a whining submission.  But the man was deformed,
+he had none of his own robust strength--he was not to be struck,
+but to be tossed out of the way like an offending child.
+
+He staunched the blood from his face and made a step forward without a
+word, determined not to fight, but to take the weapon from the other's
+hands.  "Coward!" said the Seigneur.  "You dare not fight with the
+sword.  With the sword we are even.  I am as strong as you there--
+stronger, and I will have your blood.  Coward!  Coward!  Coward!  I will
+give you till I count three.  One!  .  .  .  Two!  .  .  ."
+
+Fournel did not stir.  He could not make up his mind what to do.  Cry
+out?  No one could come in time to prevent the onslaught--and onslaught
+there would be, he knew.  There was a merciless hatred in the Seigneur's
+face, a deadly purpose in his eyes; the wild determination of a man who
+did not care whether he lived or died, ready to throw himself upon a
+hundred in his hungry rage.  It seemed so mad, so monstrous, that the
+beautiful summer day through which came the sharp whetting of the scythe,
+the song of the birds, and the smell of ripening fruit and grain, should
+be invaded by this tragic absurdity, this human fury which must spend
+itself in blood.
+
+Fournel's mind was conscious of this feeling, this sense of futile,
+foolish waste and disfigurement, even as the Seigneur said "Three!"
+and, rushing forward, thrust.
+
+As Fournel saw the blade spring at him, he dropped on one knee, caught it
+with his left hand as it came, and wrenched it aside.  The blade
+lacerated his fingers and his palm, but he did not let go till he had
+seized the sword at his feet with his right hand.  Then, springing up
+with it, he stepped back quickly and grasped his weapon fiercely enough
+now.
+
+Yet, enraged as he was, he had no wish to fight; to involve himself in a
+fracas which might end in tragedy and the courts of the land.  It was a
+high price to pay for any satisfaction he might have in this affair.  If
+the Seigneur were killed in the encounter--he must defend himself now--
+what a miserable notoriety and possible legal penalty and public
+punishment!  For who could vouch for the truth of his story?  Even if
+he wounded Racine only, what a wretched story to go abroad: that he had
+fought with a hunchback--a hunchback who knew the use of the sword,
+which he did not, but still a hunchback!
+
+"Stop this nonsense," he said, as Louis Racine prepared to attack again.
+"Don't be a fool.  The game isn't worth the candle."
+
+"One of us does not leave this room alive," said the Seigneur.  "You care
+for life.  You love it, and you can't buy what you love from me.  I don't
+care for life, and I would gladly die, to see your blood flow.  Look,
+it's flowing down your face; it's dripping from your hand, and there
+shall be more dripping soon.  On guard!"
+
+He suddenly attacked with a fierce energy, forcing Fournel back upon the
+wall.  He was not a first-class swordsman, but he had far more knowledge
+of the weapon than his opponent, and he had no scruple about using his
+knowledge.  Fournel fought with desperate alertness, yet awkwardly, and
+he could not attack; it was all that he could do, all that he knew how
+to do, to defend himself.  Twice again did the Seigneur's weapon draw
+blood, once from the shoulder and once from the leg of his opponent, and
+the blood was flowing from each wound.  After the second injury they
+stood panting for a moment.  Now the outside world was shut out from
+Fournel's senses as it was from Louis Racine's.  The only world they knew
+was this cool room, whose oak floors were browned by the slow searching
+stains of Time, and darkened by the footsteps of six generations that had
+come and gone through the old house.  The books along the walls seemed to
+cry out against the unseemly and unholy strife.  But now both men were in
+that atmosphere of supreme egoism where only their two selves moved, and
+where the only thing that mattered on earth was the issue of this strife.
+Fournel could only think of how to save his life, and to do that he must
+become the aggressor, for his wounds were bleeding hard, and he must have
+more wounds, if the fight went on without harm to the Seigneur.
+
+"You know now what it is to insult a Frenchman--On guard!" again cried
+the Seigneur, in a shriller voice, for everything in him was pitched to
+the highest note.
+
+He again attacked, and the sound of the large swords meeting clashed on
+the soft air.  As they struggled, a voice came ringing through the
+passages, singing a bar from an opera:
+
+         "Oh eager golden day, Oh happy evening hour,
+          Behold my lover cometh from fields of wrath and hate!
+          Sheathed is his sword; he cometh to my bower;
+          In war he findeth honour, and love within the gate."
+
+The voice came nearer and nearer.  It pierced the tragic separateness of
+the scene of blood.  It reached the ears of the Seigneur, and a look of
+pain shot across his face.  Fournel was only dimly aware of the voice,
+for he was hard pressed, and it seemed to come from infinite distances.
+Presently the voice stopped, and some one tried the door of the room.
+
+It was Madelinette.  Astonished at finding it locked, she stood still a
+moment uncertain what to do.  Then the sounds of the struggle within came
+to her ears.  She shook the door, leaned her shoulders against it, and
+called, "Louis!  Louis!"  Suddenly she darted away, found Havel the
+faithful servant in the passage, and brought him swiftly to the door.
+The man sprang upon it, striking with his shoulder.  The lock gave, the
+door flew open, and Madelinette stepped swiftly into the room, in time to
+see George Fournel sway and fall, his sword rattling on the hard oak
+floor.
+
+"Oh, what have you done, Louis!" she cried, then added hurriedly to
+Havel: "Draw the blind there, shut the door, and tell Madame Marie to
+bring some water quickly."
+
+The silent servant vanished, and she dropped on her knees beside the
+bleeding and insensible man, and lifted his head.
+
+"He insulted you and me, and I've killed him, Madelinette," said Louis
+hoarsely.
+
+A horrified look came to her face, and she hurriedly and tremblingly
+opened Fournel's waistcoat and shirt, and felt his heart.
+
+She was freshly startled by a struggle behind her, and, turning quickly,
+she saw Madame Marie holding the Seigneur's arm to prevent him from
+ending his own life.
+
+She sprang up and laid her hand upon her husband's arm.  "He is not dead-
+-you need not do it, Louis," she said quietly.  There was no alarm, no
+undue excitement in her face now.  She was acting with good presence of
+mind.  A new sense was working in her.  Something had gone from her
+suddenly where her husband was concerned, and something else had taken
+its place.  An infinite pity, a bitter sorrow, and a gentle command were
+in her eyes all at once--new vistas of life opened before her, all in
+an instant.
+
+"He is not dead, and there is no need to kill yourself, Louis," she
+repeated, and her voice had a command in it that was not to be gainsaid.
+"Since you have vindicated your honour, you will now help me to set this
+business right."
+
+Madame Marie was on her knees beside the insensible man.  "No, he is not
+dead, thank God!" she murmured, and while Havel stripped the arm and
+leg, she poured some water between Fournel's lips.  Her long experience
+as the Little Chemist's wife served her well now.
+
+Now that the excitement was over, Louis collapsed.  He swayed and would
+have fallen, but Madelinette caught him, helped him to the sofa, and,
+forcing him gently down on his side, adjusted a pillow for him, and
+turned to the wounded man again.
+
+An hour went busily by in the closely-curtained room, and at last George
+Fournel, conscious, and with wounds well bandaged, sat in a big arm-
+chair, glowering round him.  At his first coming-to, Louis Racine, at his
+wife's insistence, had come and offered his hand, and made apology for
+assaulting him in his own house.
+
+Fournel's reply had been that he wanted to hear no more fool's talk and
+to have no more fool's doings, and that one day he hoped to take his pay
+for the day's business in a satisfactory way.
+
+Madelinette made no apology, said nothing, save that she hoped he would
+remain for a few days till he was recovered enough to be moved.  He
+replied that he would leave as soon as his horses were ready, and refused
+to take food or drink from their hands.  His servant was brought from
+the Louis Quinze Hotel, and through him he got what was needed for
+refreshment, and requested that no one of the household should come near
+him.  At night, in the darkness, he took his departure, no servant of the
+household in attendance.  But as he got into the carriage, Madelinette
+came quickly to him, and said:
+
+"I would give ten years of my life to undo to-day's work."
+
+"I have no quarrel with you, Madame," he said gloomily, raised his hat,
+and was driven away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MADELINETTE MAKES A DISCOVERY
+
+The national fete of the summer was over.  The day had been successful,
+more successful indeed than any within the memory of the inhabitants;
+for the English and French soldiers joined in the festivities without
+any intrusion of racial spirit, but in the very essence and soul of good-
+fellowship.  The General had called at the Manor, and paid his respects
+to the Seigneur, who received him abstractedly if not coolly, but
+Madelinette had captured his imagination and his sympathies.  He was fond
+of music for an Englishman, and with a ravishing charm she sang for him a
+bergerette of the eighteenth century and then a ballad of Shakespeare's
+set to her own music.  She was so anxious that the great holiday should
+pass off without one untoward incident, that she would have resorted to
+any fair device to attain the desired end.  The General could help her
+by his influence and instructions, and if the soldiers--regulars and
+militia--joined in the celebrations harmoniously, and with goodwill,
+a long step would be made towards undoing the harm that Louis had done,
+and maybe influencing him towards a saner, wiser view of things.  He had
+changed much since the fateful day when he had forced George Fournel to
+fight him; had grown more silent, and had turned grey.  His eyes had
+become by turns watchful and suspicious, gloomy and abstracted; and his
+speech knew the same variations; now bitter and cynical, now sad and
+distant, and all the time his eyes seemed to grow darker and his face
+paler.  But however moody and variable and irascible he might be with
+others, however unappeasable, with Madelinette he struggled to be gentle,
+and his petulance gave way under the intangible persuasiveness of her
+words and will, which had the effect of command.  Under this influence
+he had prepared the words which he was to deliver at the Fete.  They were
+full of veneration for past traditions, but were not at variance with a
+proper loyalty to the flag under which they lived, and if the English
+soldiery met the speech with genial appreciation the day might end in a
+blessing--and surely blessings were overdue in Madelinette's life in
+Pontiac.
+
+It had been as she worked for and desired, thanks to herself and the
+English General's sympathetic help.  Perhaps his love of music made him
+better understand what she wanted, made him even forgiving of the
+Seigneur's strained manner; but certain it is that the day, begun with
+uneasiness on the part of the people of Pontiac, who felt themselves
+under surveillance, ended in great good-feeling and harmless revelry;
+and it was also certain that the Seigneur's speech gained him an applause
+that surprised him and momentarily appeased his vanity.  The General gave
+him a guard of honour of the French Militia in keeping with his position
+as Seigneur; and this, with Madelinette's presence at his elbow,
+restrained him in his speech when he would have broken from the limits
+of propriety in the intoxication of his eager eloquence.  But he spoke
+with moderation, standing under the British Flag on the platform, and at
+the last he said:
+
+"A flag not our own floats over us now; guarantees us against the
+malice of the world and assures us in our laws and religion; but there is
+another flag which in our tearful memories is as dear to us now as it was
+at Carillon and Levis.  It is the flag of memory--of language and of
+race, the emblem of our past upon our hearthstones; and the great country
+that rules us does not deny us reverence to it.  Seeing it, we see the
+history of our race from Charlemagne to this day, and we have a pride in
+that history which England does not rebuke, a pride which is just and
+right.  It is fitting that we should have a day of commemoration.  Far
+off in France burns the light our fathers saw and were glad.  And we in
+Pontiac have a link that binds us to the old home.  We have ever given
+her proud remembrance--we now give her art and song."
+
+With these words, and turning to his wife, he ended, and cries of "Madame
+Madelinette!  Madame Madelinette!" were heard everywhere.  Even the
+English soldiers cheered, and Madelinette sang a la Claire Fontaine,
+three verses in French and one in English, and the whole valley rang
+with the refrain sung at the topmost pitch by five thousand voices:
+
+"I'ya longtemps que je t'aime,
+Jamais je ne t'oublierai."
+
+The day of pleasure done and dusk settled on Pontiac and on the
+encampment of soldiers in the valley, a light still burned in the library
+at the Manor House long after midnight.  Madelinette had gone to bed,
+but, excited by the events of the day, she could not sleep, and she went
+down to the library to read.  But her mind wandered still, and she sat
+mechanically looking before her at a picture of the father of the late
+Seigneur, which was let into the moulding of the oak wall.  As she looked
+abstractedly and yet with the intensity of the preoccupied mind, her eye
+became aware of a little piece of wood let into the moulding of the
+frame.  The light of the hanging lamp was full on it.
+
+This irregularity began to perplex her eye.  Presently it intruded on her
+reverie.  Still busy with her thoughts, she knelt upon the table beneath
+the picture and pressed the irregular piece of wood.  A spring gave, the
+picture came slowly away from the frame, and disclosed a small cupboard
+behind.  In this cupboard were a few books, an old silver-handled pistol,
+and a packet.  Madelinette's reverie was broken now.  She was face to
+face with discovery and mystery.  Her heart stood still with fear.  After
+an instant of suspense, she took out the packet and held it to the light.
+She gave a smothered cry.
+
+It was the will of the late Seigneur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+WHAT WILL SHE DO WITH IT?
+
+George Fournel was the heir to the Seigneury of Pontiac, not Louis
+Racine.  There it was in the will of Monsieur de la Riviere, duly signed
+and attested.
+
+Madelinette's heart stood still.  Louis was no longer--indeed, never had
+been--Seigneur of Pontiac, and they had no right there, had never had any
+right there.  They must leave this place which was to Louis the fetich of
+his soul, the small compensation fate had made him for the trouble nature
+had cynically laid upon him.  He had clung to it as a drowning man clings
+to a spar.  To him it was the charter from which he could appeal to the
+world as the husband of Madelinette Lajeunesse.  To him it was the name,
+the dignity, and the fortune he brought her.  It was the one thing that
+saved him from a dire humiliation; it was the vantage-ground from which
+he appealed to her respect, the flaming testimony of his own self-esteem.
+Every hour since his trouble had come upon him, since Madelinette's great
+fame had come to her, he had protested to himself that it was honour for
+honour; and every day he had laboured, sometimes how fantastically, how
+futilely! to dignify his position, to enhance his importance in her eyes.
+She had understood it all, had read him to the last letter in the
+alphabet of his mind and heart.  She had realised the consternation of
+the people, and she knew that, for her sake, and because the Cure had
+commanded, all the obsolete claims he had made were responded to by the
+people.  Certainly he had affected them by his eloquence and his fiery
+kindness, but at the same time they had shrewdly smelt the treason
+underneath his ardour.  There was a definite limit to their loyalty to
+him; and, deprived of the Seigneury, he would count for nothing.
+
+A hundred thoughts like these went through her mind as she stood by the
+table under the hanging lamp, her face white as the loose robe she wore,
+her eyes hot and staring, her figure rigid as stone.
+
+To-morrow--how could she face to-morrow, and Louis!  How could she tell
+him this!  How could she say to him, "Louis, you are no longer Seigneur.
+The man you hate, he who is your inveterate enemy, who has every reason
+to exact from you the last tribute of humiliation, is Seigneur here!"
+How could she face the despair of the man whose life was one inward
+fever, one long illusion, which was yet only half an illusion, since
+he was forever tortured by suspicion; whose body was wearing itself out,
+and spirit was destroying itself in the struggle of a vexed imagination!
+
+She knew that Louis' years were numbered.  She knew that this blow would
+break him body and soul.  He could never survive the humiliation.  His
+sensitiveness was a disease, his pride was the only thing that kept him
+going; his love of her, strong as it was, would be drowned in an imagined
+shame!
+
+It was midnight.  She was alone with this secret.  She held the paper in
+her hand, which was at once Louis' sentence or his charter of liberty.
+A candle was at her hand, the doors were shut, the blinds drawn, the
+house a frozen silence--how cold she was, though it was the deep of
+summer!  She shivered from head to foot, and yet all day the harvest sun
+had drenched the room in its heat.
+
+Yet her blood might run warm again, her cold cheeks might regain their
+colour, her heart beat quietly, if this paper were no more!  The thought
+made her shrink away from herself, as it were, yet she caught up the
+candle and lighted it.
+
+For Louis.  For Louis, though she would rather have died than do it for
+herself.  To save to Louis what was, to his imagination, the one claim
+he had upon her respect and the world's.  After all, how little was it in
+value or in dignity!  How little she cared for it!  One year of her voice
+could earn two such Seigneuries as this.  And the honour--save that it
+was Pontiac-it was naught to her.  In all her life she had never done or
+said a dishonourable thing.  She had never lied, she had never deceived,
+she had never done aught that might not have been written down and
+published to all the world.  Yet here, all at once, she was faced with
+a vast temptation, to do a deed, the penalty of which was an indelible
+shame.
+
+What injury would it do to George Fournel!  He was used now to his
+disappointment; he was rich; he had no claims upon Pontiac; there was no
+one but himself to whom it mattered, this little Seigneury.  What he did
+not know did not exist, so far as himself was concerned.  How easily
+could it all be made right some day!  She felt as though she were
+suffocating, and she opened the window a little very softly.  Then she
+lit the candle tremblingly, watched the flame gather strength, and opened
+out the will.  As she did so, however, the smell of a clover field, which
+is as honey, came stealing through the room, and all at once a strange
+association of ideas flashed into her brain.
+
+She recalled one summer day long ago, when, in the church of St.
+Saviour's, the smell of the clover fields came through the open doors
+and windows, and her mind had kept repeating mechanically, till she fell
+asleep, the text of the Curb's sermon--"As ye sow, so also shall ye
+reap."
+
+That placid hour which had no problems, no cares, no fears, no penalties
+in view, which was filled with the richness of a blessed harvest and the
+plenitude of innocent youth, came back on her now in the moment of her
+fierce temptation.
+
+She folded up the paper slowly, a sob came in her throat, she blew out
+the candle, and put the will back in the cupboard.  The faint click of
+the spring as she closed the panel seemed terribly loud to her.  She
+started and looked timorously round.  The blood came back to her face--
+she flushed crimson with guilt.  Then she turned out the lighted lamp
+and crept away up the stairs to her room.
+
+She paused beside Louis' bed.  He was moving restlessly in his sleep;
+he was murmuring her name.  With a breaking sigh she crept into bed
+slowly and lay like one who had been beaten, bruised, and shamed.
+
+At last, before the dawn, she fell asleep.  She dreamed that she was
+in prison and that George Fournel was her jailor.
+
+She waked to find Louis at her bedside.
+
+"I am holding my seigneurial court to-day," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE ONE WHO SAW
+
+All day and every day Madelinette's mind kept fastening itself upon one
+theme, kept turning to one spot.  In her dreams she saw the hanging lamp,
+the moving panel, the little cupboard, the fatal paper.  Waking and
+restlessly busy, she sometimes forgot it for a moment, but remembrance
+would come back with painful force, and her will must govern her hurt
+spirit into quiet resolution.  She had such a sense of humiliation as
+though some one dear to her had committed a crime against herself.  Two
+persons were in her--Madelinette Lajeunesse, the daughter of the village
+blacksmith, brought up in the peaceful discipline of her religion,
+shunning falsehood and dishonour with a simple proud self-respect; and
+Madame Racine, the great singer, who had touched at last the heart of
+things; and, with the knowledge, had thrown aside past principles and
+convictions to save her stricken husband from misery and humiliation--
+to save his health, his mind, his life maybe.
+
+The struggle of conscience and expediency, of principle and womanliness
+wore upon her, taking away the colour from her cheeks, but spiritualising
+her face, giving the large black eyes an expression of rare intensity, so
+that the Avocat in his admiration called her Madonna, and the Cure came
+oftener to the Manor House with a fear in his heart that all was not
+well.  Yet he was met by her cheerful smile, by her quiet sense of
+humour, by the touching yet not demonstrative devotion of the wife
+to the husband, and a varying and impulsive adoration of the wife by
+the husband.  One day when the Cure was with the Seigneur, Madelinette
+entered upon them.  Her face was pale though composed, yet her eyes had a
+look of abstraction or detachment.  The Cure's face brightened at her
+approach.  She wore a simple white gown with a bunch of roses at the
+belt, and a broad hat lined with red that shaded her face and gave it a
+warmth it did not possess.
+
+"Dear Madame!" said the Cure, rising to his feet and coming towards her.
+
+"I have told you before that I will have nothing but 'Madelinette,' dear
+Cure," she replied, with a smile, and gave him her hand.  She turned to
+Louis, who had risen also, and putting a hand on his arm pressed him
+gently into his chair, then, with a swift, almost casual, caress of his
+hair, placed on the table the basket of flowers she was carrying, and
+began to arrange them.
+
+"Dear Louis," she said presently, and as though en passant, "I have
+dismissed Tardif to-day--I hope you won't mind these dull domestic
+details, Cure," she added.
+
+The Cure nodded and turned his head towards the window musingly.  He was
+thinking that she had done a wise thing in dismissing Tardif, for the man
+had evil qualities, and he was hoping that he would leave the parish now.
+
+The Seigneur nodded.  "Then he will go.  I have dismissed him--I have
+a temper--many times, but he never went.  It is foolish to dismiss a man
+in a temper.  He thinks you do not mean it.  But our Madelinette there"--
+he turned towards the Cure now--"she is never in a temper, and every one
+always knows she means what she says; and she says it as even as a
+clock."  Then the egoist in him added: "I have power and imagination
+and the faculty for great things; but Madelinette has serene judgment
+--a tribute to you, Cure, who taught her in the old days."
+
+"In any case, Tardif is going," she repeated quietly.  "What did he do?"
+said the Seigneur.  "What was your grievance, beautiful Madame?"
+
+He was looking at her with unfeigned admiration--with just such a look
+as was in his face the first day they met in the Avocat's house on his
+arrival in Pontiac.  She turned and saw it, and remembered.  The scene
+flashed before her mind.  The thought of herself then, with the flush of
+a sunrise love suddenly rising in her heart, roused a torrent of feeling
+now, and it required every bit of strength she had to prevent her
+bursting into a passion of tears.  In imagination she saw him there,
+a straight, slim, handsome figure, with the very vanity of proud health
+upon him, and ambition and passionate purpose in every line of his
+figure, every glance of his eyes.  Now--there he was, bent, frail, and
+thin, with restless eyes and deep discontent in voice and manner; the
+curved shoulder and the head grown suddenly old; the only thing, speaking
+of the past, the graceful hand, filled with the illusory courage of a
+declining vitality.  But for the nervous force in him, the latent
+vitality which renewed with stubborn persistence the failing forces, he
+was dead.  The brain kept commanding the body back to life and manhood
+daily.
+
+"What did Tardif do?" the Seigneur again questioned, holding out a hand
+to her.
+
+She did not dare to take his hand lest her feelings should overcome her;
+so with an assumed gaiety she put in it a rose from her basket and said:
+
+"He has been pilfering.  Also he was insolent.  I suppose he could not
+help remembering that I lived at the smithy once--the dear smithy," she
+added softly.
+
+"I will go at once and pay the scoundrel his wages," said the Seigneur,
+rising, and with a nod to the Cure and his wife opened the door.
+
+"Do not see him yourself, Louis," said Madelinette.  "Not I.  Havel shall
+pay him and he shall take himself off to-morrow morning."
+
+The door closed, and Madelinette was left alone with the Cure.  She came
+to him and said with a quivering in her voice:
+
+"He mocked Louis."
+
+"It is well that he should go.  He is a bad man and a bad servant.  I
+know him too well."
+
+"You see, he keeps saying"--she spoke very slowly--"that he witnessed
+a will the Seigneur made in favour of Monsieur Fournel.  He thinks us
+interlopers, I suppose."
+
+The Cure put a hand on hers gently.  "There was a time when I felt that
+Monsieur Fournel was the legal heir to the Seigneury, for Monsieur de la
+Riviere had told me there was such a will; but since then I have changed
+my mind.  Your husband is the natural heir, and it is only just that the
+Seigneury should go on in the direct line.  It is best."
+
+"Even with all Louis' mistakes?"
+
+"Even with them.  You have set them right, and you will keep him within
+the bounds of wisdom and prudence.  You are his guardian angel,
+Madelinette."
+
+She looked up at him with a pensive smile and a glance of gratitude.
+
+"But suppose that will--if there is one--exists, see how false our
+position!"
+
+"Do you think it is mere accident that the will has never been found--if
+it was not destroyed by the Seigneur himself before he died?  No, there
+is purpose behind it, with which neither you or I or Louis have anything
+to do.  Ah, it is good to have you here in this Seigneury, my child!
+What you give us will return to you a thousandfold.  Do not regret the
+world and your work there.  You will go back all too soon."
+
+She was about to reply when the Seigneur again entered the room.
+
+"I made up my mind that he should go at once, and so I've sent him word
+--the rat!"
+
+"I will leave you two to be drowned in the depths of your own
+intelligence," said Madelinette; and taking her empty basket left the
+room.
+
+A strange compelling feeling drove her to the library where the fateful
+panel was.  With a strange sense that her wrong-doing was modified by the
+fact, she had left the will where she had found it.  She had a
+superstition that fate would deal less harshly with her if
+she did.  It was not her way to temporise.  She had concealed the
+discovery of the will with an unswerving determination.  It was for
+Louis, it was for his peace, for the ease of his fading life, and she had
+no repentance.  Yet there it was, that curious, useless concession to old
+prejudices, the little touch of hypocrisy--she left the will where she
+had found it.  She had never looked at it since, no matter how great the
+temptation, and sometimes this was overpowering.
+
+To-day it overpowered her.  The house was very still and the blinds were
+drawn to shut out the heat, but the soft din of the locusts came through
+the windows.  Her household were all engaged elsewhere.  She shut the
+doors of the little room, and kneeling on the table touched the spring.
+The panel came back and disclosed the cupboard.  There lay the will.  She
+took it up and opened it.  Her eyes went dim on the instant, and she
+leaned her forehead against the wall sick at heart.
+
+As she did so a sudden gust of wind drove in the blind of the window.
+She started, but saw what it was, and hastily putting the will back,
+closed the panel, and with a fast-beating heart, left the room.
+
+Late that evening she found a letter on her table addressed to herself.
+It ran:
+
+     You've shipped me off like dirt.  You'll be shipped off, Madame,
+     double quick.  I've got what'll bring the right owner here.  You'll
+     soon hear from
+                                        Tardif.
+
+In terror she hastened to the library and sprung the panel.  The will was
+gone.
+
+Tardif was on his way with it to George Fournel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE PURSUIT
+
+There was but one thing to do.  She must go straight to George Fournel at
+Quebec.  She knew only too well that Tardif was speeding thither as fast
+as horses could carry him.  He had had several hours' start, but there
+was still a chance of overtaking him.  And suppose she overtook him?
+She could not decide definitely what she should do, but she would do
+anything, sacrifice anything, to secure again that fatal document which,
+in George Fournel's hands, must bring a collapse worse than death.  A
+dozen plans flashed before her, and now that her mind was set upon the
+thing, compunction would not stay her.  She had gone so far, she was
+prepared to go further to save this Seigneury to Louis.  She put in her
+pocket the silver-handled pistol from the fatal cupboard.
+
+In an hour from the time she found the note, the horses and coach were at
+the door, and the faithful Havel, cloaked and armed, was ready for the
+journey.  A note to Louis, with the excuse of a sudden and important call
+to Quebec, which he was to construe into business concerning her
+profession; hurried yet careful arrangements for his comfort during her
+absence; a letter to the Cure begging of him a daily visit to the Manor
+House; and then, with the flurried Madame Marie, she entered the coach
+with Havel on the box, and they were off.
+
+The coach rattled through the village and stopped for a moment at the
+smithy.  A few words of cheerful good-bye to her father--she carried the
+spring in her face and the summer of gaiety in her face however sore her
+heart was--and they were once more upon the road.
+
+Their first stage was twenty-five miles, and it led through the ravine
+where Parpon and his comrades had once sought to frighten George Fournel.
+As they passed the place Madelinette shuddered, and she remembered
+Fournel's cynical face as he left the house three months ago.  She felt
+that it would not easily soften to mercy or look upon her trouble with a
+human eye, if once the will were in his hands.  It was a silent journey,
+but Madame Marie asked no questions, and there was comfort in her
+unspoken sympathy.
+
+Five hours, and at midnight they arrived at the end of the first stage
+of their journey, at the village tavern of St. Stanislaus.  Here Madame
+Marie urged Madelinette to stay and sleep, but this she refused to do,
+if horses could be got to go forward.  The sight of two gold pieces made
+the thing possible in the landlord's eyes, and Madame Marie urged no
+more, but found some refreshment, of which she gently insisted that
+Madelinette should partake.  In another hour from their arrival they were
+on the road again, with the knowledge that Tardif had changed horses and
+gone forward four hours before, boasting as he went that when the
+bombshell he was carrying should burst, the country would stay awake
+o' nights for a year.
+
+Madelinette herself had made the inquiries of the landlord, whose easily-
+bought obsequiousness now knew no bounds, and he gave a letter to Havel
+to hand to his cousin the landlord at the next change, which, he said,
+would be sure to secure them the best of accommodation and good horses.
+
+As the night grew to morning, Madelinette drooped a little, and Madame
+Marie, who had, to her own anger and disgust, slept three hours or more,
+quietly drew Madelinette towards her.  With a little sob the girl--for
+what was she but a girl--let her head drop on the old woman's shoulder,
+and she fell into a troubled sleep, which lasted till, in the flush of
+sunrise, they drew up at the solitary inn on the outskirts of the village
+of Beaugard.  They had come fifty miles since the evening before.
+
+Here Madelinette took Havel into her confidence, in so far as to tell him
+that Tardif had stolen a valuable paper from her, the loss of which might
+bring most serious consequences.
+
+Whatever Havel had suspected he was the last man in the world to show or
+tell.  But before leaving the Manor House of Pontiac he had armed himself
+with pistols, in the grim hope that he might be required to use them.
+Havel had been used hard in the world, Madelinette had been kind to him,
+and he was ready to show his gratitude--and he little recked what form it
+might take.  When he found that they were following Tardif, and for what
+purpose, an ugly joy filled his heart, and he determined on revenge--
+so long delayed--on the scoundrel who had once tried to turn the parish
+against him by evil means.  He saw that his pistols were duly primed, he
+learned that Tardif had passed but two hours before, boasting again that
+Europe would have gossip for a year, once he reached Quebec.  Tardif too
+had paid liberally for his refreshment and his horses, for here he had
+taken a carriage, and had swaggered like a trooper in a conquered
+country.
+
+Havel had every hope of overtaking Tardif, and so he told Madelinette,
+adding that he would secure the paper for her at any cost.  She did not
+quite know what Havel meant, but she read purpose in his eye, and when
+Havel said: "I won't say 'Stop thief' many times," she turned away
+without speaking--she was choked with anxiety.  Yet in her own pocket was
+a little silver-handled pistol.
+
+It was true that Tardif was a thief, but she knew that his theft would be
+counted a virtue before the world.  This she could not tell Havel, but
+when the critical moment came--if it did come--she would then act upon
+the moment's inspiration.  If Tardif was a thief, what was she!--But this
+she could not tell Havel or the world.  Even as she thought it for this
+thousandth time, her face flushed deeply, and a mist came before her
+eyes.  But she hardened her heart and gave orders to proceed as soon as
+the horses were ready.  After a hasty breakfast they were again on their
+way, and reached the third stage of their journey by eleven o'clock.
+Tardif had passed two hours before.
+
+So, for two days they travelled, with no sleep save what they could catch
+as the coach rolled on.  They were delayed three hours at one inn because
+of the trouble in getting horses, since it appeared that Tardif had taken
+the only available pair in the place; but a few gold pieces brought
+another pair galloping from a farm two miles away, and they were again on
+the road.  Fifty miles to go, and Tardif with three hours' start of them!
+Unless he had an accident there was faint chance of overtaking him, for
+at this stage he had taken to the saddle again.  As time had gone on, and
+the distance between them and Quebec had decreased, Madelinette had grown
+paler and stiller.  Yet she was considerate of Madame Marie, and more
+than once insisted on Havel lying down for a couple of hours, and herself
+made him a strengthening bowl of soup at the kitchen fire of the inn.
+Meanwhile she inquired whether it might be possible to get four horses at
+the next change, and she offered five gold pieces to a man who would ride
+on ahead of them and secure the team.
+
+Some magic seemed to bring her the accomplishment of the impossible, for
+even as she made the offer, and the downcast looks of the landlord were
+assuring her that her request was futile, there was the rattle of hoofs
+without, and a petty Government official rode up.  He had come a journey
+of three miles only, and his horse was fresh.  Agitated, yet ruling
+herself to composure, Madelinette approached him and made her proposal
+to him.  He was suspicious, as became a petty Government official, and
+replied sullenly.  She offered him money--before the landlord, unhappily
+--and his refusal was now unnecessarily bitter.  She turned away sadly,
+but Madame Marie had been roused by the official's churlishness, and for
+once the placid little body spoke in that vulgar tongue which needs no
+interpretation.  She asked the fellow if he knew to whom he had been
+impolite, to whom he had refused a kindly act.
+
+"You--you, a habitant road-watcher, a pound-keeper, a village tax-
+collector, or something less!" she said.  "You to refuse the great
+singer Madelinette Lajeunesse, the wife of the Seigneur of Pontiac, the
+greatest patriot in the land; to refuse her whom princes are glad to
+serve--" She stopped and gasped her indignation.
+
+A hundred speeches and a hundred pounds could not have done so much.  The
+habitant official stared in blank amazement, the landlord took a glass of
+brandy to steady himself.
+
+"The Lajeunesse--the Lajeunesse, the singer of all the world--ah, why did
+she not say so then!" said the churl.  "What would I not do for her!
+Money--no, it is nothing, but the Lajeunesse, I myself would give my
+horse to hear her sing."
+
+"Tell her she can have M'sieu's horse," said the landlord, excitedly
+interposing.
+
+"Tiens, who the devil--the horse is mine!  If Madame--if she will but let
+me offer it to her myself!" said the agitated official.  "I sing myself
+--I know what singing is.  I have sung in an opera--a sentinel in armour
+I was.  Ah, but bring me to her, and you shall see what I will do, by
+grace of heaven!  I will marry you if you haven't a husband," he added
+with ardour to the dumfounded Madame Marie, who hurried to the adjoining
+room.
+
+An instant afterwards the official was making an oration in tangled
+sentences which brought him a grateful smile and a hand-clasp from
+Madelinette.  She could not prevent him from kissing her hand, she could
+not refrain from laughing when, outside the room, he tried to kiss Madame
+Marie.  She was astounded, however, an hour later, to see him still at
+the inn door, marching up and down, a whip in his hand.  She looked at
+him reproachfully, indignantly.
+
+"Why are you not on the way?" she asked.
+
+"Your man, that M'sieu' Havel, has rode on; I am to drive," he said.
+"Yes, Madame, it is my everlasting honour that I am to drive you.  Havel
+has a good horse, the horse has a good rider, you have a good servant in
+me.  I, Madame, have a good mistress in you--I am content.  I am
+overjoyed--I am proud--I am ready, I, Pierre Lapierre."
+
+The churlish official had gone back to the natural state of an excitable
+habitant, ready to give away his heart or lose his head at an instant's
+notice, the temptation being sufficient.  Madelinette was frightened.
+She knew well why Havel had ridden on ahead without her permission, and
+shaking hands with the landlord and getting into the coach, she said
+hastily to her new coachman: "Lose not an instant.  Drive hard."
+
+They reached the next change by noon, and here they found four horses
+awaiting them.  Tardif, and Havel also, had come and gone.  An hour's
+rest, and they were away again upon the last stage of the journey.  They
+should reach Quebec soon after dusk, all being well.  At first, Lapierre
+the official had been inclined to babble, but at last he relieved his
+mind by interjections only.  He kept shaking his head wisely, as though
+debating on great problems, and he drove his horses with a master-hand--
+he had once been a coach driver on that long river-road, which in summer
+makes a narrow ribbon of white, mile for mile with the St. Lawrence from
+east to west.  This was the proudest moment of his life.  He knew great
+things were at stake, and they had to do with the famous singer,
+Lajeunesse; and what tales for his grandchildren in years to come!
+
+The flushed and comfortable Madame Marie sat upright in the coach,
+holding the hand of her mistress, and Madelinette grew paler as the miles
+diminished between her and Quebec.  Yet she was quiet and unmoving, now
+and then saying an encouraging word to Lapierre, who smacked his lips for
+miles afterwards, and took out of his horses their strength and paces by
+masterly degrees.  So that when, at last, on the hill they saw far off
+the spires of Quebec, the team was swinging as steadily on as though they
+had not come twenty-five miles already.  This was a moment of pride for
+Lapierre, but of apprehension for Madelinette.  At the last two inns on
+the road she had got news of both Tardif and Havel.  Tardif had had the
+final start of half-an-hour.  A half-hour's start, and fifteen miles to
+go!  But one thing was sure, Havel, the wiry Havel, was the better man,
+with sounder nerve and a fostered strength.
+
+Yet, as they descended the hill and plunged into the wild wooded valley,
+untenanted and uncivilised, where the road wound and curved among giant
+boulders and twisted through ravines and gorges, her heart fell within
+her.  Evening was at hand, and in the thick forest the shadows were
+heavy, and night was settling upon them before its time.
+
+They had not gone a mile, however, when, as they swung creaking round a
+great boulder, Lapierre pulled up his horses with a loud exclamation, for
+almost under his horses' feet lay a man apparently dead, his horse dead
+beside him.
+
+It was Havel.  In an instant Madelinette and Ma dame Marie were bending
+over him.  The widow of the Little Chemist had skill and presence of
+mind.
+
+"He is not dead, dear mine," said she in a low voice, feeling Havel's
+heart.
+
+"Thank God," was all that Madelinette could say.  "Let us lift him into
+the coach."
+
+Now Lapierre was standing beside them, the reins in his hand.  "Leave
+that to me," he said, and passed the reins into Madame Marie's hands,
+then with muttered imprecations on persons unmentioned he lifted up the
+slight form of Havel, and carried him to the coach.  Meanwhile
+Madelinette had stooped to a little stream at the side of the road, and
+filled her silver drinking-cup with water.
+
+As she bent over Havel and sprinkled his face, Lapierre examined the
+insensible man.
+
+"He is but stunned," he said.  "He will come to in a moment."
+
+Then he went to the spot where Havel had lain, and found a pistol lying
+at the side of the road.  Examining it, he found it had been discharged-
+both barrels.  Rustling with importance he brought it to Madelinette,
+nodding and looking wise, yet half timorous too in sharing in so
+remarkable a business.  Madelinette glanced at the pistol, her lips
+tightened, and she shuddered.  Havel had evidently failed, and she must
+face the worst.  Yet now that it had come, she was none the less
+determined to fight on.
+
+Havel opened his eyes and looked round in a startled way.  He saw
+Madelinette.
+
+"Ah, Madame, Madame, pardon!  He got away.  I fired twice and winged him,
+but he shot my horse and I fell on my head.  He has got away.  What time
+is it, Madame?" he suddenly asked.  She told him.  "Ah, it is too late,"
+he added.  "It happened over half-an-hour ago.  Unless he is badly hurt
+and has fallen by the way, he is now in the city.  Madame, I have failed
+you--pardon, Madame!"
+
+She helped him to sit up, and made a cushion of her cloak for his head,
+in a corner of the coach.  "There is nothing to ask pardon for, Havel,"
+she said; "you did your best.  It was to be--that's all.  Drink the
+brandy now."
+
+A moment afterwards Lapierre was on the box, Madame Marie was inside, and
+Madelinette said to the coachman:
+
+"Drive hard--the White Calvary by the church of St. Mary Magdalene."
+
+In another hour the coach drew up by the White Calvary, where a soft
+light burned in memory of some departed soul.
+
+The three alighted.  Madelinette whispered to Havel, he got up on the box
+beside Lapierre, and the coach rattled away to a tavern, as the two women
+disappeared swiftly into the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FACE TO FACE
+
+As the two approached the mansion where George Fournel lived, they saw
+the door open and a man come hurriedly out into the street.  He wore his
+wrist in a sling.
+
+Madelinette caught Madame Marie's arm.  She did not speak, but her heart
+sank within her.  The man was Tardif.
+
+He saw them and shuffled over.
+
+"Ha, Madame," he said, "he has the will, and I've not done with you yet
+--you'll see."  Then, shaking a fist in Madelinette's face, he clattered
+off into the darkness.
+
+They crossed the street, and Madame Marie knocked at Fournel's door.  It
+was at once opened, and Madelinette announced herself.  The servant
+stared stonily at first, then, as she mentioned her name and he saw her
+face, he suddenly became servile, and asked them into a small waiting-
+room.  Monsieur Fournel was at home, and should be informed at once of
+Madame's arrival.
+
+A few moments later the servant, somewhat graver, but as courteous still,
+came to say that Monsieur would receive her in his library.  Madelinette
+turned towards Madame Marie.  The servant understood.
+
+"I shall see that the lady has refreshment," he said.  "Will Madame
+perhaps care for refreshment--and a mirror, before Monsieur has the
+honour?--Madame has travelled far."
+
+In spite of the anxiety of the moment and the great matters at stake,
+Madelinette could not but smile.  "Thank you," she said, "I hope I'm not
+so unpresentable."
+
+"A little dust here and there perhaps, Madame," he said, with humble
+courtesy.
+
+Madelinette was not so heroical as to undervalue the suggestion.  Lives
+perhaps were in the balance, but she was a woman, and who could tell what
+slight influences might turn the scale!
+
+The servant saw her hesitation.  "If Madame will but remain here, I will
+bring what is necessary," he said, and was gone.  In a moment he appeared
+again with a silver basin, a mirror, and a few necessaries of the toilet.
+
+"I suppose, Madame," said the servant, with fluttered anxiety, to show
+that he knew who she was, "I suppose you have had sometimes to make rough
+shifts, even in palaces."
+
+She gave him a gold piece.  It cheered her in the moment to think that in
+this forbidding house, on a forbidding mission, to a forbidding man, she
+had one friend.  She made a hasty toilet, and but for the great paleness
+of her cheeks, no traces remained of the three days' travel with their
+hardship and anxiety.  Presently, as the servant ushered her into the
+presence of George Fournel, even the paleness was warmed a little by the
+excitement of the moment.
+
+Fournel was standing with his back to the door, looking out into the
+moonlit night.  As she entered he quickly drew the curtains of the
+windows and turned towards his visitor, a curious, hard, disdainful look
+in his face.  In his hands he held a paper which she knew only too well.
+
+"Madame," he said, and bowed.  Then he motioned her to a chair.  He took
+one himself and sat down beside the great oak writing-desk and waited for
+her to speak--waited with a look which sent the blood from her heart to
+colour her cheeks and forehead.
+
+She did not speak, however, but looked at him fearlessly.  It was
+impossible for her to humble herself before the latent insolence of his
+look.  It seemed to degrade her out of all consideration.  He felt the
+courage of her defiance, and it moved him.  Yet he could but speak in
+cynical suggestion.
+
+"You had a long, hard, and adventurous journey," he said.  He rose
+suddenly and drew a tray towards him.  "Will you not have some
+refreshment?" he added, in an even voice.  "I fear you have not had time
+to seek it at an inn.  Your messenger has but just gone."
+
+It was impossible for him to do justice to himself, or to let his
+hospitality rest upon its basis of natural courtesy.  It was clear that
+he was moved with accumulated malice, and he could not hide it.
+
+"Your servant has been hospitable," she said, her voice trembling a
+little.  She plunged at once into the business of her visit.
+
+"Monsieur, that paper you hold--" she stopped for an instant, able to go
+no further.
+
+"Ah, this--this document you have sent me," he said, opening it with an
+assumed carelessness.  "Your servant had an accident--I suppose we may
+call it that privately--as he came.  He was fired at--was wounded.  You
+will share with me the hope that the highwayman who stopped him may be
+brought to justice, though, indeed, your man Tardif left him behind in
+the dust.  Perhaps you came upon him, Madame--hein?"
+
+She steeled herself.  Too much was at stake; she could not resent his
+hateful implications now.
+
+"Tardif was not my messenger, Monsieur, as you know.  Tardif was the
+thief of that document in your hands."
+
+"Yes, this--will!" he said musingly, an evil glitter in his eyes.  "Its
+delivery has been long delayed.  Posts and messengers are slow from
+Pontiac."
+
+"Monsieur will hear what I have to say?  You have the will, your rights
+are in your hands.  Is not that enough?"
+
+"It is not enough," he answered, in a grating voice.  "Let us be plain
+then, Madame, and as simple as you please.  You concealed this will.
+Not Tardif but yourself is open to the law."
+
+She shrank under the brutality of his manner, but she ruled herself to
+outward composure.  She was about to reply when he added, with a sneer:
+"Avarice is a debasing vice--Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house!
+Thou shalt not steal!"
+
+"Monsieur," she said calmly, "it would have been easy to destroy the
+will.  Have you not thought of that?"
+
+For a moment he was taken aback, but he said harshly: "If crime were
+always intelligent, it would have fewer penalties."
+
+She shrank again under the roughness of his words.  But she was fighting
+for an end that was dear to her soul, and she answered:
+
+"It was not lack of intelligence, but a sense of honour--yes, a sense of
+honour," she insisted, as he threw back his head and laughed.  "What do
+you think might be my reason for concealing the will--if I did conceal
+it?"
+
+"The answer seems obvious.  Why does the wild ass forage with a strange
+herd, or the pig put his feet in the trough?  Not for his neighbour's
+gain, Madame, not in a thousand years."
+
+"Monsieur, I have never been spoken to so coarsely.  I am a blacksmith's
+daughter, and I have heard rough men talk in my day, but I have never
+heard a man--of my own race at least--so rude to a woman.  But I am here
+not for my own sake; I will not go till I have said and done all I have
+come to say and do.  Will you listen to me, Monsieur?"
+
+"I have made my charges--answer them.  Disprove this theft"--he held up
+the will--"of concealment, and enjoyment of property not your own, and
+then ask of me that politeness which makes so beautiful stable and forge
+at Pontiac."
+
+"Monsieur, you cannot think that the will was concealed for profit, for
+the value of the Seigneury of Pontiac.  I can earn two such seigneuries
+in one year, Monsieur."
+
+"Nevertheless you do not."
+
+"For the same reason that I did not bring or send that will to you when I
+found it, Monsieur.  And for that same reason I have come to ask you not
+to take advantage of that will."
+
+He was about to interpose angrily, but she continued: "Whatever the
+rental may be that you in justice feel should be put upon the Seigneury,
+I will pay--from the hour my husband entered on the property, its heir as
+he believed.  Put such rental on the property, do not disturb Monsieur
+Racine in his position as it is, and I will double that rental."
+
+"Do not think, Madame, that I am as avaricious as you."
+
+"Is it avaricious to offer double the worth of the rental?"
+
+"There is the title and distinction.  You married a mad nobody; you wish
+to retain an honour that belongs to me."
+
+"I am asking it for my husband's sake, not my own, believe me, Monsieur."
+
+"And what do you expect me to do for his sake, Madame?"
+
+"What humanity would suggest.  Ah, I know what you would say: he tried to
+kill you; he made you fight him.  But, Monsieur, he has repented of that.
+He is ill, he is--crippled, he cherishes the Seigneury beyond its worth a
+thousand times."
+
+"He cherishes it at my expense.  So, you must not disturb the man who
+robs you of house and land, and tries to murder you, lest he should be
+disturbed and not sleep o' nights.  Come, Madame, that is too thin."
+
+"He might kill you, but he would not rob you, Monsieur.  Do you think
+that if he knew that will existed, he would be now at the Seigneury,
+or I here?  I know you hate Louis Racine."
+
+"With ample reason."
+
+"You hate him more because he defeated you than because he once tried to
+kill you.  Oh, I do not know the rights or wrongs of that great case at
+law; I only know that Louis Racine was not the judge or jury, but the
+avocat only, whose duty it was to do as he did.  That he did it the more
+gladly because he was a Frenchman and you an Englishman, is not his fault
+or yours either.  Louis Racine's people came here two hundred years ago,
+yours not sixty years ago.  You, the great business man, have had
+practical power which gave you riches.  You have sacrificed all for
+power.  Louis Racine has only genius, and no practical power."
+
+"A dangerous fanatic and dreamer," he interjected.  "A dreamer, if you
+will, with no practical power, for he never thought of himself, and
+'practical power' is usually all self.  He dreamed--he gave his heart and
+soul up for ideas.  Englishmen do not understand that.  Do you not know--
+you do know--that, had he chosen, he might have been rich too, for his
+brains would have been of great use to men of practical power like
+yourself."
+
+She paused; Fournel did not answer, but sat as though reading the will
+intently.
+
+"Was it strange that he should dream of a French sovereign state here,
+where his people came and first possessed the land?  Can you wonder that
+this dreamer, when the Seigneury of Pontiac came to him, felt as if a new
+life were opened up to him, and saw a way to some of his ambitions.  They
+were sad, mistaken ambitions, doomed to failure, but they were also his
+very heart, which he would empty out gladly for an idea.  The Seigneury
+of Pontiac came to him, and I married him."
+
+"Evidently bent upon wrecking the chances of a great career," interrupted
+Fournel over the paper.
+
+"But no; I also cared more for ideas than for the sordid things of life.
+It is in our blood, you see"  she was talking with less restraint now,
+for she saw he was listening, despite assumed indifference--"and Pontiac
+was dearer to me than all else in the world.  Louis Racine belonged
+there.  You--what sort of place would you, an Englishman, have occupied
+at the Seigneury of Pontiac!  What kind--"
+
+He got suddenly to his feet.  He was a man of strange whims and vanities,
+and his resentment at his exclusion from the Seigneury of Pontiac had
+become a fixed idea.  He had hugged the thought of its possession before
+M. de la Riviere died, as a man humbly born prides himself on the
+distinguished lineage of his wife.  His great schemes were completed, he
+was a rich man, and he had pictured himself retiring to this Seigneury,
+a peaceful and practical figure, living out his days in a refined repose
+which his earlier life had never known.  She had touched the raw nerves
+of his secret vanity.
+
+"What kind of Seigneur would I make, eh?  What sort of figure would I
+cut in Pontiac!" He laughed loudly.  "By heaven, Madame, you shall see!
+I did not move against his outrage and assault, but I will move to
+purpose now.  For you and he shall leave there in disgrace before another
+week goes round.  I have you both in my 'practical power,' and I will
+squeeze satisfaction out of you.  He is a ruffianly interloper, and you,
+Madame, the law would call by another name."
+
+She got quickly to her feet and came a step nearer to him.  Leaning a
+hand on the table, she bent towards him slightly.  Something seemed to
+possess her that transfigured her face, and gave it a sense of power and
+confidence.  Her eyes fixed themselves steadily on him.
+
+"Monsieur," she said, "you may call me what you will, and I will bear it,
+for you have been sorely injured.  You are angry because I seemed to
+think an Englishman was not fitted to be Seigneur of Pontiac.  We French
+are a people of sentiments and ideas; we make idols of trifles, and we
+die for fancies.  We dream, we have shrines for memories.  These things
+you despise.  You would give us justice and make us rich by what you call
+progress.  Monsieur, that is not enough.  We are not born to appreciate
+you.  Our hearts are higher than our heads, and, under a flag that
+conquered us, they cling together.  Was it strange that I should think
+Louis Racine better suited to be Seigneur at Pontiac?"
+
+She paused as though expecting him to answer, but he only looked
+inquiringly at her, and she continued "My husband used you ill, but he
+is no interloper.  He took what the law gave him, what has been in his
+family for over two hundred years.  Monsieur, it has meant more to him
+than a hundred times greater honour could to you.  When his trouble came,
+when--" she paused, as though it was difficult to speak--"when the other
+--legacy--of his family descended on him, that Seigneury became to him
+the one compensation of his life.  By right of it only could he look the
+world in the face--or me."
+
+She stopped suddenly, for her voice choked her.  "Will you please
+continue?" said Fournel, opening and shutting the will in his hand,
+and looking at her with a curious new consideration.
+
+"Fame came to me as his trouble came to him.  It was hard for him to go
+among men, but, ah, can you think how he dreaded the day when I should
+return to Pontiac !  .  .  .  I will tell you the whole truth, Monsieur."
+She drew herself up proudly.  "I loved--Louis.  He came into my heart
+with its first great dream, and before life--the business of life--really
+began.  He was one with the best part of me, the girlhood in me which is
+dead."
+
+Fournel rose and in a low voice said: "Will you not sit down?"  He
+motioned to a chair.
+
+She shook her head.  "Ah no, please!  Let me say all quickly and while
+I have the courage.  I loved him, and he loved and loves me.  I love
+that love in which I married him, and I love his love for me.  It is
+indestructible, because it is in the fibre of my life.  It has nothing
+to do with ugliness or beauty, or fortune or misfortune, or shame or
+happiness, or sin or holiness.  When it becomes part of us, it must go on
+in one form or another, but it cannot die.  It lives in breath and song
+and thought and work and words.  That is the wonder of it, the pity of
+it, and the joy of it.  Because it is so, because love would shield the
+beloved from itself if need be, and from all the terrors of the world at
+any cost, I have done what I have done.  I did it at cost of my honour,
+but it was for his sake; at the price of my peace, but to spare him.  Ah,
+Monsieur, the days of life are not many for him: his shame and his futile
+aims are killing him.  The clouds will soon close over, and his vexed
+brain and body will be still.  To spare him the last turn of the wheel of
+torture, to give him the one bare honour left him yet a little while, I
+have given up my work of life to comfort him.  I concealed, I stole, if
+you will, the document you hold.  And, God help me!  I would do it again
+and yet again, if I lost my soul for ever, Monsieur.  Monsieur, I know
+that in his madness he would have killed you, but it was his suffering,
+not a bad heart, that made him do it.  Do a sorrowful woman a great
+kindness and spare him, Monsieur."
+
+She had held the man motionless and staring.  When she ended, he got to
+his feet and came near to her.  There was a curious look in his face,
+half struggle, half mysterious purpose.  "The way is easy to a hundred
+times as much," he said, in a low meaning voice, and his eyes boldly held
+hers.  "You are doing a chivalrous sort of thing that only a woman would
+do--for duty; do something for another reason: for what a woman would do
+--for the blood of youth that is in her."  He reached out a hand to lay
+it on her arm.  "Ask of me what you will, if you but put your hand in
+mine and--"
+
+"Monsieur," she said, pale and gasping, "do you think so ill of me then?
+Do I seem to you like--!"  She turned away, her eyes dry and burning, her
+body trembling with shame.
+
+"You are here alone with me at night," he persisted.  "It would not be
+easy to--"
+
+"Death would be easy, Monsieur," she said calmly and coldly.  "My husband
+tried to kill you.  You would do--ah, but let me pass!" she said, with a
+sudden fury.  "You--if you were a million times richer, if you could ruin
+me for ever, do you think--"
+
+"Hush, Madame," he said, with a sudden change of voice and a manner all
+reverence.  "I do not think.  I spoke only to hear you speak in reply:
+only to know to the uttermost what you were.  Madame," he added, in a
+shaking voice, "I did not know that such a woman lived.  Madame, I could
+have sworn there was none in the world."  Then in a quicker, huskier note
+he added: "Eighteen years ago a woman nearly spoiled my life.  She was
+as beautiful as you, but her heart was tainted.  Since then I have never
+believed in any woman--never till now.  I have said that all were
+purchasable--at a price.  I unsay that now.  I have not believed
+in any one--"
+
+"Oh, Monsieur!" she said, with a quick impulsive gesture towards him,
+and her face lighting with sympathy.
+
+"I was struck too hard--"
+
+She touched his arm and said gently: "Some are hurt in one way and some
+in another; all are hurt some time, but--"
+
+"You shall have your way," he interrupted, and moved apart.
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, Monsieur, it is a noble act!--" she hurriedly rejoined,
+then with a sudden cry rushed towards him, for he was lighting the will
+at the flame of a candle near him.
+
+"But no, no, no, you shall not do it," she cried.  "I only asked it for
+while he lives--ah!"
+
+She collapsed with a cry of despair, for he had held the flaming paper
+above her reach, and its ashes were now scattering on the floor.
+
+"You will let me give you some wine?" he said quietly, and poured out a
+glassful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE BITER BITTEN
+
+Madelinette was faint, and, sitting down, she drank the wine feebly, then
+leaned her head against the back of the chair, her face turned from
+Fournel.
+
+"Forgive me, if you can," he said.  "You have this to comfort you, that
+if friendship is a boon in this world you have an honest friend in George
+Fournel."
+
+She made a gesture of assent with her hand, but she did not speak.  Tears
+were stealing quietly down her cold face.  For a moment so, in silence,
+and then she rose to her feet, and pulled down over her face the veil she
+wore.  She was about to hold out her hand to him to say good-bye, when
+there was a noise without, a knocking at the door, then it was flung
+open, and Tardif, intoxicated, entered followed by two constables, with
+Fournel's servant vainly protesting.
+
+"Here she is," Tardif said to the officers of the law, pointing to
+Madelinette.  "It was her set the fellow on to shoot me.  I had the will
+she stole from him," he added, pointing to Fournel.
+
+Distressed as Madelinette was, she was composed and ready.
+
+"The man was dismissed my employ--" she began, but Fournel interposed.
+
+"What is this I hear about shooting and a will?" he said sternly.
+
+"What will!" cried Tardif.  "The will I brought you from Pontiac, and
+Madame there followed, and her servant shot me.  The will I brought you,
+M'sieu'.  The will leaving the Manor of Pontiac to you!"
+
+Fournel turned as though with sudden anger to the officers.  "You come
+here--you enter my house to interfere with a guest of mine, on the charge
+of a drunken scoundrel like this!  What is this talk of wills!  The
+vapourings of his drunken brain.  The Seigneury of Pontiac belongs to
+Monsieur Racine, and but three days since Madame here dismissed this
+fellow for pilfering and other misdemeanours.  As for shooting--the man
+is a liar, and--"
+
+"Ah, do you deny that I came to you?--" began Tardif.
+
+"Constables," said Fournel, "I give this fellow in charge.  Take him to
+gaol, and I will appear at court against him when called upon."
+
+Tardif's rage choked him.  He tried to speak once or twice, then began to
+shriek an imprecation at Fournel; but the constables clapped hands on his
+mouth, and dragged him out of the room and out of the house.
+
+Fournel saw him safely out, then returned to Madelinette.  "Do not fear
+for the fellow.  A little gaol will do him good.  I will see to it that
+he gives no trouble, Madame," he said.  "You may trust me."
+
+"I do trust you, Monsieur," Madelinette answered quietly.  "I pray that
+you may be right, and that--" "It will all come out right," he firmly
+insisted.  "Will you ask for Madame Marie?" she said.  Then with a
+smile: "We will go happier than we came."
+
+As she and Madame Marie passed from the house, Fournel shook
+Madelinette's hand warmly, and said: "'All's well that ends well.'"
+
+"That ends well," answered Madelinette, with a sorrowful questioning in
+her voice.
+
+"We will make it so," he rejoined, and then they parted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE DOOR THAT WOULD NOT OPEN
+
+The old Manor House of Pontiac was alive with light and merriment.  It
+was the early autumn; not cool enough for the doors and windows to be
+shut, but cool enough to make dancing a pleasure, and to give spirit to
+the gaiety that filled the old house.  The occasion was a notable one for
+Pontiac.  An address of congratulation and appreciation and a splendid
+gift of silver had been brought to the Manor from the capital by certain
+high officials of the Government and the Army, representing the people of
+the Province.  At first Madelinette had shrunk from the honour to be done
+her, and had so written to certain quarters whence the movement had
+proceeded; but a letter had come to her which had changed her mind.  This
+letter was signed George Fournel.  Fournel had a right to ask a favour of
+her; and one that was to do her honour seemed the least that she might
+grant.  He had suffered much at Louis' hands; he had forborne much; and
+by an act of noble forgiveness and generosity, had left Louis undisturbed
+in an honour which was not his, and the enjoyment of an estate to which
+he had no claim.  He had given much, suffered much, and had had nothing
+in return save her measureless and voiceless gratitude.  Friendship she
+could give him; but it was a silent friendship, an incompanionable
+friendship, founded upon a secret and chivalrous act.  He was in Quebec
+and she in Pontiac; and since that day when he had burned the will before
+her eyes she had not seen him.  She had heard from him but twice; once to
+tell her that she need have no fear of Tardif, and again, when he urged
+her to accept the testimonial and the gift to be offered by her grateful
+fellow-citizens.
+
+The deputation, distinguished and important, had been received by the
+people of Pontiac with the flaunting of flags, playing of bands, and
+every demonstration of delight.  The honour done to Madelinette was an
+honour done to Pontiac, and Pontiac had never felt itself so important.
+It realised that this kind of demonstration was less expensive, and less
+dangerous, than sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion.  The vanity of
+the habitants could be better exercised in applauding Madelinette and in
+show of welcome to the great men of the land, than in cultivating a
+dangerous patriotism under the leadership of Louis Racine.  Temptations
+to conspiracy had been few since the day George Fournel, wounded and
+morose, left the Manor House secretly one night, and carried back to
+Quebec his resentment and his injuries.  Treasonable gossip filtered no
+longer from doorway to doorway; carbines were not to be had for a song;
+no more nightly drills and weekly meetings gave a spice of great
+expectations to their life.  Their Seigneur, silent, and pale, and
+stooped, lived a life apart.  If he walked through the town, it was with
+bitter, abstracted eyes that took little heed of their presence.  If he
+drove, his horses travelled like the wind.  At Mass, he looked at no one,
+saw no one, and, as it would seem, heard no one.
+
+But Madelinette--she was the Madelinette of old, simple, gracious, kind,
+with a smile here and a kind word there: a little child to be caressed or
+an old woman to be comforted; the sick to be fed and doctored; the poor
+to be helped; the idle to be rebuked with a persuasive smile; the angry
+to be coaxed by a humorous word; the evil to be reproved by a fearless
+friendliness; the spiteful to be hushed by a still, commanding presence.
+She never seemed to remember that she was the daughter of old Joe
+Lajeunesse the blacksmith, yet she never seemed to forget it.  She was
+the wife of the Seigneur, and she was the daughter of the smithy-man too.
+She sat in the smithy-man's doorway with her hand in his; and she sat at
+the Manor table with its silver glitter, and its antique garnishings,
+with as real an unconsciousness.
+
+Her influence seemed to pierce far and wide.  The Cure and the Avocat
+adored her; and the proudest, happiest moment of their lives was when
+they sat at the Manor table, or, in the sombre drawing-room, watched her
+give it light and grace and charm, and fill their hearts with the
+piercing delight of her song.  So her life had gone on; to the outward
+world serene and happy, full of simplicity, charity, and good works.
+What it was in reality no one could know, not even herself.  Since the
+day when Louis had tried to kill George Fournel, life had been a
+different thing for them both.  On her part she had been deeply hurt;
+wounded beyond repair.  He had failed her from every vital stand-point,
+he had not fulfilled one hope she had ever had of him.  But she laid the
+blame not at his door; she rather shrank with inner bitterness from the
+cynical cruelty of nature, which, in deforming the body, with a merciless
+cruelty had deformed a noble mind.  These things were between her and her
+inmost soul.
+
+To Louis she was ever the same, affectionate, gentle, and unselfish;
+but her stronger soul ruled him without his knowledge, commanded his
+perturbed spirit into the abstracted quiet and bitter silence wherein he
+lived, and which she sought to cheer by a thousand happy devices.  She
+did not let him think that she was giving up anything for him; no word or
+act of hers could have suggested to him the sacrifices she had made.  He
+knew them, still he did not know them in their fulness; he was grateful,
+but his gratitude did not compass the splendid self-effacing devotion
+with which she denied herself the glorious career that had lain before
+her.  Morbid and self-centred, he could not understand.  Since her return
+from Quebec she had sought to give a little touch of gaiety to their
+life, and she had not the heart to interfere with his constant insistence
+on the little dignities of the position of Seigneur, ironical as they all
+were in her eyes.  She had sacrificed everything; and since another also
+had sacrificed himself to give her husband the honours and estate he
+possessed, the game should be delicately played to the unseen end.
+
+So it had gone on until the coming of the deputation with the testimonial
+and the gift.  She had proposed the gaieties of the occasion to Louis
+with so simple a cheerfulness, that he had no idea of the torture it
+meant to her; no realisation of how she would be brought face to face
+with the life that she had given up for his sake.  But neither he nor she
+was aware of one thing, that the beautiful embossed address contained an
+appeal to her to return to the world of song which she had renounced,
+to go forth once more and contribute to the happiness of humanity.
+
+When, therefore, in the drawing-room of the Manor, the address was read
+to her, and this appeal rang upon her ears, she felt herself turn dizzy
+and faint: her whole life seemed to reel backwards to all she had lost,
+and the tyranny of the present bore down upon her with a cruel weight.
+It needed all her courage and all her innate strength to rule herself to
+composure.  For an instant the people in the room were a confused mass,
+floating away into a blind distance.  She heard, however, the quick
+breathing of the Seigneur beside her, and it called her back to an active
+and necessary confidence.
+
+With a smile she received the address, and, turning, handed it to Louis,
+smiling at him too with a winning duplicity, for which she might never
+have to ask forgiveness in this world or the next.  Then she turned and
+spoke.  Eloquently, simply, she gave out her thanks for the gift of
+silver and the greater gift of kind words; and said that in her quiet
+life, apart from that active world of the stage, where sorrow and sordid
+experience went hand in hand with song, where the delights of home were
+sacrificed to the applause of the world, she would cherish their gift as
+a reward that she might have earned, had she chosen the public instead
+of the private way of life.  They had told her of the paths of glory,
+but she was walking the homeward way.
+
+Thus deftly, and without strain, and with an air of happiness even, did
+she set aside the words and the appeal which had created a storm in her
+soul.  A few moments afterwards, as the old house rang to the laughter of
+old and young, with dancing well begun, no one would have thought that
+the Manor of Pontiac was not the home of peace and joy.  Even Louis
+himself, who had had his moments of torture and suspicion when the appeal
+was read, was now in a kind of happy reaction.  He moved about among the
+guests with less abstraction and more cheerfulness than he had shown for
+months.  He carried in his hand the address which Madelinette had handed
+him.  Again and again he showed it to eager guests.
+
+Suddenly, as he was about to fold it up for the last time and carry it to
+the library, he saw the name of George Fournel among the signatures.
+Stunned, dumfounded, he left the room.  George Fournel, whom he had tried
+to kill, had signed this address of congratulation to his wife!  Was it
+Fournel's intention thus to show that he had forgiven and forgotten?  It
+was not like the man to either forgive or forget.  What did it mean?  He
+left the house buried in morbid speculation, and involuntarily made his
+way to a little hut of two rooms which he had built in the Seigneury
+grounds.  Here it was he read and wrote, here he had spent moody hours
+alone, day after day, for months past.  He was not aware that some one
+left the crowd about the house and followed him.  Arrived at the hut, he
+entered and shut the door; lighted candles, and spread the embossed
+parchment out before him upon the table.  As he stood looking at it, he
+heard the door open behind him.  Tardif stood before him.
+
+The face of Tardif had an evil hunted look.  Before the astonished and
+suspicious Seigneur had chance to challenge him, he said in a low
+insolent tone:
+
+"Good evening, M'sieu'!  Fine doings at the Manor--eh?
+
+"What are you doing at the Manor, and what are you doing here?" asked
+the Seigneur, scanning the face of the man closely; for there was a look
+in it he did not understand.
+
+"I have as much right to be here as you, M'sieu'."
+
+"You have no right at all to be here.  You were dismissed your place by
+the mistress of this Manor."
+
+"There is no mistress of this Manor."
+
+"Madame Racine dismissed you."
+
+"And I dismissed Madame Racine," answered the man with a sneer.
+
+"You are training for the horsewhip.  You forget that, as Seigneur,
+I have power to give you summary punishment."
+
+"You haven't power to do anything at all, M'sieu'!"  The Seigneur
+started.  He thought the remark had reference to his physical disability.
+His fingers itched to take the creature by the throat, and choke the
+tongue from his mouth.  Before he could speak, the man continued with a
+half-drunken grimace:
+
+"You, with your tributes, and your courts, and your body-guards!  Bah!
+You'd have a gibbet if you could, wouldn't you?  You with your rebellion
+and your tinpot honours!  A puling baby could conspire as well as you.
+And all the world laughing at you--v'la!"
+
+"Get out of this room and take your feet from my Manor, Tardif," said the
+Seigneur with a deadly quietness, "or it will be the worse for you."
+
+"Your Manor--pish!"  The man laughed a hateful laugh.  "Your Manor?  You
+haven't any Manor.  You haven't anything but what you carry on your
+back."
+
+A flush passed swiftly over the Seigneur's face, then left it cold and
+white, and the eyes shone fiery in his head.  He felt some shameful
+meaning in the man's words, beyond this gross reference to his deformity.
+
+"I am Seigneur of this Manor, and you have taken wages from me, and eaten
+my bread, slept under my roof, and--"
+
+"I've no more eaten your bread and slept under your roof than you have.
+Pish!  You were living then on another man's fortune, now you're living
+on what your wife earns."
+
+The Seigneur did not understand yet.  But there was a strange light of
+suspicion in his eyes, a nervous rage knotting his forehead.
+
+"My land and my earnings are my own, and I have never lived on another
+man's fortune.  If you mean that the late Seigneur made a will--that
+canard--"
+
+"It was no canard."  Tardif laughed hatefully.  "There was a will right
+enough."
+
+"Where is it?  I've heard that fool's gossip before."
+
+"Where is it?  Ask your wife; she knows.  Ask your loving Tardif, he
+knows."
+
+"Where is the will, Tardif?" asked the Seigneur in a voice that, in his
+own ears, seemed to come from an infinite distance; to Tardif's ears it
+was merely tuneless and harsh.
+
+"In M'sieu' Fournel's pocket, or Madame's.  What's the difference?  The
+price is the same, and you keep your eyes shut and play the Seigneur, and
+eat and drink what they give you just the same."
+
+Now the Seigneur understood.  His eyes went blind for a moment, and his
+hands twitched convulsively on the embossed address he had been rolling
+and unrolling.  A terror, a shame, a dreadful cruelty entered into him,
+but he was still and numb, and his tongue was thick.  He spoke heavily.
+
+"Tell me all," he said.  "You shall be well paid."
+
+"I don't want your money.  I want to see you squirm.  I want to see her
+put where she deserves.  Bah!  Do you think Fournel forgave you for
+putting his feet in his shoes, and for that case at law, for nothing?
+Why should he?  He hated you, and you hated him.  His name's on that
+paper in your hand among all the rest.  Do you think he eats humble pie
+and crawls to Madame and lets you stay here for nothing?"
+
+The Seigneur was painfully quiet and intent, yet his brain was like some
+great lens, refracting and magnifying things to monstrous proportions.
+
+"A will was found?" he asked.
+
+"By Madame in the library.  She left it where she found it--behind the
+picture over the Louis Seize table.  The day you dismissed me, I saw her
+at the cupboard.  I found the will and started with it to M'sieu'
+Fournel.  She followed.  You remember when she went--eh?  On business--
+and such business!  she and Havel and the old slut Marie.  You remember,
+eh; Louis?" he added with unnamable insolence.  The Seigneur inclined
+his head.  "V'la!  they followed me, overtook me, and Havel shot me in
+the wrist.  See there!"--he held out his wrist.  The Seigneur nodded.
+"But I got to Fournel's first.  I put the will into his hands.
+
+"I told him Madame Madelinette was following.  Then I went to bring the
+constables to his house to arrest her when he had finished with her."
+He laughed a brutal laugh, which deepened the strange glittering look in
+Louis' eyes.  "When I came an hour later, she was there.  But--now you
+shall see what stuff they are both made of!  He laughed at me, said I had
+lied; that there was no will; that I was a thief; and had me locked up in
+gaol.  For a month I was in gaol without trial.  Then one day I was let
+out without trial.  His servant met me and brought me to his house.  He
+gave me money and told me to leave the country.  If I didn't, I would be
+arrested again for trying to shoot Havel, and for blackmail.  They could
+all swear me off my feet and into prison--what was I to do!  I took the
+money and went.  But I came back to have my revenge.  I could cut their
+hearts out and eat them."
+
+"You are drunk," said the Seigneur quietly.  "You don't know what you're
+saying."
+
+"I'm not drunk.  I'm always trying to get drunk now.  I couldn't have
+come here if I hadn't been drinking.  I couldn't have told you the truth,
+if I hadn't been drinking.  But I'm sober enough to know that I've done
+for him and for her!  And I'm even with you too--bah!  Did you think she
+cared a fig for you?  She's only waiting till you die.  Then she'll go to
+her lover.  He's a man of life and limb.  Youpish!  a hunchback, that all
+the world laughs at, a worm--" he turned towards the door laughing
+hideously, his evil face gloating.  "You've not got a stick or stone.
+She"--jerking a finger towards the house--"she earns what you eat, she--"
+
+It was the last word he ever spoke, for, with a low terrible cry, the
+Seigneur snatched up a knife from the table and sprang upon him, catching
+him by the throat.  Once, twice, thrice, the knife went home, and the
+ruffian collapsed under it with one loud cry.  Not letting go his grasp
+of the dying man's collar, the Seigneur dragged him across the floor,
+and, opening the door of the small inner room, pulled him inside.  For a
+moment he stood beside the body, panting, then he went to the other room
+and, bringing a candle, looked at the dead thing in silence.  Presently
+he stooped, held the candle to the wide-staring eyes, then felt the
+heart.  "He is gone," he said in an even voice.  Stooping for the knife
+he had dropped on the floor, he laid it on the body.  He looked at his
+hands.  There was one spot of blood on his fingers.  He wiped it off with
+his handkerchief, then blowing out the light, he calmly opened the door
+of the hut, locked it, went out, and moved on slowly towards the house.
+
+As he left the hut he was conscious that some one was moving under the
+trees by the window, but his mind was not concerned with things outside
+himself and the one other thing left for him to do.
+
+He entered the house and went in search of Madelinette.  When he reached
+the drawing-room, surrounded by eager listeners, she was beginning to
+sing.  Her bearing was eager and almost tremulous, for, with this crowd
+round her and in the flush of this gaiety and excitement, there was
+something of that exhilarating air that greets the singer upon the stage.
+Her eyes were shining with a look, half-sorrowful, half-triumphant.
+Within the past half-hour she had overcome herself; she had fought down
+the blind, wild rebellion that, for one moment as it were, had surged up
+in her heart.  She was proud and glad, and piteous and triumphant and
+deeply womanly all at once.
+
+Going to the piano she had looked round for Louis, but he was not
+visible.  She smiled to herself, however, for she knew that her singing
+would bring him--he worshipped it.  Her heart was warm towards him,
+because of that moment when she rebelled and was hard at soul.  She
+played her own accompaniment, and he was hidden from her by the piano
+as she sang--sang more touchingly and more humanly, if not more
+artistically, than she had ever done in her life.  The old art was not so
+perfect, perhaps, but there was in the voice all that she had learned and
+loved and suffered and hoped.  When she rose from the piano to a storm of
+applause, and saw the shining faces and tearful eyes round her, her own
+eyes filled with tears.  These people--most of them--had known and loved
+her since she was a child, and loved her still without envy or any taint.
+Her father was standing near, and with smiling face she caught from his
+hand the handkerchief with which he was mopping his eyes, and kissed him,
+saying:
+
+"I learned that from the tunes you played on your anvil, dear smithy-
+man."
+
+Then she turned again to look for Louis.  Near the door she saw him, and
+with so strange a face, so wild a look, that, unheeding eager requests to
+sing again, she responded to the gesture he made, made her way through
+the crowd to the hall-way, and followed him up the stairs, and to the
+little boudoir beside her bedroom.  As she entered and shut the door,
+a low sound like a moan broke from him.  She went quickly to lay a hand
+upon his arm, but he waved her back.  "What is it, Louis?" she asked, in
+a bewildered voice.  "Where is the will?" he said.
+
+"Where is the will, Louis," she repeated after him mechanically, staring
+at his face, ghostly in the moonlight.
+
+"The will you found behind the picture in the library."
+
+"O Louis!" she cried, and made a gesture of despair.  "O Louis!"
+
+"You found it, and Tardif stole it and took it to Quebec."
+
+"Yes, Louis, but Louis--ah, what is the matter, dear!  I cannot bear that
+look in your face.  What is the matter, Louis?"
+
+"Tardif took it to Fournel, and you followed.  And I have been living in
+another man's house, on another's bread--"
+
+"O Louis, no--no--no!  Our money has paid for all."
+
+"Your money, Madelinette!"  His voice rose.
+
+"Ah, don't speak like that!  See, Louis.  It can make no difference.  How
+you have found out I do not know, but it can make no difference.  I did
+not want you to know--you loved the Seigneury so.  I concealed the will;
+Tardif found it, as you say.  But, Louis, dear, it is all right.
+Monsieur Fournel would not take the place, and--and I have bought it."
+
+She told her falsehood fearlessly.  This man's trouble, this man's peace,
+if she might but win it, was the purpose of her life.
+
+"Tardif said that--he said that you--that you and Fournel--"
+
+She read his meaning in his tone, and shrank back in terror, then with a
+flush, straightened herself, and took a step towards him.
+
+"It was natural that you should not care for a hunchback like me," he
+continued, "but--"
+
+"Louis!" she cried, in a voice of anguish and reproach.
+
+"But I did not doubt you.  I believed in you when he said it, as I
+believe in you now when you stand there like that.  I know what you have
+done for me--"
+
+"I pleaded with Monsieur Fournel, knowing how you loved the Seigneury--
+pleaded and offered to pay three times the price--"
+
+"Yourself would have been a hundred million times the price.  Ah, I know
+you, Madelinette--I know you now!  I have been selfish, but I see all
+now.  Now when all is over--" he seemed listening to noises with out--
+"I see what you have done for me.  I know how you have sacrificed all for
+me--all but honour--all but honour," he added, a wild fire in his eyes,
+a trembling seizing him.  "Your honour is yours forever.  I say so.
+I say so, and I have proved it.  Kiss me, Madelinette--kiss me once," he
+added, in a quick whisper.
+
+"My poor, poor Louis!" she said, laid a soothing hand upon his arm, and
+leaned towards him.  He snatched her to his breast, and kissed her twice
+in a very agony of joy, then let her go.  He listened for an instant to
+the growing noise without, then said in a hoarse voice:
+
+"Now, I will tell you, Madelinette.  They are coming for me--don't you
+hear them?  They are coming to take me; but they shall not have me.  They
+shall not have me--" he glanced to a little door that led into a bath-
+room at his right.
+
+"Louis-Louis!" she said in a sudden fright, for though his words seemed
+mad, a strange quiet sanity was in all he did.  "What have you done?  Who
+are coming?" she asked in agony, and caught him by the arm.
+
+"I killed Tardif.  He is there in the hut in the garden--dead!  I was
+seen, and they are coming to take me."
+
+With a cry she ran to the door that led into the hall, and locked it.
+She listened, then turned her face to Louis.
+
+"You killed him!" she gasped.  "Louis!  Louis!"  Her face was like
+ashes.
+
+"I stabbed him to death.  It was all I could do, and I did it.  He
+slandered you.  I went mad, and did it.  Now--"
+
+There was a knocking at the door, and a voice calling--a peremptory
+voice.
+
+"There is only one way," he said.  "They shall not take me.  I will not
+be dragged to gaol for crowds to jeer at.  I will not be sent to the
+scaffold, to your shame."
+
+He ran to the door of the bath-room and flung it open.  "If my life is to
+pay the price, then--!"
+
+She came blindly towards him, stretching out her hands.
+
+"Louis!  Louis!" was all that she could say.
+
+He caught her hands and kissed them, then stepped swiftly back into the
+little bath-room, and locked the door, as the door of the room she was in
+was burst open, and two constables and a half-dozen men crowded into the
+room.
+
+She stood with her back to the bath-room door, panting, and white, and
+anguished, and her ears strained to the terrible thing inside the place
+behind her.
+
+The men understood, and came towards her.  "Stand back," she said.  "You
+shall not have him.  You shall not have him.  Ah, don't you hear?  He is
+dying--O God, O God!" she cried, with tearless eyes and upturned face--
+"Ah, let it be soon!  Ah, let him die soon!"
+
+The men stood abashed before her agony.  Behind the little door where
+she stood there was a muffled groaning.  She trembled, but her arms were
+spread out before the door as though on a cross, and her lips kept
+murmuring: "O God, let him die!  Let him die!  Oh spare him agony!"
+
+Suddenly she stood still and listened-listened, with staring eyes that
+saw nothing.  In the room men shrank back, for they knew that death was
+behind the little door, and that they were in the presence of a sorrow
+greater than death.
+
+Suddenly she turned upon them with a gesture of piteous triumph and said:
+
+"You cannot have him now."
+
+Then she swayed and fell forward to the floor as the Cure and George
+Fournel entered the room.  The Cure hastened to her side and lifted up
+her head.
+
+George Fournel pushed the men back who would have entered the bath-room,
+and himself, bursting the door open, entered.  Louis lay dead upon the
+floor.  He turned to the constables.
+
+"As she said, you cannot have him now.  You have no right here.  Go.
+I had a warning from the man he killed.  I knew there would be trouble.
+But I have come too late," he added bitterly.
+
+An hour later the house was as still as the grave. Madame Marie sat with
+the doctor beside the bed of her dear mistress, and in another room,
+George Fournel, with the Avocat, kept watch beside the body of the
+Seigneur of Pontiac.  The face of the dead man was as peaceful as that of
+a little child.
+
+                    .........................
+
+At ninety years of age, the present Seigneur of Pontiac, one Baron
+Fournel, lives in the Manor House left him by Madelinette Lajeunesse the
+great singer, when she died a quarter of a century ago.  For thirty years
+he followed her from capital to capital of Europe and America to hear her
+sing; and to this day he talks of her in language more French than
+English in its ardour.  Perhaps that is because his heart beats in
+sympathy with the Frenchmen he once disdained.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Ah, let it be soon!  Ah, let him die soon!
+All are hurt some time
+Did not let him think that she was giving up anything for him
+Duplicity, for which she might never have to ask forgiveness
+Frenchman,  slave of ideas, the victim of sentiment
+Frenchman, volatile, moody, chivalrous, unreasonable
+Her stronger soul ruled him without his knowledge
+I love that love in which I married him
+Let others ride to glory, I'll shoe their horses for the gallop
+Lighted candles in hollowed pumpkins
+Love has nothing  to do with ugliness or beauty, or fortune
+Nature twists in back, or  anywhere, gets a twist in's brain too
+Rewarded for its mistakes
+Some are hurt in one way and some in another
+Struggle of conscience and expediency
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LANE HAD NO TURNING, PARKER, V1 ***
+
+********** This file should be named 6237.txt or 6237.zip **********
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