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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Lane That Had No Turning, by Parker, v4
+#67 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: The Lane That Had No Turning, Volume 4.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6240]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 17, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LANE HAD NO TURNING, PARKER, V4 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 4.
+
+
+
+TIMES WERE HARD IN PONTIAC
+MEDALLION'S WHIM
+THE PRISONER
+AN UPSET PRICE
+A FRAGMENT OF LIVES
+THE MAN THAT DIED AT ALMA
+THE BARON OF BEAUGARD
+THE TUNE McGILVERAY PLAYED
+
+
+
+
+TIMES WERE HARD IN PONTIAC
+
+It was soon after the Rebellion, and there was little food to be had
+and less money, and winter was at hand.  Pontiac, ever most loyal to old
+France, though obedient to the English, had herself sent few recruits to
+be shot down by Colborne; but she had emptied her pockets in sending to
+the front the fulness of her barns and the best cattle of her fields.
+She gave her all; she was frank in giving, hid nothing; and when her own
+trouble came there was no voice calling on her behalf.  And Pontiac would
+rather starve than beg.  So, as the winter went on, she starved in
+silence, and no one had more than sour milk and bread and a potato now
+and then.  The Cure, the Avocat, and the Little Chemist fared no better
+than the habitants; for they gave all they had right and left, and
+themselves often went hungry to bed.  And the truth is that few outside
+Pontiac knew of her suffering; she kept the secret of it close.
+
+It seemed at last, however, to the Cure that he must, after all, write
+to the world outside for help.  That was when he saw the faces of the
+children get pale and drawn.  There never was a time when there were so
+few fish in the river and so little game in the woods.  At last, from the
+altar steps one Sunday, the Cure, with a calm, sad voice, told the people
+that, for "the dear children's sake," they must sink their pride and ask
+help from without.  He would write first to the Bishop of Quebec; "for,"
+said he, "Mother Church will help us; she will give us food, and money to
+buy seed in the spring; and, please God, we will pay all back in a year
+or two!"  He paused a minute, then continued: "Some one must go, to speak
+plainly and wisely of our trouble, that there be no mistake--we are not
+beggars, we are only borrowers.  Who will go?  I may not myself, for who
+would give the Blessed Sacrament, and speak to the sick, or say Mass and
+comfort you?"
+
+There was silence in the church for a moment, and many faces meanwhile
+turned instinctively to M. Garon the Avocat, and some to the Little
+Chemist.
+
+"Who will go?" asked the Cure again.  "It is a bitter journey, but our
+pride must not be our shame in the end.  Who will go?"
+
+Every one expected that the Avocat or the Little Chemist would rise; but
+while they looked at each other, waiting and sorrowful, and the Avocat's
+fingers fluttered to the seat in front of him, to draw himself up, a
+voice came from the corner opposite, saying: "M'sieu' le Cure, I will
+go."
+
+A strange, painful silence fell on the people for a moment, and then went
+round an almost incredulous whisper: "Parpon the dwarf!"
+
+Parpon's deep eyes were fixed on the Cure, his hunched body leaning on
+the railing in front of him, his long, strong arms stretched out as if he
+were begging for some good thing.  The murmur among the people increased,
+but the Cure raised his hand to command silence, and his eyes gazed
+steadily at the dwarf.  It might seem that he was noting the huge head,
+the shaggy hair, the overhanging brows, the weird face of this distortion
+of a thing made in God's own image.  But he was thinking instead of how
+the angel and the devil may live side by side in a man, and neither be
+entirely driven out--and the angel conquer in great times and seasons.
+
+He beckoned to Parpon to come over, and the dwarf trotted with a sidelong
+motion to the chancel steps.  Every face in the congregation was eager,
+and some were mystified, even anxious.  They all knew the singular power
+of the little man--his knowledge, his deep wit, his judgment, his
+occasional fierceness, his infrequent malice; but he was kind to children
+and the sick, and the Cure and the Avocat and their little coterie
+respected him.  Once everybody had worshipped him: that was when he had
+sung in the Mass, the day of the funeral of the wife of Farette the
+miller, for whom he worked.  It had been rumoured that in his hut by the
+Rock of Red Pigeons, up at Dalgrothe Mountain, a voice of most wonderful
+power and sweetness had been heard singing; but this was only rumour.
+Yet when the body of the miller's wife lay in the church, he had sung so
+that men and women wept and held each other's hands for joy.  He had
+never sung since, however; his voice of silver was locked away in the
+cabinet of secret purposes which every man has somewhere in his own soul.
+
+"What will you say to the Bishop, Parpon?" asked the Cure.
+
+The congregation stirred in their seats, for they saw that the Cure
+intended Parpon to go.
+
+Parpon went up two steps of the chancel quietly and caught the arm of the
+Cure, drawing him down to whisper in his ear.
+
+A flush and then a peculiar soft light passed over the Cure's face, and
+he raised his hand over Parpon's head in benediction and said: "Go, my
+son, and the blessing of God and of His dear Son be with you."
+
+Then suddenly he turned to the altar, and, raising his hands, he tried to
+speak, but only said: "O Lord, Thou knowest our pride and our vanity,
+hear us, and--"
+
+Soon afterwards, with tearful eyes, he preached from the text:
+
+"And the Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it
+not."
+
+                    .......................
+
+Five days later a little, uncouth man took off his hat in the chief
+street of Quebec, and began to sing a song of Picardy to an air which no
+man in French Canada had ever heard.  Little farmers on their way to the
+market by the Place de Cathedral stopped, listening, though every
+moment's delay lessened their chances of getting a stand in the market-
+place.  Butchers and milkmen loitered, regardless of waiting customers;
+a little company of soldiers caught up the chorus, and, to avoid
+involuntary revolt, their sergeant halted them, that they might listen.
+Gentlemen strolling by--doctor, lawyer, officer, idler--paused and forgot
+the raw climate, for this marvellous voice in the unshapely body warmed
+them, and they pushed in among the fast-gathering crowd.  Ladies hurrying
+by in their sleighs lost their hearts to the thrilling notes of:
+
+                   "Little grey fisherman,
+                    Where is your daughter?
+                    Where is your daughter so sweet?
+                    Little grey man who comes Over the water,
+                    I have knelt down at her feet,
+                    Knelt at your Gabrielle's feet---ci ci!"
+
+Presently the wife of the governor stepped out from her sleigh, and,
+coming over, quickly took Parpon's cap from his hand and went round among
+the crowd with it, gathering money.
+
+"He is hungry, he is poor," she said, with tears in her eyes.  She had
+known the song in her childhood, and he who used to sing it to her was in
+her sight no more.  In vain the gentlemen would have taken the cap from
+her; she gathered the money herself, and others followed, and Parpon sang
+on.
+
+A night later a crowd gathered in the great hall of the city, filling it
+to the doors, to hear the dwarf sing.  He came on the platform dressed as
+he had entered the city, with heavy, home-made coat and trousers, and
+moccasins, and a red woollen comforter about his neck--but this comforter
+he took off when he began to sing.  Old France and New France, and the
+loves and hates and joys and sorrows of all lands, met that night in the
+soul of this dwarf with the divine voice, who did not give them his name,
+so that they called him, for want of a better title, the Provencal.  And
+again two nights afterwards it was the same, and yet again a third night
+and a fourth, and the simple folk, and wise folk also, went mad after
+Parpon the dwarf.
+
+Then, suddenly, he disappeared from Quebec City, and the next Sunday
+morning, while the Cure was saying the last words of the Mass, he entered
+the Church of St. Saviour's at Pontiac.  Going up to the chancel steps he
+waited.  The murmuring of the people drew the Cure's attention, and then,
+seeing Parpon, he came forward.
+
+Parpon drew from his breast a bag, and put it in his hands, and beckoning
+down the Cure's head, he whispered.
+
+The Cure turned to the altar and raised the bag towards it in ascription
+and thanksgiving, then he turned to Parpon again, but the dwarf was
+trotting away down the aisle and from the church.
+
+"Dear children," said the Cure, "we are saved, and we are not shamed."
+He held up the bag.  "Parpon has brought us two thousand dollars: we
+shall have food to eat, and there shall be more money against seed-time.
+The giver of this good gift demands that his name be not known.  Such is
+all true charity.  Let us pray."
+
+So hard times passed from Pontiac as the months went on; but none save
+the Cure and the Avocat knew who had helped her in her hour of need.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MEDALLION'S WHIM
+
+When the Avocat began to lose his health and spirits, and there crept
+through his shrewd gravity and kindliness a petulance and dejection,
+Medallion was the only person who had an inspiriting effect upon him.
+The Little Chemist had decided that the change in him was due to bad
+circulation and failing powers: which was only partially true.
+
+Medallion made a deeper guess.  "Want to know what's the matter with
+him?" he said.  "Ha, I'll tell you!  Woman."
+
+"Woman--God bless me!" said the Little Chemist, in a frightened way.
+
+"Woman, little man; I mean the want of a woman," said Medallion.
+
+The Cure, who was present, shrugged his shoulders.  "He has an excellent
+cook, and his bed and jackets are well aired; I see them constantly at
+the windows."
+
+A laugh gurgled in Medallion's throat.  He loved these innocent folk; but
+himself went twice a year to Quebec City and had more expanded views.
+
+"Woman, Padre"--nodding to the priest, and rubbing his chin so that it
+rasped like sand-paper--"Woman, my druggist"--throwing a sly look at the
+Chemist----"woman, neither as cook nor bottle-washer, is what he needs.
+Every man-out of holy orders"--this in deference to his good friend the
+Cure--"arrives at the time when his youth must be renewed or he becomes
+as dry bones--like an empty house--furniture sold off.  Can only be
+renewed one way--Woman. Well, here's our Avocat, and there's his remedy.
+He's got the cooking and the clean fresh linen; he must have a wife, the
+very best."
+
+"Ah, my friend, you are droll," said the Cure, arching his long fingers
+at his lips and blowing gently through them, but not smiling in the
+least; rather serious, almost reproving.
+
+"It is such a whim, such a whim!" said the Little Chemist, shaking his
+head and looking through his glasses sideways like a wise bird.
+
+"Ha--you shall see!  The man must be saved; our Cure shall have his fees;
+our druggist shall provide the finest essences for the feast--no more
+pills.  And we shall dine with our Avocat once a week--with asparagus in
+season for the Cure, and a little good wine for all.  Ha!"
+
+His Ha! was never a laugh; it was unctuous, abrupt, an ejaculation of
+satisfaction, knowledge, solid enjoyment, final solution.
+
+The Cure shook his head doubtfully; he did not see the need; he did not
+believe in Medallion's whim; still he knew that the man's judgment was
+shrewd in most things, and he would be silent and wait.  But he shrank
+from any new phase of life likely to alter the conditions of that old
+companionship, which included themselves, the Avocat, and the young
+Doctor, who, like the Little Chemist, was married.
+
+The Chemist sharply said: "Well, well, perhaps.  I hope.  There is a
+poetry (his English was not perfect, and at times he mixed it with French
+in an amusing manner), a little chanson, which runs:
+
+             "'Sorrowful is the little house,
+               The little house by the winding stream;
+               All the laughter has died away
+                    Out of the little house.
+               But down there come from the lofty hills
+               Footsteps and eyes agleam,
+               Bringing the laughter of yesterday
+                    Into the little house,
+               By the winding stream and the hills.
+               Di ron, di ron, di ron, di ron-don!'"
+
+The Little Chemist blushed faintly at the silence that followed his
+timid, quaint recital.  The Cure looked calm and kind, and drawn away as
+if in thought; but Medallion presently got up, stooped, and laid his long
+fingers on the shoulder of the apothecary.
+
+"Exactly, little man," he said; "we've both got the same idea in our
+heads.  I've put it hard fact, you've put it soft sentiment; and it's
+God's truth either way."
+
+Presently the Cure asked, as if from a great distance, so meditative was
+his voice: "Who will be the woman, Medallion?"
+
+"I've got one in my eye--the very right one for our Avocat; not here, not
+out of Pontiac, but from St. Jean in the hills--fulfilling your verses,
+gentle apothecary.  She must bring what is fresh--he must feel that the
+hills have come to him, she that the valley is hers for the first time.
+A new world for them both.  Ha!"
+
+"Regardez Ca!  you are a great man," said the Little Chemist.
+
+There was a strange, inscrutable look in the kind priest's eyes.  The
+Avocat had confessed to him in his time.
+
+Medallion took up his hat.
+
+"Where are you going?" said the Little Chemist.  "To our Avocat, and
+then to St. Jean."
+
+He opened the door and vanished.  The two that were left shook their
+heads and wondered.
+
+Chuckling softly to himself, Medallion strode away through the lane of
+white-board houses and the smoke of strong tabac from these houses, now
+and then pulling suddenly up to avoid stumbling over a child, where
+children are numbered by the dozen to every house.  He came at last to a
+house unlike the others, in that it was of stone and larger.  He leaned
+for a moment over the gate, and looked through a window into a room where
+the Avocat sat propped up with cushions in a great chair, staring
+gloomily at two candles burning on the table before him.  Medallion
+watched him for a long time.  The Avocat never changed his position; he
+only stared at the candle, and once or twice his lips moved.  A woman
+came in and put a steaming bowl before him, and laid a pipe and matches
+beside the bowl.  She was a very little, thin old woman, quick and quiet
+and watchful--his housekeeper.  The Avocat took no notice of her.  She
+looked at him several times anxiously, and passed backwards and forwards
+behind him as a hen moves upon the flank of her brood.  All at once she
+stopped.  Her small, white fingers, with their large rheumatic knuckles,
+lay flat on her lips as she stood for an instant musing; then she trotted
+lightly to a bureau, got pen and paper and ink, reached down a bunch of
+keys from the mantel, and came and put them all beside the bowl and the
+pipe.  Still the Avocat did not stir, or show that he recognised her.
+She went to the door, turned, and looked back, her fingers again at her
+lips, then slowly sidled out of the room.  It was long before the Avocat
+moved.  His eyes had not wavered from the space between the candles.  At
+last, however, he glanced down.  His eye caught the bowl, then the pipe.
+He reached out a slow hand for the pipe, and was taking it up, when his
+glance fell on the keys and the writing material.  He put the pipe down,
+looked up at the door through which the little old woman had gone, gazed
+round the room, took up the keys, but soon put them down again with a
+sigh, and settled back in his chair.  Now his gaze alternated between
+that long lane, sloping into shadow between the candles, and the keys.
+
+Medallion threw a leg over the fence and came in a few steps to the door.
+He opened it quietly and entered.  In the dark he felt his way along the
+wall to the door of the Avocat's room, opened it, and thrust in his
+ungainly, whimsical face.
+
+"Ha!" he laughed with quick-winking eyes.  "Evening, Garon.  Live the
+Code Napoleon!  Pipes for two."  A change came slowly over the Avocat.
+His eyes drew away from that vista between the candles, and the strange
+distant look faded out of them.
+
+"Great is the Code Napoleon!" he said mechanically.  Then, presently:
+"Ah, my friend, Medallion!"
+
+His first words were the answer to a formula which always passed between
+them on meeting.  As soon as Garon had said them, Medallion's lanky body
+followed his face, and in a moment he had the Avocat's hand in his,
+swallowing it, of purpose crushing it, so that Monsieur Garon waked up
+smartly and gave his visitor a pensive smile.  Medallion's cheerful
+nervous vitality seldom failed to inspire whom he chose to inspire with
+Something of his own life and cheerfulness.  In a few moments both the
+Avocat and himself were smoking, and the contents of the steaming bowl
+were divided between them.  Medallion talked on many things.  The little
+old housekeeper came in, chirped a soft good-evening, flashed a small
+thankful smile at Medallion, and, after renewing the bowl and lighting
+two more tall candles, disappeared.  Medallion began with the parish,
+passed to the law, from the law to Napoleon, from Napoleon to France,
+and from France to the world, drawing out from the Avocat something of
+his old vivacity and fire.  At last Medallion, seeing that the time was
+ripe, turned his glass round musingly in his fingers before him and said:
+
+"Benoit, Annette's husband, died to-day, Garon.  You knew him.
+He went singing--gone in the head, but singing as he used to do before he
+married--or got drunk!  Perhaps his youth came back to him when he was
+going to die, just for a minute."
+
+The Avocat's eye gazed at Medallion earnestly now, and Medallion went on:
+
+"As good singing as you want to hear.  You've heard the words of the
+song--the river drivers sing it:
+
+             "'What is there like to the cry of the bird
+                 That sings in its nest in the lilac tree?
+               A voice the sweetest you ever have heard;
+                 It is there, it is here, ci ci!
+               It is there, it is here, it must roam and roam,
+                 And wander from shore to shore,
+               Till I go forth and bring it home,
+                 And enter and close my door
+               Row along, row along home, ci ci!'"
+
+When Medallion had finished saying the first verse he waited, but the
+Avocat said nothing; his eyes were now fastened again on that avenue
+between the candles leading out into the immortal part of him--his past;
+he was busy with a life that had once been spent in the fields of
+Fontainebleau and in the shadow of the Pantheon.
+
+Medallion went on:
+
+             "'What is there like to the laughing star,
+               Far up from the lilac tree?
+               A face that's brighter and finer far;
+               It laughs and it shines, ci, ci!
+               It laughs and it shines, it must roam and roam,
+               And travel from shore to shore,
+               Till I go forth and bring it home,
+               And house it within my door
+               Row along, row along home, ci, ci!'"
+
+When Medallion had finished he raised his glass and said: "Garon, I drink
+to home and woman!"
+
+He waited.  The Avocat's eyes drew away from the candles again, and he
+came to his feet suddenly, swaying slightly as he did so.  He caught up
+a glass and, lifting it, said: "I drink to home and--" a little cold
+burst of laughter came from him, he threw his head back with something
+like disdain--"and the Code Napoleon!" he added abruptly.
+
+Then he put the glass down without drinking, wheeled back, and dropped
+into his chair.  Presently he got up, took his keys, went over, opened
+the bureau, and brought back a well-worn note-book which looked like a
+diary.  He seemed to have forgotten Medallion's presence, but it was not
+so; he had reached the moment of disclosure which comes to every man, no
+matter how secretive, when he must tell what is on his mind or die.  He
+opened the book with trembling fingers, took a pen and wrote, at first
+slowly, while Medallion smoked:
+
+"September 13th.--It is five-and-twenty years ago to-day--Mon Dieu, how
+we danced that night on the flags before the Sorbonne!  How gay we were
+in the Maison Bleu!  We were gay and happy--Lulie and I--two rooms and a
+few francs ahead every week.  That night we danced and poured out the
+light wine, because we were to be married to-morrow.  Perhaps there would
+be a child, if the priest blessed us, she whispered to me as we watched
+the soft-travelling moon in the gardens of the Luxembourg.  Well, we
+danced.  There was an artist with us.  I saw him catch Lulie about the
+waist, and kiss her on the neck.  She was angry, but I did not think of
+that; I was mad with wine.  I quarrelled with her, and said to her a
+shameful thing.  Then I rushed away.  We were not married the next day;
+I could not find her.  One night, soon after, there was a revolution of
+students at Mont Parnasse.  I was hurt.  I remember that she came to me
+then and nursed me, but when I got well she was gone.  Then came the
+secret word from the Government that I must leave the country or go to
+prison.  I came here.  Alas! it is long since we danced before the
+Sorbonne, and supped at the Maison Bleu.  I shall never see again the
+gardens of the Luxembourg.  Well, that was a mad night five-and-twenty
+years ago!"
+
+His pen went faster and faster.  His eyes lighted up, he seemed quite
+forgetful of Medallion's presence.  When he finished, a fresh change came
+over him.  He gathered his thin fingers in a bunch at his lips, and made
+an airy salute to the warm space between the candles.  He drew himself
+together with a youthful air, and held his grey head gallantly.  Youth
+and age in him seemed almost grotesquely mingled.  Sprightly notes from
+the song of a cafe chantant hovered on his thin, dry lips.  Medallion,
+amused, yet with a hushed kind of feeling through all his nerves, pushed
+the Avocat's tumbler till it touched his fingers.  The thin fingers
+twined round it, and once more he came to his feet.  He raised the glass.
+"To--" for a minute he got no further--"To the wedding-eve!" he said,
+and sipped the hot wine.  Presently he pushed the little well-worn book
+over to Medallion.  "I have known you fifteen years--read!" he said.  He
+gave Medallion a meaning look out of his now flashing eyes.  Medallion's
+bony face responded cordially.  "Of course," he answered, picked up the
+book, and read what the Avocat had written.  It was on the last page.
+When he had finished reading, he held the book musingly.  His whim had
+suddenly taken on a new colour.  The Avocat, who had been walking up and
+down the room, with the quick step of a young man, stopped before him,
+took the book from him, turned to the first page, and handed it back
+silently.  Medallion read:
+
+Quebec, September 13th, 18-.  It is one year since.  I shall learn to
+laugh some day.
+
+Medallion looked up at him.  The old man threw back his head, spread out
+the last page in the book which he had just written, and said defiantly,
+as though expecting contradiction to his self-deception--"I have
+learned."
+
+Then he laughed, but the laugh was dry and hollow and painful.  It
+suddenly passed from his wrinkled lips, and he sat down again; but now
+with an air as of shy ness and shame.  "Let us talk," he said, "of--
+of the Code Napoleon."
+
+The next morning Medallion visited St. Jean in the hills.  Five years
+before he had sold to a new-comer at St. Jean-Madame Lecyr--the furniture
+of a little house, and there had sprung up between them a quiet
+friendship, not the less admiring on Medallion's part because Madame
+Lecyr was a good friend to the poor and sick.  She never tired, when they
+met, of hearing him talk of the Cure, the Little Chemist, and the Avocat;
+and in the Avocat she seemed to take the most interest, making countless
+inquiries--countless when spread over many conversations--upon his life
+during the time Medallion had known him.  He knew also that she came to
+Pontiac, occasionally, but only in the evening; and once of a moonlight
+night he had seen her standing before the window of the Avocat's house.
+Once also he had seen her veiled in the little crowded court-room of
+Pontiac when an interesting case was being tried, and noticed how she
+watched Monsieur Garon, standing so very still that she seemed lifeless;
+and how she stole out as soon as he had done speaking.
+
+Medallion had acute instincts, and was supremely a man of self-counsel.
+What he thought he kept to him self until there seemed necessity to
+speak.  A few days before the momentous one herebefore described he had
+called at Madame Lecyr's house, and, in course of conversation, told her
+that the Avocat's health was breaking; that the day before he had got
+completely fogged in court over the simplest business, and was quite
+unlike his old, shrewd, kindly self.  By this time he was almost prepared
+to see her turn pale and her fingers flutter at the knitting-needles she
+held.  She made an excuse to leave the room for a moment.  He saw a
+little book lying near the chair from which she had risen.  Perhaps it
+had dropped from her pocket.  He picked it up.  It was a book of French
+songs--Beranger's and others less notable.  On the fly-leaf was written:
+"From Victor to Lulie, September 13th, 18-."  Presently she came back to
+him quite recovered and calm, inquired how the Avocat was cared for, and
+hoped he would have every comfort and care.  Medallion grew on the
+instant bold.  He was now certain that Victor was the Avocat, and Lulie
+was Madame Lecyr.  He said abruptly to her: "Why not come and cheer him
+up--such old friends as you are?"
+
+At that she rose with a little cry, and stared anxiously at him.  He
+pointed to the book of songs.  "Don't be angry--I looked," he said.
+
+She breathed quick and hard, and said nothing, but her fingers laced and
+interlaced nervously in her lap.  "If you were friends why don't you go
+to him?" he said.
+
+She shook her head mournfully.  "We were more than friends, and that is
+different."
+
+"You were his wife?" said Medallion gently.
+
+"It was different," she replied, flushing.  "France is not the same as
+here.  We were to be married, but on the eve of our wedding-day there was
+an end to it all.  Only five years ago I found out he was here."
+
+Then she became silent, and would, or could, speak no more; only, she
+said at last before he went: "You will not tell him, or any one?"
+
+She need not have asked Medallion.  He knew many secrets and kept them;
+which is not the usual way of good-humoured people.
+
+But now, with the story told by the Avocat himself in his mind, he saw
+the end of the long romance.  He came once more to the house of Madame
+Lecyr, and being admitted, said to her: "You must come at once with me."
+
+She trembled towards him.  "He is worse--he is dying!"
+
+He smiled.  "Not dying at all.  He needs you; come along.  I'll tell you
+as we go."
+
+But she hung back.  Then he told her all he had seen and heard the
+evening before.  Without a word further she prepared to go.  On the way
+he turned to her and said: "You are Madame Lecyr?"
+
+"I am as he left me," she replied timidly, but with a kind of pride, too.
+
+"Don't mistake me," he said.  "I thought perhaps you had been married
+since."
+
+The Avocat sat in his little office, feebly fumbling among his papers,
+as Medallion entered on him and called to him cheerily: "We are coming to
+see you to-night, Garon--the Cure, our Little Chemist, and the Seigneur;
+coming to supper."
+
+The Avocat put out his hand courteously; but he said in a shrinking,
+pained voice: "No, no, not to-night, Medallion.  I would wish no visitors
+this night--of all."
+
+Medallion stooped over him, and caught him by both arms gently.  "We
+shall see," he said.  "It is the anniversary," he whispered.
+
+"Ah, pardon!" said the Avocat, with a reproving pride, and shrank back
+as if all his nerves had been laid bare.  But Medallion turned, opened
+the door, went out, and let in a woman, who came forward and timidly
+raised her veil.
+
+"Victor!" Medallion heard, then "Lulie!" and then he shut the door,
+and, with supper in his mind, went into the kitchen to see the
+housekeeper, who, in this new joy, had her own tragedy--humming to
+himself:
+
+              "But down there come from the lofty hills
+               Footsteps and eyes agleam,
+               Bringing the laughter of yesterday
+               Into the little house."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PRISONER
+
+His chief occupation in the daytime was to stand on the bench by the
+small barred window and watch the pigeons on the roof and in the eaves of
+the house opposite.  For five years he had done this.  In the summer a
+great fire seemed to burn beneath the tin of the roof, for a quivering
+hot air rose from them, and the pigeons never alighted on them, save in
+the early morning or in the evening.  Just over the peak could be seen
+the topmost branch of a maple, too slight to bear the weight of the
+pigeons, but the eaves were dark and cool, and there his eyes rested when
+he tired of the hard blue sky and the glare of the slates.
+
+In winter the roof was covered for weeks and months by a blanket of snow
+which looked like a shawl of impacted wool, white and restful, and the
+windows of the house were spread with frost.  But the pigeons were always
+gay, walking on the ledges or crowding on the shelves of the lead pipes.
+He studied them much, but he loved them more.  His prison was less a
+prison because of them, and during those long five years he found himself
+more in touch with them than with the wardens of the prison or with any
+of his fellow-prisoners.  To the former he was respectful, and he gave
+them no trouble at all; with the latter he had nothing in common, for
+they were criminals, and he--so wild and mad with drink and anger was he
+at the time, that he had no remembrance, absolutely none, of how Jean
+Gamache lost his life.
+
+He remembered that they had played cards far into the night; that they
+had quarrelled, then made their peace; that the others had left; that
+they had begun gaming and drinking and quarrelling again--and then
+everything was blurred, save for a vague recollection that he had won
+all Gamache's money and had pocketed it.  Afterwards came a blank.
+
+He waked to find two officers of the law beside him, and the body of Jean
+Gamache, stark and dreadful, a few feet away.
+
+When the officers put their hands upon him he shook them off; when they
+did it again he would have fought them to the death, had it not been for
+his friend, tall Medallion the auctioneer, who laid a strong hand on his
+arm and said, "Steady, Turgeon, steady!" and he had yielded to the firm
+friendly pressure.
+
+Medallion had left no stone unturned to clear him at the trial, had
+himself played detective unceasingly.  But the hard facts remained, and
+on a chain of circumstantial evidence Blaze Turgeon was convicted of
+manslaughter and sent to prison for ten years.  Blaze himself had said
+that he did not remember, but he could not believe that he had committed
+the crime.  Robbery?  He shrugged his shoulders at that, he insisted that
+his lawyer should not reply to the foolish and insulting suggestion.  But
+the evidence went to show that Gamache had all the winnings when the
+other members of the party retired, and this very money had been found in
+Blaze's pocket.  There was only Blaze's word that they had played cards
+again.  Anger?  Possibly.  Blaze could not recall, though he knew they
+had quarrelled.  The judge himself, charging the jury, said that he never
+before had seen a prisoner so frank, so outwardly honest, but he warned
+them that they must not lose sight of the crime itself, the taking of a
+human life, whereby a woman was made a widow and a child fatherless.  The
+jury found him guilty.
+
+With few remarks the judge delivered his sentence, and then himself,
+shaken and pale, left the court-room hurriedly, for Blaze Turgeon's
+father had been his friend from boyhood.
+
+Blaze took his sentence calmly, looking the jury squarely in the eyes,
+and when the judge stopped, he bowed to him, and then turned to the jury
+and said:
+
+"Gentlemen, you have ruined my life.  You don't know, and I don't know,
+who killed the man.  You have guessed, and I take the penalty.  Suppose
+I'm innocent--how will you feel when the truth comes out?  You've known
+me more or less these twenty years, and you've said, with evidently no
+more knowledge than I've got, that I did this horrible thing.  I don't
+know but that one of you did it.  But you are safe, and I take my ten
+years!"
+
+He turned from them, and, as he did so, he saw a woman looking at him
+from a corner of the court-room, with a strange, wild expression.  At the
+moment he saw no more than an excited, bewildered face, but afterwards
+this face came and went before him, flashing in and out of dark places in
+a kind of mockery.
+
+As he went from the court-room another woman made her way to him in spite
+of the guards.  It was the Little Chemist's wife, who, years before, had
+been his father's housekeeper, who knew him when his eyes first opened on
+the world.
+
+"My poor Blaze! my poor Blaze!" she said, clasping his manacled hands.
+
+In prison he refused to see all visitors, even Medallion, the Little
+Chemist's wife, and the good Father Fabre.  Letters, too, he refused to
+accept and read.  He had no contact, wished no contact with the outer
+world, but lived his hard, lonely life by himself, silent, studious--
+for now books were a pleasure to him.  He had entered his prison a wild,
+excitable, dissipated youth, and he had become a mature brooding man.
+Five years had done the work of twenty.
+
+The face of the woman who looked at him so strangely in the court-room
+haunted him so that at last it became a part of his real life, lived
+largely at the window where he looked out at the pigeons on the roof of
+the hospital.
+
+"She was sorry for me," he said many a time to himself.  He was shaken
+with misery often, so that he rocked to and fro as he sat on his bed,
+and a warder heard him cry out even in the last days of his imprisonment:
+
+"O God, canst Thou do everything but speak!"  And again: "That hour--the
+memory of that hour, in exchange for my ruined life!"
+
+One day the gaoler came to him and said: "Monsieur Turgeon, you are free.
+The Governor has cut off five years from your sentence."
+
+Then he was told that people were waiting without--Medallion, the Little
+Chemist and his wife, and others more important.  But he would not go to
+meet them, and he stepped into the open world alone at dawn the next
+morning, and looked out upon a still sleeping village.  Suddenly there
+stood before him a woman, who had watched by the prison gates all night;
+and she put out her hand in entreaty, and said with a breaking voice:
+"You are free at last!"
+
+He remembered her--the woman who had looked at him so anxiously and
+sorrowfully in the court-room.  "Why did you come to meet me?" he asked.
+
+"I was sorry for you."
+
+"But that is no reason."
+
+"I once committed a crime," she whispered, with shrinking bitterness.
+
+"That's bad," he said.  "Were you punished?"  He looked at her keenly,
+almost fiercely, for a curious suspicion shot into his mind.
+
+She shook her head and answered no.
+
+"That's worse!"
+
+"I let some one else take my crime upon him and be punished for it," she
+said, an agony in her eyes.  "Why was that?"
+
+"I had a little child," was her reply.
+
+"And the man who was punished instead?"
+
+"He was alone in the world," she said.
+
+A bitter smile crept to his lips, and his face was afire.  He shut his
+eyes, and when they opened again discovery was in them.
+
+"I remember you now," he said.  "I remember now.
+
+"I waked and saw you looking at me that night!  Who was the father of your
+child?"
+
+"Jean Gamache," she replied.  "He ruined me and left me to starve."
+
+"I am innocent of his death!" he said quietly and gladly.
+
+She nodded.  He was silent for a moment.  "The child still lives?" he
+asked.  She nodded again.  "Well, let it be so," he said.  "But you owe
+me five years--and a good name."
+
+"I wish to God I could give them back!" she cried, tears streaming down
+her cheeks.  "It was for my child; he was so young."
+
+"It can't be helped now," he said sighing, and he turned away from her.
+
+"Won't you forgive me?" she asked bitterly.
+
+"Won't you give me back those five years?"
+
+"If the child did not need me I would give my life," she answered.  "I
+owe it to you."
+
+Her haggard, hunted face made him sorry; he, too, had suffered.
+
+"It's all right," he answered gently.  "Take care of your child."
+
+Again he moved away from her, and went down the little hill, with a cloud
+gone from his face that had rested there five years.  Once he turned to
+look back.  The woman was gone, but over the prison a flock of pigeons
+were flying.  He took off his hat to them.
+
+Then he went through the town, looking neither to right nor left, and
+came to his own house, where the summer morning was already entering the
+open windows, though he had thought to find the place closed and dark.
+
+The Little Chemist's wife met him in the doorway.  She could not speak,
+nor could he, but he kissed her as he had done when he went condemned to
+prison.  Then he passed on to his own room, and entering, sat down before
+the open window, and peacefully drank in the glory of a new world.  But
+more than once he choked down a sob rising in his throat.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AN UPSET PRICE
+
+Once Secord was as fine a man to look at as you would care to see: with a
+large intelligent eye, a clear, healthy skin, and a full, brown beard.
+He walked with a spring, had a gift of conversation, and took life as he
+found it, never too seriously, yet never carelessly.  That was before he
+left the village of Pontiac in Quebec to offer himself as a surgeon to
+the American Army.  When he came back there was a change in him.  He was
+still handsome, but something of the spring had gone from his walk, the
+quick light of his eyes had given place to a dark, dreamy expression, his
+skin became a little dulled, and his talk slower, though not less musical
+or pleasant.  Indeed, his conversation had distinctly improved.
+Previously there was an undercurrent of self-consciousness; it was all
+gone now.  He talked as one knowing his audience.  His office became
+again, as it had been before, a rendezvous for the few interesting men
+of the place, including the Avocat, the Cure, the Little Chemist, and
+Medallion.  They played chess and ecarte for certain hours of certain
+evenings in the week at Secord's house.  Medallion was the first to
+notice that the wife--whom Secord had married soon after he came back
+from the war--occasionally put down her work and looked with a curious
+inquiring expression at her husband as he talked.  It struck Medallion
+that she was puzzled by some change in Secord.
+
+Secord was a brilliant surgeon and physician.  With the knife or beside a
+sick-bed, he was admirable.  His intuitive perception, so necessary in
+his work, was very fine: he appeared to get at the core of a patient's
+trouble, and to decide upon necessary action with instant and absolute
+confidence.  Some delicate operation performed by him was recorded and
+praised in the Lancet; and he was offered a responsible post in a medical
+college, and, at the same time, the good-will of a valuable practice.  He
+declined both, to the lasting astonishment, yet personal joy, of the Cure
+and the Avocat; but, as time went on, not so much to the surprise of the
+Little Chemist and Medallion.  After three years, the sleepy Little
+Chemist waked up suddenly in his chair one day, and said: "Parbleu, God
+bless me!" (he loved to mix his native language with English) got up and
+went over to Secord's office, adjusted his glasses, looked at Secord
+closely, caught his hand with both of his own, shook it with shy
+abruptness, came back to his shop, sat down, and said: "God bless my
+soul!  Regardez ca!"
+
+Medallion made his discovery sooner.  Watching closely he had seen a
+pronounced deliberation infused through all Secord's indolence of manner,
+and noticed that often, before doing anything, the big eyes debated
+steadfastly, and the long, slender fingers ran down the beard softly.
+At times there was a deep meditativeness in the eye, again a dusky fire.
+But there was a certain charm through it all--a languid precision,
+a slumbering look in the face, a vague undercurrent in the voice,
+a fantastical flavour to the thought.  The change had come so gradually
+that only Medallion and the wife had a real conception of how great it
+was.  Medallion had studied Secord from every stand-point.  At the very
+first he wondered if there was a woman in it.  Much thinking on a woman,
+whose influence on his life was evil or disturbing, might account
+somewhat for the change in Secord.  But, seeing how fond the man was of
+his wife, Medallion gave up that idea.  It was not liquor, for Secord
+never touched it.  One day, however, when Medallion was selling the
+furniture of a house, he put up a feather bed, and, as was his custom--
+for he was a whimsical fellow--let his humour have play.  He used many
+metaphors as to the virtue of the bed, crowning them with the statement
+that you slept in it dreaming as delicious dreams as though you had eaten
+poppy, or mandragora, or--He stopped short, said, "By jingo, that's it!"
+knocked the bed down instantly, and was an utter failure for the rest of
+the day.
+
+The wife was longer in discovering the truth, but a certain morning, as
+her husband lay sleeping after an all-night sitting with a patient, she
+saw lying beside him--it had dropped from his waistcoat pocket--a little
+bottle full of a dark liquid.  She knew that he always carried his
+medicine-phials in a pocket-case.  She got the case, and saw that none
+was missing.  She noticed that the cork of the phial was well worn.  She
+took it out and smelled the liquid.  Then she understood.  She waited and
+watched.  She saw him after he waked look watchfully round, quietly take
+a wine-glass, and let the liquid come drop by drop into it from the point
+of his forefinger.  Henceforth she read with understanding the changes in
+his manner, and saw behind the mingled abstraction and fanciful
+meditation of his talk.
+
+She had not yet made up her mind what to do.  She saw that he hid it from
+her assiduously.  He did so more because he wished not to pain her than
+from furtiveness.  By nature he was open and brave, and had always had a
+reputation for plainness and sincerity.  She was in no sense his equal in
+intelligence or judgment, nor even in instinct.  She was a woman of more
+impulse and constitutional good-nature than depth.  It is probable that
+he knew that, and refrained from letting her into the knowledge of this
+vice, contracted in the war when, seriously ill, he was able to drag
+himself about from patient to patient only by the help of opium.  He was
+alive to his position and its consequences, and faced it.  He had no
+children, and he was glad of this for one reason.  He could do nothing
+now without the drug; it was as necessary as light to him.  The little
+bottle had been his friend so long, that, with his finger on its smooth-
+edged cork, it was as though he held the tap of life.
+
+The Little Chemist and Medallion kept the thing to themselves, but they
+understood each other in the matter, and wondered what they could do to
+cure him.  The Little Chemist only shrank back, and said, "No, no,
+pardon, my friend!" when Medallion suggested that he should speak to
+Secord.  But the Little Chemist was greatly concerned--for had not Secord
+saved his beloved wife by a clever operation? and was it not her custom
+to devote a certain hour every week to the welfare of Secord's soul and
+body, before the shrine of the Virgin?  Her husband told her now that
+Secord was in trouble, and though he was far from being devout himself,
+he had a shy faith in the great sincerity of his wife.  She did her best,
+and increased her offerings of flowers to the shrine; also, in her
+simplicity, she sent Secord's wife little jars of jam to comfort him.
+
+One evening the little coterie met by arrangement at the doctor's house.
+After waiting an hour or two for Secord, who had been called away to a
+critical case, the Avocat and the Cure went home, leaving polite old-
+fashioned messages for their absent host; but the Little Chemist and
+Medallion remained.  For a time Mrs. Secord remained with them, then
+retired, begging them to await her husband, who, she knew, would be
+grateful if they stayed.  The Little Chemist, with timid courtesy, showed
+her out of the room, then came back and sat down.  They were very silent.
+The Little Chemist took off his glasses a half-dozen times, wiped them,
+and put them back.  Then suddenly turned on Medallion.  "You mean to
+speak to-night?"
+
+"Yes, that's it."
+
+"Regardez ca--well, well!"
+
+Medallion never smoked harder than he did then.  The Little Chemist
+looked at him nervously again and again, listened towards the door,
+fingered with his tumbler, and at last hearing the sound of sleigh-bells,
+suddenly came to his feet, and said: "Voila, I will go to my wife."  And
+catching up his cap, and forgetting his overcoat, he trotted away home in
+a fright.
+
+What Medallion did or said to Secord that night neither ever told.
+But it must have been a singular scene, for when the humourist pleads or
+prays there is no pathos like it; and certainly Medallion's eyes were red
+when he rapped up the Little Chemist at dawn, caught him by the
+shoulders, turned him round several times, thumped him on the back, and
+called him a bully old boy; and then, seeing the old wife in her quaint
+padded night-gown, suddenly hugged her, threw himself into a chair, and
+almost shouted for a cup of coffee.
+
+At the same time Mrs. Secord was alternately crying and laughing in her
+husband's arms, and he was saying to her: "I'll make a fight for it,
+Lesley, a big fight; but you must be patient, for I expect I'll be a
+devil sometimes without it.  Why, I've eaten a drachm a day of the stuff,
+or drunk its equivalent in the tincture.  No, never mind praying; be a
+brick and fight with me that's the game, my girl."
+
+He did make a fight for it, such an one as few men have made and come
+out safely.  For those who dwell in the Pit never suffer as do they who
+struggle with this appetite.  He was too wise to give it up all at once.
+He diminished the dose gradually, but still very perceptibly.  As it was,
+it made a marked change in him.  The necessary effort of the will gave a
+kind of hard coldness to his face, and he used to walk his garden for
+hours at night in conflict with his enemy.  His nerves were uncertain,
+but, strange to say, when (it was not often) any serious case of illness
+came under his hands, he was somehow able to pull himself together and do
+his task gallantly enough.  But he had had no important surgical case
+since he began his cure.  In his heart he lived in fear of one; for he
+was not quite sure of himself.  In spite of effort to the contrary he
+became irritable, and his old pleasant fantasies changed to gloomy and
+bizarre imaginings.
+
+The wife never knew what it cost her husband thus, day by day, to take a
+foe by the throat and hold him in check.  She did not guess that he knew
+if he dropped back even once he could not regain himself: this was his
+idiosyncrasy.  He did not find her a great help to him in his trouble.
+She was affectionate, but she had not much penetration even where he was
+concerned, and she did not grasp how much was at stake.  She thought
+indeed that he should be able to give it up all at once.  He was tender
+with her, but he wished often that she could understand him without
+explanation on his part.  Many a time he took out the little bottle with
+a reckless hand, but conquered himself.  He got most help, perhaps, from
+the honest, cheerful eye of Medallion and the stumbling timorous
+affection of the Little Chemist.  They were perfectly disinterested
+friends--his wife at times made him aware that he had done her a wrong,
+for he had married her with thus appetite on him.  He did not defend
+himself, but he wished she would--even if she had to act it--make him
+believe in himself more.  One morning against his will he was irritable
+with her, and she said something that burnt like caustic.  He smiled
+ironically, and pushed his newspaper over to her, pointing to a
+paragraph.  It was the announcement that an old admirer of hers whom she
+had passed by for her husband, had come into a fortune.  "Perhaps you've
+made a mistake," he said.
+
+She answered nothing, but the look she gave was unfortunate for both.
+He muffled his mouth in his long silken beard as if to smother what he
+felt impelled to say, then suddenly rose and left the table.
+
+At this time he had reduced his dose of the drug to eight drops twice a
+day.  With a grim courage he resolved to make it five all at once.  He
+did so, and held to it.  Medallion was much with him in these days.  One
+morning in the spring he got up, went out in his garden, drew in the
+fresh, sweet air with a great gulp, picked some lovely crab-apple
+blossoms, and, with a strange glowing look in his eyes, came in to his
+wife, put them into her hands, and kissed her.  It was the anniversary of
+their wedding-day.  Then, without a word, he took from his pocket the
+little phial that he had carried so long, rolled it for an instant in his
+palm, felt its worn, discoloured cork musingly, and threw it out of the
+window.
+
+"Now, my dear," he whispered, "we will be happy again."
+
+He held to his determination with a stern anxiety.  He took a month's
+vacation, and came back better.  He was not so happy as he hoped to be;
+yet he would not whisper to himself the reason why.  He felt that
+something had failed him somewhere.
+
+One day a man came riding swiftly up to his door to say that his wife's
+father had met with a bad accident in his great mill.  Secord told his
+wife.  A peculiar troubled look came into his face as he glanced
+carefully over his instruments and through his medicine case.  "God, I
+must do it alone!" he said.
+
+The old man's injury was a dangerous one: a skilful operation was
+necessary.  As Secord stood beside the sufferer, he felt his nerves
+suddenly go--just as they did in the war before he first took the drug.
+His wife was in the next room--he could hear her; he wished she would
+make no sound at all.  Unless this operation was performed successfully
+the sufferer would die--he might die anyhow.  Secord tried to gather
+himself up to his task, but he felt it was of no use.  A month later when
+he was more recovered physically he would be able to perform the
+operation, but the old man was dying now, while he stood helplessly
+stroking his big brown beard.  He took up his pocket medicine-case, and
+went out where his wife was.
+
+Excited and tearful, she started up to meet him, painfully inquiring.
+"Can you save him?" she said.  "Oh, James, what is the matter?  You are
+trembling."
+
+"It's just this way, Lesley: my nerve is broken; I can't perform the
+operation as I am, and he will die in an hour if I don't."
+
+She caught him by the arm.  "Can you not be strong?  You have a will.
+Will you not try to save my father, James?  Is there no way?"
+
+"Yes, there is one way," he said.  He opened the pocket-case and took out
+a phial of laudanum.  "This is the way.  I can pull myself together with
+it.  It will save his life."  There was a dogged look in his face.
+
+"Well? well?" she said.  "Oh, my dear father, will you not keep him
+here?"
+
+A peculiar cold smile hovered about his lips.  "But there is danger to me
+in this .  .  .  and remember, he is very old!"
+
+"Oh," she cried, "how can you be so shocking, so cruel!"  She rocked
+herself to and fro.  "If it will save him--and you need not take it
+again, ever!"
+
+"But, I tell you--"
+
+"Do you not hear him--he is dying!"  She was mad with grief; she hardly
+knew what she said.
+
+Without a word he dropped the tincture swiftly in a wine-glass of water,
+drank it off, shivered, drew himself up with a start, gave a sigh as if
+some huge struggle was over, and went in to where the old man was.  Three
+hours after he told his wife that her father was safe.
+
+When, after a hasty kiss, she left him and went into the room of
+sickness, and the door closed after her, standing where she had left him
+he laughed a hard crackling laugh, and said between his teeth:
+
+"An upset price!"
+
+Then he poured out another portion of the dark tincture--the largest he
+had ever taken--and tossed it off.  That night he might have been seen
+feeling about the grass in a moon-lit garden.  At last he put something
+in his pocket with a quick, harsh chuckle of satisfaction.  It was a
+little black bottle with a well-worn cork.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A FRAGMENT OF LIVES
+
+They met at last, Dubarre, and Villiard, the man who had stolen from him
+the woman he loved.  Both had wronged the woman, but Villiard most, for
+he had let her die because of jealousy.
+
+They were now in a room alone in the forest of St. Sebastian.  Both were
+quiet, and both knew that the end of their feud was near.
+
+Going to a cupboard Dubarre brought out four glasses and put them on the
+table.  Then from two bottles he poured out what looked like red wine,
+two glasses from each bottle.  Putting the bottles back he returned to
+the table.
+
+"Do you dare to drink with me?" Dubarre asked, nodding towards the
+glasses.  "Two of the glasses have poison in them, two have good red wine
+only.  We will move them about and then drink.  Both may die, or only one
+of us."
+
+Villiard looked at the other with contracting, questioning eyes.
+
+"You would play that game with me?" he asked, in a mechanical voice.
+
+"It would give me great pleasure."  The voice had a strange, ironical
+tone.  "It is a grand sport--as one would take a run at a crevasse and
+clear it, or fall.  If we both fall, we are in good company; if you fall,
+I have the greater joy of escape; if I fall, you have the same joy."
+
+"I am ready," was the answer.  "But let us eat first."
+
+A great fire burned in the chimney, for the night was cool.  It filled
+the room with a gracious heat and with huge, comfortable shadows.  Here
+and there on the wall a tin cup flashed back the radiance of the fire,
+the barrel of a gun glistened soberly along a rafter, and the long, wiry
+hair of an otter-skin in the corner sent out little needles of light.
+Upon the fire a pot was simmering, and a good savour came from it.  A
+wind went lilting by outside the but in tune with the singing of the
+kettle.  The ticking of a huge, old-fashioned repeating-watch on the wall
+was in unison with these.
+
+Dubarre rose from the table, threw himself upon the little pile of otter-
+skins, and lay watching Villiard and mechanically studying the little
+room.
+
+Villiard took the four glasses filled with the wine and laid them on a
+shelf against the wall, then began to put the table in order for their
+supper, and to take the pot from the fire.
+
+Dubarre noticed that just above where the glasses stood on the shelf a
+crucifix was hanging, and that red crystal sparkled in the hands and feet
+where the nails should be driven in.  There was a painful humour in the
+association.  He smiled, then turned his head away, for old memories
+flashed through his brain--he had been an acolyte once; he had served at
+the altar.
+
+Suddenly Dubarre rose, took the glasses from the shelf and placed them in
+the middle of the table--the death's head for the feast.
+
+As they sat down to eat, the eyes of both men unconsciously wandered to
+the crucifix, attracted by the red sparkle of the rubies.  They drank
+water with the well-cooked meat of the wapiti, though red wine faced them
+on the table.  Each ate heartily; as though a long day were before them
+and not the shadow of the Long Night.  There was no speech save that of
+the usual courtesies of the table.  The fire, and the wind, and the watch
+seemed the only living things besides themselves, perched there between
+heaven and earth.
+
+At length the meal was finished, and the two turned in their chairs
+towards the fire.  There was no other light in the room, and on the faces
+of the two, still and cold, the flame played idly.
+
+"When?" said Dubarre at last.  "Not yet," was the quiet reply.
+
+"I was thinking of my first theft--an apple from my brother's plate,"
+said Dubarre, with a dry smile.  "You?"
+
+"I, of my first lie."
+
+"That apple was the sweetest fruit I ever tasted."
+
+"And I took the penalty of the lie, but I had no sorrow."
+
+Again there was silence.
+
+"Now?" asked Villiard, after an hour had passed.  "I am ready."
+
+They came to the table.
+
+"Shall we bind our eyes?" asked Dubarre.  "I do not know the glasses
+that hold the poison."
+
+"Nor I the bottle that held it.  I will turn my back, and do you change
+about the glasses."
+
+Villiard turned his face towards the timepiece on the wall.  As he did so
+it began to strike--a clear, silvery chime: "One! two! three--!"
+
+Before it had finished striking both men were facing the glasses again.
+
+"Take one," said Dubarre.
+
+Villiard took the one nearest himself.  Dubarre took one also.  Without a
+word they lifted the glasses and drank.
+
+"Again," said Dubarre.
+
+"You choose," responded Villiard.
+
+Dubarre lifted the one nearest himself, and Villiard picked up the other.
+Raising their glasses again, they bowed to each other and drank.
+
+The watch struck twelve, and stopped its silvery chiming.
+
+They both sat down, looking at each other, the light of an enormous
+chance in their eyes, the tragedy of a great stake in their clinched
+hands; but the deeper, intenser power was in the face of Dubarre, the
+explorer.
+
+There was more than power; malice drew down the brows and curled the
+sensitive upper lip.  Each man watched the other for knowledge of his own
+fate.  The glasses lay straggling along the table, emptied of death and
+life.
+
+All at once a horrible pallor spread over the face of Villiard, and his
+head jerked forward.  He grasped the table with both hands, twitching and
+trembling.  His eyes stared wildly at Dubarre, to whose face the flush of
+wine had come, whose look was now maliciously triumphant.
+
+Villiard had drunk both glasses of the poison!
+
+"I win!"  Dubarre stood up.  Then, leaning over the table towards the
+dying man, he added: "You let her die-well!  Would you know the truth?
+She loved you--always."
+
+Villiard gasped, and his look wandered vaguely along the opposite wall.
+
+Dubarre went on.  "I played the game with you honestly, because--because
+it was the greatest man could play.  And I, too, sinned against her.  Now
+die!  She loved you--murderer!"
+
+The man's look still wandered distractedly along the wall.  The sweat of
+death was on his face; his lips were moving spasmodically.
+
+Suddenly his look became fixed; he found voice.  "Pardon--Jesu!" he
+said, and stiffened where he sat.  His eyes were fixed on the jewelled
+crucifix.  Dubarre snatched it from the wall, and hastening to him held
+it to his lips: but the warm sparkle of the rubies fell on eyes that were
+cold as frosted glass.  Dubarre saw that he was dead.
+
+"Because the woman loved him!" he said, gazing curiously at the dead
+man.
+
+He turned, went to the door and opened it, for his breath choked him.
+
+All was still on the wooded heights and in the wide valley.
+
+"Because the woman loved him he repented," said Dubarre again with a
+half-cynical gentleness as he placed the crucifix on the dead man's
+breast.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN THAT DIED AT ALMA
+
+The man who died at Alma had a Kilkenny brogue that you could not cut
+with a knife, but he was called Kilquhanity, a name as Scotch as
+McGregor.  Kilquhanity was a retired soldier, on pension, and Pontiac was
+a place of peace and poverty.  The only gentry were the Cure, the Avocat,
+and the young Seigneur, but of the three the only one with a private
+income was the young Seigneur.
+
+What should such a common man as Kilquhanity do with a private income!
+It seemed almost suspicious, instead of creditable, to the minds of the
+simple folk at Pontiac; for they were French, and poor, and laborious,
+and Kilquhanity drew his pension from the headquarters of the English
+Government, which they only knew by legends wafted to them over great
+tracts of country from the city of Quebec.
+
+When Kilquhanity first came with his wife, it was without introductions
+from anywhere--unlike everybody else in Pontiac, whose family history
+could be instantly reduced to an exact record by the Cure.  He had a
+smattering of French, which he turned off with oily brusqueness; he was
+not close-mouthed, he talked freely of events in his past life; and he
+told some really wonderful tales of his experiences in the British army.
+He was no braggart, however, and his one great story which gave him the
+nickname by which he was called at Pontiac, was told far more in a spirit
+of laughter at himself than in praise of his own part in the incident.
+
+The first time he told the story was in the house of Medallion the
+auctioneer.
+
+"Aw the night it was," said Kilquhanity, after a pause, blowing a cloud
+of tobacco smoke into the air, "the night it was, me darlin's!  Bitther
+cowld in that Roosian counthry, though but late summer, and nothin' to
+ate but a lump of bread, no bigger than a dickybird's skull; nothin' to
+drink but wather.  Turrible, turrible, and for clothes to wear--Mother of
+Moses! that was a bad day for clothes!  We got betune no barrick quilts
+that night.  No stockin' had I insoide me boots, no shirt had I but a
+harse's quilt sewed an to me; no heart I had insoide me body; nothin' at
+all but duty an' shtandin' to orders, me b'ys!
+
+"Says Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick to me, 'Kilquhanity,' says he, 'there's
+betther places than River Alma to live by,' says he.  'Faith, an' by the
+Liffey I wish I was this moment'--Liffey's in ould Ireland, Frenchies!
+'But, Kilquhanity,' says he, 'faith, an' it's the Liffey we'll never see
+again, an' put that in yer pipe an' smoke it!' And thrue for him.
+
+"But that night, aw that night!  Ivery bone in me body was achin', and
+shure me heart was achin' too, for the poor b'ys that were fightin' hard
+an' gettin' little for it.  Bitther cowld it was, aw, bitther cowld, and
+the b'ys droppin' down, droppin', droppin', droppin', wid the Roosian
+bullets in thim!
+
+"'Kilquhanity,' says Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick to me, 'it's this
+shtandin' still, while we do be droppin', droppin', that girds the soul
+av yer.' Aw, the sight it was, the sight it was!  The b'ys of the
+rigimint shtandin' shoulder to shoulder, an' the faces av 'm blue wid
+powder, an' red wid blood, an' the bits o' b'ys droppin' round me loike
+twigs of an' ould tree in a shtorm.  Just a cry an' a bit av a gurgle tru
+the teeth, an' divil the wan o' thim would see the Liffey side anny more.
+"'The Roosians are chargin'!' shouts Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick.  'The
+Roosians are chargin'--here they come!'  Shtandin' besoide me was a bit
+of a lump of a b'y, as foine a lad as ever shtood in the boots of me
+rigimint--aw! the look of his face was the look o' the dead.  'The
+Roosians are comin'--they're chargin'!' says Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick,
+and the bit av a b'y, that had nothin' to eat all day, throws down his
+gun and turns round to run.  Eighteen years old he was, only eighteen--
+just a straight slip of a lad from Malahide.  'Hould on!  Teddie,' says
+I, 'hould on!  How'll yer face yer mother if yer turn yer back on the
+inimy of yer counthry?'  The b'y looks me in the eyes long enough to wink
+three times, picks up his gun, an' shtood loike a rock, he did, till the
+Roosians charged us, roared on us, an' I saw me slip of a b'y go down
+under the sabre of a damned Cossack.  'Mother!' I heard him say,
+'Mother!' an' that's all I heard him say--and the mother waitin' away aff
+there by the Liffey soide.  Aw, wurra, wurra, the b'ys go down to battle
+and the mothers wait at home!  Some of the b'ys come back, but the most
+of thim shtay where the battle laves 'em.  Wurra, wurra, many's the b'y
+wint down that day by Alma River, an' niver come back!  "There I was
+shtandin', when hell broke loose on the b'ys of me rigimint, and divil
+the wan o' me knows if I killed a Roosian that day or not.  But Sergeant-
+Major Kilpatrick--a bit of a liar was the Sergeant-Major--says he: 'It
+was tin ye killed, Kilquhanity.' He says that to me the noight that I
+left the rigimint for ever, and all the b'ys shtandin' round and liftin'
+lasses an' saying, 'Kilquhanity!  Kilquhanity!  Kilquhanity!'
+as if it was sugar and honey in their mouths.  Aw, the sound of it!
+'Kilquhanity,' says he, 'it was tin ye killed;' but aw, b'ys, the
+Sergeant-Major was an awful liar.  If he could be doin' annybody anny
+good by lyin', shure he would be lyin' all the time.
+
+"But it's little I know how many I killed, for I was killed meself that
+day.  A Roosian sabre claved the shoulder and neck of me, an' down I
+wint, and over me trampled a squadron of Roosian harses, an' I stopped
+thinkin'.  Aw, so aisy, so aisy, I slipped away out av the fight!  The
+shriekin' and roarin' kept dwindlin' and dwindlin', and I dropped all
+into a foine shlape, so quiet, so aisy.  An' I thought that slip av a lad
+from the Liffey soide was houlding me hand, and sayin' 'Mother!  Mother!'
+and we both wint ashlape; an' the b'ys of the rigimint when Alma was
+over, they said to each other, the b'ys they said: 'Kilquhanity's dead.'
+An' the trinches was dug, an' all we foine dead b'ys was laid in long
+rows loike candles in the trinches.  An' I was laid in among thim, and
+Sergeant-Major Kilpatrick shtandin' there an' looking at me an' sayin':
+'Poor b'y--poor b'y!'
+
+"But when they threw another man on tap of me, I waked up out o' that
+beautiful shlape, and give him a kick.  'Yer not polite,' says I to
+mesilf.  Shure, I couldn't shpake--there was no strength in me.  An' they
+threw another man on, an' I kicked again, and the Sergeant-Major he sees
+it, an' shouts out.  'Kilquhan ity's leg is kickin'!' says he.  An' they
+pulled aff the two poor divils that had been thrown o' tap o' me, and the
+Sergeant-Major lifts me head, an' he says 'Yer not killed, Kilquhanity?'
+says he.
+
+"Divil a word could I shpake, but I winked at him, and Captain Masham
+shtandin' by whips out a flask.
+
+"'Put that betune his teeth,' says he.  Whin I got it there, trust me fur
+not lettin' it go.  An' the Sergeant-Major says to me: 'I have hopes of
+you, Kilquhanity, when you do be drinkin' loike that.'
+
+"'A foine healthy corpse I am; an' a foine thirsty, healthy corpse I am,'
+says I."
+
+A dozen hands stretched out to give Kilquhanity a drink, for even the
+best story-teller of Pontiac could not have told his tale so well.
+
+Yet the success achieved by Kilquhanity at such moments was discounted
+through long months of mingled suspicion and doubtful tolerance.
+Although both he and his wife were Catholics (so they said, and so it
+seemed), Kilquhanity never went to Confession or took the Blessed
+Sacrament.  The Cure spoke to Kilquhanity's wife about it, and she said
+she could do nothing with her husband.  Her tongue once loosed, she spoke
+freely, and what she said was little to the credit of Kilquhanity.  Not
+that she could urge any horrible things against him; but she railed at
+minor faults till the Cure dismissed her with some good advice upon wives
+rehearsing their husband's faults, even to the parish priest.
+
+Mrs. Kilquhanity could not get the Cure to listen to her, but she was
+more successful elsewhere.  One day she came to get Kilquhanity's
+pension, which was sent every three months through M. Garon, the Avocat.
+After she had handed over the receipt prepared beforehand by Kilquhanity,
+she replied to M. Garon's inquiry concerning her husband in these words:
+"Misther Garon, sir, such a man it is--enough to break the heart of anny
+woman.  And the timper of him--Misther Garon, the timper of him's that
+awful, awful!  No conshideration, and that ugly-hearted, got whin a
+soldier b'y!  The things he does--my, my, the things be does!"  She threw
+up her hands with an air of distraction.
+
+"Well, and what does he do, Madame?" asked the Avocat simply.
+
+"An' what he says, too--the awful of it!  Ah, the bad sour heart in him!
+What's he lyin' in his bed for now--an' the New Year comin' on, whin we
+ought to be praisin' God an' enjoyin' each other's company in this
+blessed wurruld?  What's he lying betune the quilts now fur, but by token
+of the bad heart in him!  It's a wicked could he has, an' how did he come
+by it?  I'll tell ye, Misther Garon.  So wild was he, yesterday it was a
+week, so black mad wid somethin' I'd said to him and somethin' that
+shlipped from me hand at his head, that he turns his back on me, throws
+opin the dure, shteps out into the shnow, and shtandin' there alone, he
+curses the wide wurruld--oh, dear Misther Garon, he cursed the wide
+wurruld, shtandin' there in the snow!  God forgive the black heart of
+him, shtandin' out there cursin' the wide wurruld!"
+
+The Avocat looked at the Sergeant's wife musingly, the fingers of his
+hands tapping together, but he did not speak: he was becoming wiser all
+in a moment as to the ways of women.
+
+"An' now he's in bed, the shtrappin' blasphemer, fur the could he got
+shtandin' there in the snow cursin' the wide wurruld.  Ah, Misther Garon,
+pity a poor woman that has to live wid the loikes o' that!"
+
+The Avocat still did not speak.  He turned his face away and looked out
+of the window, where his eyes could see the little house on the hill,
+which to-day had the Union Jack flying in honour of some battle or
+victory, dear to Kilquhanity's heart.  It looked peaceful enough, the
+little house lying there in the waste of snow, banked up with earth, and
+sheltered on the northwest by a little grove of pines.  At last M. Garon
+rose, and lifting himself up and down on his toes as if about to deliver
+a legal opinion, he coughed slightly, and then said in a dry little
+voice:
+
+"Madame, I shall have pleasure in calling on your husband.  You have not
+seen the matter in the true light.  Madame, I bid you good-day."
+
+That night the Avocat, true to his promise, called on Sergeant
+Kilquhanity.  Kilquhanity was alone in the house.  His wife had gone to
+the village for the Little Chemist.  She had been roused at last to the
+serious nature of Kilquhanity's illness.
+
+M. Garon knocked.  There was no answer.  He knocked again more loudly,
+and still no answer.  He opened the door and entered into a clean, warm
+living-room, so hot that the heat came to him in waves, buffeting his
+face.  Dining, sitting, and drawing-room, it was also a sort of winter
+kitchen; and side by side with relics of Kilquhanity's soldier-life were
+clean, bright tins, black saucepans, strings of dried fruit, and well-
+cured hams.  Certainly the place had the air of home; it spoke for the
+absent termagant.
+
+M. Garon looked round and saw a half-opened door, through which presently
+came a voice speaking in a laboured whisper.  The Avocat knocked gently
+at the door.  "May I come in, Sergeant?" he asked, and entered.  There
+was no light in the room, but the fire in the kitchen stove threw a glow
+over the bed where the sick man lay.  The big hands of the soldier moved
+restlessly on the quilt.
+
+"Aw, it's the koind av ye!" said Kilquhanity, with difficulty, out of
+the half shadows.
+
+The Avocat took one burning hand in both of his, held it for a moment,
+and pressed it two or three times.  He did not know what to say.
+
+"We must have a light," said he at last, and taking a candle from the
+shelf he lighted it at the stove and came into the bedroom again.  This
+time he was startled.  Even in this short illness, Kilquhanity's flesh
+had dropped away from him, leaving him but a bundle of bones, on which
+the skin quivered with fever.  Every word the sick man tried to speak cut
+his chest like a knife, and his eyes half started from his head with the
+agony of it.  The Avocat's heart sank within him, for he saw that a life
+was hanging in the balance.  Not knowing what to do, he tucked in the
+bedclothes gently.
+
+"I do be thinkin'," said the strained, whispering voice--"I do be
+thinkin' I could shmoke."
+
+The Avocat looked round the room, saw the pipe on the window, and cutting
+some tobacco from a "plug," he tenderly filled the old black corn-cob.
+Then he put the stem in Kilquhanity's mouth and held the candle to the
+bowl.  Kilquhanity smiled, drew a long breath, and blew out a cloud of
+thick smoke.  For a moment he puffed vigorously, then, all at once, the
+pleasure of it seemed to die away, and presently the bowl dropped down on
+his chin.  M. Garon lifted it away.  Kilquhanity did not speak, but kept
+saying something over and over again to himself, looking beyond M. Garon
+abstractedly.
+
+At that moment the front door of the house opened, and presently a shrill
+voice came through the door: "Shmokin', shmokin', are ye, Kilquhanity?
+As soon as me back's turned, it's playin' the fool--" She stopped short,
+seeing the Avocat.
+
+"Beggin' yer pardon, Misther Garon," she said, "I thought it was only
+Kilquhanity here, an' he wid no more sense than a babby."
+
+Kilquhanity's eyes closed, and he buried one side of his head in the
+pillow, that her shrill voice should not pierce his ears.
+
+"The Little Chemist 'll be comin' in a minit, dear Misther Garon," said
+the wife presently, and she began to fuss with the bedclothes and to be
+nervously and uselessly busy.
+
+"Aw, lave thim alone, darlin'," whispered Kilquhanity, tossing.  Her
+officiousness seemed to hurt him more than the pain in his chest.
+
+M. Garon did not wait for the Little Chemist to arrive, but after
+pressing the Sergeant's hand he left the house and went straight to the
+house of the Cure, and told him in what condition was the black sheep of
+his flock.
+
+When M. Garon returned to his own home he found a visitor in his library.
+It was a woman, between forty and fifty years of age, who rose slowly to
+her feet as the Avocat entered, and, without preliminary, put into his
+hands a document.
+
+"That is who I am," she said.  "Mary Muddock that was, Mary Kilquhanity
+that is."
+
+The Avocat held in his hands the marriage lines of Matthew Kilquhanity of
+the parish of Malahide and Mary Muddock of the parish of St. Giles,
+London.  The Avocat was completely taken aback.  He blew nervously
+through his pale fingers, raised himself up and down on his toes, and
+grew pale through suppressed excitement.  He examined the certificate
+carefully, though from the first he had no doubt of its accuracy and
+correctness.
+
+"Well?" said the woman, with a hard look in her face and a hard note in
+her voice.  "Well?"
+
+The Avocat looked at her musingly for a moment.  All at once there had
+been unfolded to him Kilquhanity's story.  In his younger days
+Kilquhanity had married this woman with a face of tin and a heart of
+leather.  It needed no confession from Kilquhanity's own lips to explain
+by what hard paths he had come to the reckless hour when, at Blackpool,
+he had left her for ever, as he thought.  In the flush of his criminal
+freedom he had married again--with the woman who shared his home on the
+little hillside, behind the Parish Church, she believing him a widower.
+Mary Muddock, with the stupidity of her class, had never gone to the
+right quarters to discover his whereabouts until a year before this day
+when she stood in the Avocat's library.  At last, through the War Office,
+she had found the whereabouts of her missing Matthew.  She had gathered
+her little savings together, and, after due preparation, had sailed away
+to Canada to find the soldier boy whom she had never given anything but
+bad hours in all the days of his life with her.
+
+"Well," said the woman, "you're a lawyer--have you nothing to say?  You
+pay his pension--next time you'll pay it to me.  I'll teach him to leave
+me and my kid and go off with an Irish cook!"
+
+The Avocat looked her steadily in the eyes, and then delivered the
+strongest blow that was possible from the opposite side of the case.
+"Madame," said he, "Madame, I regret to inform you that Matthew
+Kilquhanity is dying."
+
+"Dying, is he?" said the woman, with a sudden change of voice and
+manner, but her whine did not ring true.  "The poor darlin', and only
+that Irish hag to care for him!  Has he made a will?" she added eagerly.
+
+Kilquhanity had made no will, and the little house on the hillside,
+and all that he had, belonged to this woman who had spoiled the first
+part of his life, and had come now to spoil the last part.
+
+An hour later the Avocat, the Cure, and the two women stood in the chief
+room of the little house on the hillside.  The door was shut between the
+two rooms, and the Little Chemist was with Kilquhanity.  The Cure's hand
+was on the arm of the first wife and the Avocat's upon the arm of the
+second.  The two women were glaring eye to eye, having just finished as
+fine a torrent of abuse of each other and of Kilquhanity as can be
+imagined.  Kilquhanity himself, with the sorrow of death upon him, though
+he knew it not, had listened to the brawl, his chickens come home to
+roost at last.  The first Mrs. Kilquhanity had sworn, with an oath that
+took no account of the Cure's presence, that not a stick nor a stone nor
+a rag nor a penny should that Irish slattern have of Matthew
+Kilquhanity's!
+
+The Cure and the Avocat had quieted them at last, and the Cure spoke
+sternly now to both women.
+
+"In the presence of death," said he, "have done with your sinful clatter.
+Stop quarrelling over a dying man.  Let him go in peace--let him go in
+peace!  If I hear one word more," he added sternly, "I will turn you both
+out of the house into the night.  I will have the man die in peace."
+
+Opening the door of the bedroom, the Cure went in and shut the door,
+bolting it quietly behind him.  The Little Chemist sat by the bedside,
+and Kilquhanity lay as still as a babe upon the bed.  His eyes were half
+closed, for the Little Chemist had given him an opiate to quiet the
+terrible pain.
+
+The Cure saw that the end was near.  He touched Kilquhanity's arm: "My
+son," said he, "look up.  You have sinned; you must confess your sins,
+and repent."
+
+Kilquhanity looked up at him with dazed but half smiling eyes.  "Are they
+gone?  Are the women gone?" The Cure nodded his head.  Kilquhanity's
+eyes closed and opened again.  "They're gone, thin!  Oh, the foine of it,
+the foine of it!" he whispered.  "So quiet, so aisy, so quiet!  Faith,
+I'll just be shlaping!  I'll be shlaping now."
+
+His eyes closed, but the Cure touched his arm again.  "My son," said he,
+"look up.  Do you thoroughly and earnestly repent you of your sins?"
+
+His eyes opened again.  "Yis, father, oh yis!  There's been a dale o'
+noise--there's been a dale o' noise in the wurruld, father," said he.
+"Oh, so quiet, so quiet now!  I do be shlaping."
+
+A smile came upon his face.  "Oh, the foine of it!  I do be shlaping-
+shlaping."
+
+And he fell into a noiseless Sleep.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BARON OF BEAUGARD
+
+"The Manor House at Beaugard, monsieur?  Ah, certainlee, I mind it very
+well.  It was the first in Quebec, and there are many tales.  It had a
+chapel and a gallows.  Its baron, he had the power of life and death, and
+the right of the seigneur--you understand?--which he used only once; and
+then what trouble it made for him and the woman, and the barony, and the
+parish, and all the country!"
+
+"What is the whole story, Larue?" said Medallion, who had spent months
+in the seigneur's company, stalking game, and tales, and legends of the
+St. Lawrence.
+
+Larue spoke English very well--his mother was English.
+
+"Mais, I do not know for sure; but the Abbe Frontone, he and I were
+snowed up together in that same house which now belongs to the Church,
+and in the big fireplace, where we sat on a bench, toasting our knees and
+our bacon, he told me the tale as he knew it.  He was a great scholar--
+there is none greater.  He had found papers in the wall of the house, and
+from the Gover'ment chest he got more.  Then there were the tales handed
+down, and the records of the Church--for she knows the true story of
+every man that has come to New France from first to last.  So, because I
+have a taste for tales, and gave him some, he told me of the Baron of
+Beaugard, and that time he took the right of the seigneur, and the end of
+it all.
+
+"Of course it was a hundred and fifty years ago, when Bigot was
+Intendant-ah, what a rascal was that Bigot, robber and deceiver!  He
+never stood by a friend, and never fought fair a foe--so the Abbe said.
+Well, Beaugard was no longer young.  He had built the Manor House, he had
+put up his gallows, he had his vassals, he had been made a lord.  He had
+quarrelled with Bigot, and had conquered, but at great cost; for Bigot
+had such power, and the Governor had trouble enough to care for himself
+against Bigot, though he was Beaugard's friend.
+
+"Well, there was a good lump of a fellow who had been a soldier, and he
+picked out a girl in the Seigneury of Beaugard to make his wife.  It is
+said the girl herself was not set for the man, for she was of finer stuff
+than the peasants about her, and showed it.  But her father and mother
+had a dozen other children, and what was this girl, this Falise, to do?
+She said yes to the man, the time was fixed for the marriage, and it came
+along.
+
+"So.  At the very hour of the wedding Beaugard came by, for, the church
+was in mending, and he had given leave it should be in his own chapel.
+Well, he rode by just as the bride was coming out with the man--Garoche.
+When Beaugard saw Falise, he gave a whistle, then spoke in his throat,
+reined up his horse, and got down.  He fastened his eyes on the girl's.
+A strange look passed between them--he had never seen her before, but she
+had seen him often, and when he was gone had helped the housekeeper with
+his rooms.  She had carried away with her a stray glove of his.  Of
+course it sounds droll, and they said of her when all came out that it
+was wicked; but evil is according to a man's own heart, and the girl had
+hid this glove as she hid whatever was in her soul--hid it even from the
+priest.
+
+"Well, the Baron looked and she looked, and he took off his hat, stepped
+forward, and kissed her on the cheek.  She turned pale as a ghost, and
+her eyes took the colour that her cheeks lost.  When he stepped back he
+looked close at the husband.  'What is your name?' he said.  'Garoche,
+M'sieu' le Baron,' was the reply.  'Garoche, Garoche,' he said, eyeing
+him up and down.  'You have been a soldier?'  'Yes, M'sieu' le Baron.'
+'You have served with me?'  'Against you, M'sieu' le Baron .  .  .  when
+Bigot came fighting.' 'Better against me than for me,' said the Baron,
+speaking to himself, though he had so strong a voice that what he said
+could be heard by those near him-that is, those who were tall, for he was
+six and a half feet, with legs and shoulders like a bull.
+
+"He stooped and stroked the head of his hound for a moment, and all the
+people stood and watched him, wondering what next.  At last he said: 'And
+what part played you in that siege, Garoche?' Garoche looked troubled,
+but answered: 'It was in the way of duty, M'sieu' le Baron--I with five
+others captured the relief-party sent from your cousin the Seigneur of
+Vadrome.'  'Oh,' said the Baron, looking sharp, 'you were in that, were
+you?  Then you know what happened to the young Marmette?' Garoche
+trembled a little, but drew himself up and said: 'M'sieu' le Baron, he
+tried to kill the Intendant--there was no other way.' 'What part played
+you in that, Garoche?'  Some trembled, for they knew the truth, and they
+feared the mad will of the Baron.  'I ordered the firing-party, M'sieu'
+le Baron,' he answered.
+
+"The Baron's eyes got fierce and his face hardened, but he stooped and
+drew the ears of the hound through his hand softly.  'Marmette was my
+cousin's son, and had lived with me,' he said.  'A brave lad, and he had
+a nice hatred of vileness--else he had not died.' A strange smile played
+on his lips for a moment, then he looked at Falise steadily.  Who can
+tell what was working in his mind!  'War is war,' he went on, 'and Bigot
+was your master, Garoche; but the man pays for his master's sins this way
+or that.  Yet I would not have it different, no, not a jot.'  Then he
+turned round to the crowd, raised his hat to the Cure, who stood on the
+chapel steps, once more looked steadily at Falise, and said: 'You shall
+all come to the Manor House, and have your feastings there, and we will
+drink to the home-coming of the fairest woman in my barony.'  With that
+he turned round, bowed to Falise, put on his hat, caught the bridle
+through his arm, and led his horse to the Manor House.
+
+"This was in the afternoon.  Of course, whether they wished or not,
+Garoche and Falise could not refuse, and the people were glad enough, for
+they would have a free hand at meat and wine, the Baron being liberal of
+table.  And it was as they guessed, for though the time was so short, the
+people at Beaugard soon had the tables heavy with food and drink.  It was
+just at the time of candle-lighting the Baron came in and gave a toast.
+'To the dwellers in Eden to-night,' he said--'Eden against the time of
+the Angel and the Sword.'  I do not think that any except the Cure and
+the woman understood, and she, maybe, only because a woman feels the
+truth about a thing, even when her brain does not.  After they had done
+shouting to his toast, he said a good-night to all, and they began to
+leave, the Cure among the first to go, with a troubled look in his face.
+
+"As the people left, the Baron said to Garoche and Falise: 'A moment with
+me before you go.' The woman started, for she thought of one thing, and
+Garoche started, for he thought of another--the siege of Beaugard and the
+killing of young Marmette.  But they followed the Baron to his chamber.
+Coming in, he shut the door on them.  Then he turned to Garoche.  'You
+will accept the roof and bed of Beaugard to-night, my man,' he said, 'and
+come to me here at nine tomorrow morning.'  Garoche stared hard for an
+instant.  'Stay here!' said Garoche, 'Falise and me stay here in the
+Manor, M'sieu' le Baron!'  'Here, even here, Garoche; so good-night to
+you,' said the Baron.  Garoche turned towards the girl.  'Then come,
+Falise,' he said, and reached out his hand.  'Your room, Garoche, shall
+be shown you at once,' the Baron added softly, 'the lady's at her
+pleasure.'
+
+"Then a cry burst from Garoche, and he sprang forward, but the Baron
+waved him back.  'Stand off,' he said, 'and let the lady choose between
+us.'  'She is my wife,' said Garoche.  'I am your Seigneur,' said the
+other.  'And there is more than that,' he went on; 'for, damn me, she
+is too fine stuff for you, and the Church shall untie what she has tied
+to-day!'  At that Falise fainted, and the Baron caught her as she fell.
+He laid her on a couch, keeping an eye on Garoche the while.  'Loose her
+gown,' he said, 'while I get brandy.' Then he turned to a cupboard,
+poured liquor, and came over.  Garoche had her dress open at the neck and
+bosom, and was staring at something on her breast.  The Baron saw also,
+stooped with a strange sound in his throat, and picked it up.  'My
+glove!' he said.  'And on her wedding-day!' He pointed.  'There on the
+table is its mate, fished this morning from my hunting-coat--a pair the
+Governor gave me.  You see, man, you see her choice!'
+
+"At that he stooped and put some brandy to her lips.  Garoche drew back
+sick and numb, and did nothing, only stared.  Falise came to herself
+soon, and when she felt her dress open, gave a cry.  Garoche could have
+killed her then, when he saw her shudder from him, as if afraid, over
+towards the Baron, who held the glove in his hand, and said: 'See,
+Garoche, you had better go.  In the next room they will tell you where to
+sleep.  To-morrow, as I said, you will meet me here.  We shall have
+things to say, you and I.'  Ah, that Baron, he had a queer mind, but in
+truth he loved the woman, as you shall see!
+
+"Garoche got up without a word, went to the door and opened it, the look
+of the Baron and the woman following him, for there was a devil in his
+eye.  In the other room there were men waiting, and he was taken to a
+chamber and locked in.  You can guess what that night must have been to
+him!"
+
+"What was it to the Baron and Falise?" asked Medallion.
+
+"M'sieu', what do you think?  Beaugard had never had an eye for women;
+loving his hounds, fighting, quarrelling, doing wild, strong things.  So,
+all at once, he was face to face with a woman who has the look of love in
+her face, who was young, and fine of body--so the Abbe said--and was
+walking to marriage at her father's will and against her own, carrying
+the Baron's glove in her bosom.  What should Beaugard do?  But no, ah no,
+m'sieu', not as you think, not quite!  Wild, with the bit in his teeth,
+yes; but at heart-well, here was the one woman for him.  He knew it all
+in a minute, and he would have her once and for all, and till death
+should come their way.  And so he said to her, as he raised her, she
+drawing back afraid, her heart hungering for him, yet fear in her eyes,
+and her fingers trembling as she softly pushed him from her.  You see,
+she did not know quite what was in his heart.  She was the daughter of a
+tenant vassal, who had lived in the family of a grand seigneur in her
+youth, the friend of his child--that was all, and that was where she got
+her manners and her mind.
+
+"She got on her feet and said: 'M'sieu' le Baron, you will let me go--
+to my husband.  I cannot stay here.  Oh, you are great, you are noble,
+you would not make me sorry, make me to hate myself--and you!  I have
+only one thing in the world of any price--you would not steal my
+happiness?'  He looked at her steadily in the eyes, and said: 'Will it
+make you happy to go to Garoche?'  She raised her hands and wrung them.
+'God knows, God knows, I am his wife,' she said helplessly, 'and he loves
+me.'  'And God knows, God knows,' said the Baron, 'it is all a question
+of whether one shall feed and two go hungry, or two gather and one have
+the stubble!  Shall not he stand in the stubble?  What has he done to
+merit you?
+
+"What would he do?  You are for the master, not the man; for love, not the
+feeding on; for the Manor House and the hunt, not the cottage and the
+loom.'
+
+"She broke into tears, her heart thumping in her throat.  'I am for what
+the Church did for me this day,' she said.  'O sir, I pray you, forgive
+me and let me go.  Do not punish me, but forgive me--and let me go.
+I was wicked to wear your glove-wicked, wicked.'  'But no,' was his
+reply, 'I shall not forgive you so good a deed, and you shall not go.
+And what the Church did for you this day she shall undo--by all the
+saints, she shall!  You came sailing into my heart this hour past on a
+strong wind, and you shall not slide out on an ebb-tide.  I have you
+here, as your Seigneur, but I have you here as a man who will--'
+
+"He sat down by her at that point, and whispered softly in her ear; at
+which she gave a cry which had both gladness and pain.  'Surely, even
+that,' he said, catching her to his breast.  'And the Baron of Beaugard
+never broke his word.'  What should be her reply?  Does not a woman when
+she truly loves always believe?  That is the great sign.  She slid to her
+knees and dropped her head into the hollow of his arm.  'I do not
+understand these things,' she said, 'but I know that the other was death,
+and this is life.  And yet I know, too, for my heart says so, that the
+end--the end, will be death.'
+
+"'Tut, tut, my flower, my wild-rose!' he said.  'Of course the end of all
+is death, but we will go a-Maying first, come October, and let the world
+break over us when it must.  We are for Maying now, my rose of all the
+world!'  It was as if he meant more than he said, as if he saw what would
+come in that October which all New France never forgot, when, as he said,
+the world broke over them.
+
+"The next morning the Baron called Garoche to him.  The man was like some
+mad buck harried by the hounds, and he gnashed his teeth behind his shut
+lips.  The Baron eyed him curiously, yet kindly, too, as well he might,
+for when was ever man to hear such a speech as came to Garoche the
+morning after his marriage?  'Garoche,' the Baron said, having waved his
+men away, 'as you see, the lady made her choice--and for ever.  You and
+she have said your last farewell in this world--for the wife of the Baron
+of Beaugard can have nothing to say to Garoche the soldier.'  At that
+Garoche snarled out, 'The wife of the Baron of Beaugard, that is a lie to
+shame all hell.'  The Baron wound the lash of a riding-whip round and
+round his fingers quietly and said: 'It is no lie, my man, but the
+truth.'  Garoche eyed him savagely, and growled: 'The Church made her my
+wife yesterday; and you--you--you--ah, you who had all--you with your
+money and place, which could get all easy, you take the one thing I have!
+You, the grand seigneur, are only a common robber!  Ah, Jesu--if you
+would but fight me!'
+
+"The Baron, very calm, said: 'First, Garoche, the lady was only your wife
+by a form which the Church shall set aside--it could never have been a
+true marriage.  Second, it is no stealing to take from you what you did
+not have.  I took what was mine--remember the glove!  For the rest--to
+fight you?  No, my churl, you know that's impossible.  You may shoot me
+from behind a tree or a rock, but swording with you--come, come, a pretty
+gossip for the Court!  Then, why wish a fight?  Where would you be, as
+you stood before me--you!'  The Baron stretched himself up, and smiled
+down at Garoche.  'You have your life, man; take it and go--to the
+farthest corner of New France, and show not your face here again.  If I
+find you ever again in Beaugard I will have you whipped from parish to
+parish.  Here is money for you--good gold coins.  Take them, and go.'
+
+"Garoche got still and cold as stone.  He said in a low, harsh voice:
+'M'sieu' le Baron, you are a common thief, a wolf, a snake.  Such men as
+you come lower than Judas.  As God has an eye to see, you shall pay all
+one day.  I do not fear you nor your men nor your gallows.  You are a
+jackal, and the woman has a filthy heart--a ditch of shame.'
+
+"The Baron drew up his arm like lightning, and the lash of his whip came
+singing across Garoche's pale face.  Where it passed, a red welt rose,
+but the man never stirred.  The arm came up again, but a voice' behind
+the Baron said: 'Ah no, no, not again!'  There stood Falise.  Both men
+looked at her.  'I have heard Garoche,' she said.  'He does not judge me
+right.  My heart is no filthy ditch of shame; but it was breaking when I
+came from the altar with him yesterday.  Yet I would have been a true
+wife to him after all.  A ditch of shame--ah, Garoche--Garoche!  And you
+said you loved me, and that nothing could change you!'
+
+"The Baron said to her: 'Why have you come, Falise?  I forbade you.' 'Oh,
+my lord,' she answered, 'I feared--for you both!  When men go mad because
+of women a devil enters into them.'  The Baron, taking her by the hand,
+said: 'Permit me,' and he led her to the door for her to pass out.  She
+looked back sadly at Garoche, standing for a minute very still.  Then
+Garoche said: 'I command you, come with me; you are my wife.'  She did
+not reply, but shook her head at him.  Then he spoke out high and fierce:
+'May no child be born to you.  May a curse fall on you.  May your fields
+be barren, and your horses and cattle die.  May you never see nor hear
+good things.  May the waters leave their courses to drown you, and the
+hills their bases to bury you, and no hand lay you in decent graves!'
+
+"The woman put her hands to her ears and gave a little cry, and the Baron
+pushed her gently on, and closed the door after her.  Then he turned on
+Garoche.  'Have you said all you wish?' he asked.  'For, if not, say on,
+and then go; and go so far you cannot see the sky that covers Beaugard.
+We are even now--we can cry quits.  But that I have a little injured you,
+you should be done for instantly.  But hear me: if I ever see you again,
+my gallows shall end you straight.  Your tongue has been gross before the
+mistress of this Manor; I will have it torn out if it so much as
+syllables her name to me or to the world again.  She is dead to you.  Go,
+and go for ever!'
+
+"He put a bag of money on the table, but Garoche turned away from it, and
+without a word left the room, and the house, and the parish, and said
+nothing to any man of the evil that had come to him.
+
+"But what talk was there, and what dreadful things were said at first-
+that Garoche had sold his wife to the Baron; that he had been killed and
+his wife taken; that the Baron kept him a prisoner in a cellar under the
+Manor House!  And all the time there was Falise with the Baron--very
+quiet and sweet and fine to see, and going to Chapel every day, and to
+Mass on Sundays--which no one could understand, any more than they could
+see why she should be called the Baroness of Beaugard; for had they all
+not seen her married to Garoche?  And there were many people who thought
+her vile.  Yet truly, at heart, she was not so--not at all.  Then it was
+said that there was to be a new marriage; that the Church would let it be
+so, doing and undoing, and doing again.  But the weeks and the months
+went by, and it was never done.  For, powerful as the Baron was, Bigot
+the Intendant was powerful also, and fought the thing with all his might.
+The Baron went to Quebec to see the Bishop and the Governor, and though
+promises were made, nothing was done.  It must go to the King and then to
+the Pope, and from the Pope to the King again, and so on.  And the months
+and the years went by as they waited, and with them came no child to the
+Manor House of Beaugard.  That was the only sad thing--that and the
+waiting, so far as man could see.  For never were man and woman truer to
+each other than these, and never was a lady of the Manor kinder to the
+poor, or a lord freer of hand to his vassals.  He would bluster
+sometimes, and string a peasant up by the heels, but his gallows was
+never used; and, what was much in the minds of the people, the Cure did
+not refuse the woman the sacrament.
+
+"At last the Baron, fierce because he knew that Bigot was the cause of
+the great delay, so that he might not call Falise his wife, seized a
+transport on the river, which had been sent to brutally levy upon a poor
+gentleman, and when Bigot's men resisted, shot them down.  Then Bigot
+sent against Beaugard a company of artillery and some soldiers of the
+line.  The guns were placed on a hill looking down on the Manor House
+across the little river.  In the evening the cannons arrived, and in the
+morning the fight was to begin.  The guns were loaded and everything was
+ready.  At the Manor all was making ready also, and the Baron had no
+fear.
+
+"But Falise's heart was heavy, she knew not why.  'Eugene,' she said, 'if
+anything should happen!'  'Nonsense, my Falise,' he answered; 'what
+should happen?'  'If--if you were taken--were killed!' she said.
+'Nonsense, my rose,' he said again, 'I shall not be killed.  But if I
+were, you should be at peace here.'  'Ah, no, no!' said she.  'Never.
+Life to me is only possible with you.  I have had nothing but you--none
+of those things which give peace to other women--none.  But I have been
+happy-yes, very happy.  And, God forgive me, Eugene, I cannot regret, and
+I never have!  But it has been always and always my prayer that, when you
+die, I may die with you--at the same moment.  For I cannot live without
+you, and, besides, I would like to go to the good God with you to speak
+for us both; for oh, I loved you, I loved you, and I love you still, my
+husband, my adored!'
+
+"He stooped--he was so big, and she but of middle height--kissed her, and
+said: 'See, my Falise, I am of the same mind.  We have been happy in
+life, and we could well be happy in death together.'  So they sat long,
+long into the night and talked to each other--of the days they had passed
+together, of cheerful things, she trying to comfort herself, and he
+trying to bring smiles to her lips.  At last they said good-night, and he
+lay down in his clothes; and after a few moments she was sleeping like a
+child.  But he could not sleep, for he lay thinking of her and of her
+life--how she had come from humble things and fitted in with the highest.
+At last, at break of day, he arose and went outside.  He looked up at the
+hill where Bigot's two guns were.  Men were already stirring there.  One
+man was standing beside the gun, and another not far behind.  Of course
+the Baron could not know that the man behind the gunner said: 'Yes, you
+may open the dance with an early salute;' and he smiled up boldly at the
+hill and went into the house, and stole to the bed of his wife to kiss
+her before he began the day's fighting.  He looked at her a moment,
+standing over her, and then stooped and softly put his lips to hers.
+
+"At that moment the gunner up on the hill used the match, and an awful
+thing happened.  With the loud roar the whole hillside of rock and gravel
+and sand split down, not ten feet in front of the gun, moved with
+horrible swiftness upon the river, filled its bed, turned it from its
+course, and, sweeping on, swallowed the Manor House of Beaugard.  There
+had been a crack in the hill, the water of the river had sapped its
+foundations, and it needed only this shock to send it down.
+
+"And so, as the woman wished: the same hour for herself and the man!  And
+when at last their prison was opened by the hands of Bigot's men, they
+were found cheek by cheek, bound in the sacred marriage of Death.
+
+"But another had gone the same road, for, at the awful moment, beside the
+bursted gun, the dying gunner, Garoche, lifted up his head, saw the loose
+travelling hill, and said with his last breath: 'The waters drown them,
+and the hills bury them, and--'
+
+"He had his way with them, and after that perhaps the great God had His
+way with him perhaps."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TUNE McGILVERAY PLAYED
+
+McGilveray has been dead for over a hundred years, but there is a parish
+in Quebec where his tawny-haired descendants still live.  They have the
+same sort of freckles on their faces as had their ancestor, the
+bandmaster of Anstruther's regiment, and some of them have his taste for
+music, yet none of them speak his language or with his brogue, and the
+name of McGilveray has been gallicised to Magille.
+
+In Pontiac, one of the Magilles, the fiddler of the parish, made the
+following verse in English as a tribute of admiration for an heroic deed
+of his ancestor, of which the Cure of the parish, the good M. Santonge,
+had told him:
+
+              "Piff! poem! ka-zoon, ka-zoon!
+               That is the way of the organ tune--
+               And the ships are safe that day!
+               Piff!  poum!  kazoon, kazoon!
+               And the Admiral light his pipe and say:
+               'Bully for us, we are not kill!
+               Who is to make the organ play
+               Make it say zoon-kazoon?
+               You with the corunet come this way--
+               You are the man, Magillel
+               Piff! poum! kazoon, kazoon!'"
+
+Now, this is the story of McGilveray the bandmaster of Anstruther's
+regiment:
+
+It was at the time of the taking of Quebec, the summer of 1759.  The
+English army had lain at Montmorenci, at the Island of Orleans, and at
+Point Levis; the English fleet in the basin opposite the town, since June
+of that great year, attacking and retreating, bombarding and besieging,
+to no great purpose.  For within the walls of the city, and on the shore
+of Beauport, protected by its mud flats--a splendid moat--the French more
+than held their own.
+
+In all the hot months of that summer, when parishes were ravaged with
+fire and sword, and the heat was an excuse for almost any lapse of
+virtue, McGilveray had not been drunk once--not once.  It was almost
+unnatural.  Previous to that, McGilveray's career had been chequered.
+No man had received so many punishments in the whole army, none had risen
+so superior to them as had he, none had ever been shielded from wrath
+present and to come as had this bandmaster of Anstruther's regiment.  He
+had no rivals for promotion in the regiment--perhaps that was one reason;
+he had a good temper and an overwhelming spirit of fun--perhaps that was
+another.
+
+He was not remarkable to the vision--scarcely more than five feet four;
+with an eye like a gimlet, red hair tied in a queue, a big mouth, and a
+chest thrown out like the breast of a partridge--as fine a figure of a
+man in miniature as you should see.  When intoxicated, his tongue rapped
+out fun and fury like a triphammer.  Alert-minded drunk or sober, drunk,
+he was lightning-tongued, and he could play as well drunk as sober, too;
+but more than once a sympathetic officer altered the tactics that
+McGilveray might not be compelled to march, and so expose his condition.
+Standing still he was quite fit for duty.  He never got really drunk "at
+the top."  His brain was always clear, no matter how useless were his
+legs.
+
+But the wonderful thing was that for six months McGilveray's legs were as
+steady as his head was right.  At first the regiment was unbelieving, and
+his resolution to drink no more was scoffed at in the non-com mess.  He
+stuck to it, however, and then the cause was searched for--and not found.
+He had not turned religious, he was not fanatical, he was of sound mind--
+what was it?  When the sergeant-major suggested a woman, they howled him
+down, for they said McGilveray had not made love to women since the day
+of his weaning, and had drunk consistently all the time.
+
+Yet it was a woman.
+
+A fortnight or so after Wolfe's army and Saunders's fleet had sat down
+before Quebec, McGilveray, having been told by a sentry at Montmorenci
+where Anstruther's regiment was camped, that a French girl on the other
+side of the stream had kissed her hand to him and sung across in laughing
+insolence:
+
+               "Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre,"
+
+he had forthwith set out to hail this daughter of Gaul, if perchance she
+might be seen again.
+
+At more than ordinary peril he crossed the river on a couple of logs,
+lashed together, some distance above the spot where the picket had seen
+Mademoiselle.  It was a moonlight night, and he might easily have been
+picked off by a bullet, if a wary sentry had been alert and malicious.
+But the truth was that many of these pickets on both sides were in no
+wise unfriendly to each other, and more than once exchanged tobacco and
+liquor across the stream.  As it chanced, however, no sentry saw
+McGilveray, and presently, safely landed, he made his way down the
+stream.  Even at the distance he was from the falls, the rumble of them
+came up the long walls of firs and maples with a strange, half-moaning
+sound--all else was still.  He came down until he was opposite the spot
+where his English picket was posted, and then he halted and surveyed his
+ground.
+
+Nothing human in sight, no sound of life, no sign of habitation.  At this
+moment, however, his stupidity in thus rushing into danger, the
+foolishness of pursuing a woman whom he had never seen, and a French
+woman at that, the punishment that would be meted out to him if his
+adventure was discovered--all these came to him.
+
+They stunned him for a moment, and then presently, as if in defiance of
+his own thoughts, he began to sing softly:
+
+"Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre."
+
+Suddenly, in one confused moment, he was seized, and a hand was clapped
+over his mouth.  Three French soldiers had him in their grip-stalwart
+fellows they were, of the Regiment of Bearn.  He had no strength to cope
+with them, he at once saw the futility of crying out, so he played the
+eel, and tried to slip from the grasp of his captors.  But though he gave
+the trio an awkward five minutes he was at last entirely overcome, and
+was carried away in triumph through the woods.  More than once they
+passed a sentry, and more than once campfires round which soldiers slept
+or dozed.  Now and again one would raise his head, and with a laugh, or a
+"Sapristi!" or a "Sacre bleu!" drop back into comfort again.
+
+After about ten minutes' walk he was brought to a small wooden house, the
+door was thrown open, he was tossed inside, and the soldiers entered
+after.  The room was empty save for a bench, some shelves, a table, on
+which a lantern burned, and a rude crucifix on the wall.  McGilveray sat
+down on the bench, and in five minutes his feet were shackled, while a
+chain fastened to a staple in the wall held him in secure captivity.
+
+"How you like yourself now?" asked a huge French corporal who had
+learned English from an English girl at St. Malo years before.
+
+"If you'd tie a bit o' pink ribbon round me neck, I'd die wid pride,"
+said McGilveray, spitting on the ground in defiance at the same time.
+
+The big soldier laughed, and told his comrades what the bandmaster had
+said.  One of them grinned, but the other frowned sullenly, and said:
+
+"Avez vous tabac?"
+
+"Havey you to-ba-co?" said the big soldier instantly--interpreting.
+
+"Not for a Johnny Crapaud like you, and put that in your pipe and shmoke
+it!" said McGilveray, winking at the big fellow, and spitting on the
+ground before the surly one, who made a motion as if he would bayonet
+McGilveray where he sat.
+
+"He shall die--the cursed English soldier," said Johnny Crapaud.
+
+"Some other day will do," said McGilveray.  "What does he say?" asked
+Johnny Crapaud.
+
+"He says he'll give each of us three pounds of tobacco, if we let him
+go," answered the corporal.  McGilveray knew by the corporal's voice that
+he was lying, and he also knew that, somehow, he had made a friend.
+
+"Y'are lyin', me darlin', me bloody beauty!" interposed McGilveray.
+
+"If we don't take him to headquarters now he'll send across and get the
+tobacco," interpreted the corporal to Johnny Crapaud.
+
+"If he doesn't get the tobacco he'll be hung for a spy," said Johnny
+Crapaud, turning on his heel.  "Do we all agree?" said the corporal.
+
+The others nodded their heads, and, as they went out, McGilveray said
+after them:
+
+"I'll dance a jig on yer sepulchrees, ye swobs!" he roared, and he spat
+on the ground again in defiance.  Johnny Crapaud turned to the corporal.
+
+"I'll kill him very dead," said he, "if that tobacco doesn't come.  You
+tell him so," he added, jerking a thumb towards McGilveray.  "You tell
+him so."
+
+The corporal stayed when the others went out, and, in broken English,
+told McGilveray so.
+
+"I'll play a hornpipe, an' his gory shroud is round him," said
+McGilveray.
+
+The corporal grinned from ear to ear.  "You like a chew tabac?" said he,
+pulling out a dirty knob of a black plug.
+
+McGilveray had found a man after his own heart.  "Sing a song
+a-sixpence," said he, "what sort's that for a gintleman an' a corporal,
+too?  Feel in me trousies pocket," said he, "which is fur me frinds for
+iver."  McGilveray had now hopes of getting free, but if he had not taken
+a fancy to "me baby corporal," as he called the Frenchman, he would have
+made escape or release impossible, by insulting him and every one of them
+as quick as winking.
+
+After the corporal had emptied one pocket, "Now the other, man-o-wee-
+wee!" said McGilveray, and presently the two were drinking what the
+flask from the "trousies pocket" contained.  So well did McGilveray work
+upon the Frenchman's bonhomie that the corporal promised he should
+escape.  He explained how McGilveray should be freed--that at midnight
+some one would come and release him, while he, the corporal, was with his
+companions, so avoiding suspicion as to his own complicity.  McGilveray
+and the corporal were to meet again and exchange courtesies after the
+manner of brothers--if the fortunes of war permitted.
+
+McGilveray was left alone.  To while away the time he began to whistle to
+himself, and what with whistling, and what with winking and talking to
+the lantern on the table, and calling himself painful names, he endured
+his captivity well enough.
+
+It was near midnight when the lock turned in the door and presently
+stepped inside--a girl.
+
+"Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre," said she, and nodded her head to him
+humorously.
+
+By this McGilveray knew that this was the maid that had got him into all
+this trouble.  At first he was inclined to say so, but she came nearer,
+and one look of her black eyes changed all that.
+
+"You've a way wid you, me darlin'," said McGilveray, not thinking that
+she might understand.
+
+"A leetla way of my own," she answered in broken English.
+
+McGilveray started.  "Where did you learn it?" he asked, for he had had
+two surprises that night.
+
+"Of my mother--at St. Malo," she replied.  "She was half English--of
+Jersey.  You are a naughty boy," she added, with a little gurgle of
+laughter in her throat.  "You are not a good soldier to go a-chase of the
+French girls 'cross of the river."
+
+"Shure I am not a good soldier thin.  Music's me game.  An' the band of
+Anstruther's rigimint's mine."
+
+"You can play tunes on a drum?" she asked, mischievously.
+
+"There's wan I'd play to the voice av you," he said, in his softest
+brogue.  "You'll be unloosin' me, darlin'?" he added.
+
+She stooped to undo the shackles on his ankles.  As she did so he leaned
+over as if to kiss her.  She threw back her head in disgust.
+
+"You have been drink," she said, and she stopped her work of freeing him.
+
+"What'd wet your eye--no more," he answered.  She stood up.  "I will
+not," she said, pointing to the shackles, "if you drink some more--nevare
+some more--nevare!"
+
+"Divil a drop thin, darlin', till we fly our flag yander," pointing
+towards where he supposed the town to be.
+
+"Not till then?" she asked, with a merry little sneer.  "Ver' well, it
+is comme ca!"  She held out her hand.  Then she burst into a soft laugh,
+for his hands were tied.  "Let me kiss it," he said, bending forward.
+
+"No, no, no," she said.  "We will shake our hands after," and she
+stooped, took off the shackles, and freed his arms.
+
+"Now if you like," she said, and they shook hands as McGilveray stood up
+and threw out his chest.  But, try as he would to look important, she was
+still an inch taller than he.
+
+A few moments later they were hurrying quietly through the woods, to the
+river.  There was no speaking.  There was only the escaping prisoner and
+the gay-hearted girl speeding along in the night, the mumbling of the
+quiet cascade in their ears, the shifting moon playing hide-and-seek with
+the clouds.  They came out on the bank a distance above where McGilveray
+had landed, and the girl paused and spoke in a whisper.  "It is more hard
+now," she said.  "Here is a boat, and I must paddle--you would go to
+splash.  Sit still and be good."
+
+She loosed the boat into the current gently, and, holding it, motioned to
+him to enter.
+
+"You're goin' to row me over?" he asked, incredulously.
+
+"'Sh!  get in," she said.
+
+"Shtrike me crazy, no!" said McGilveray.  "Divil a step will I go.  Let
+me that sowed the storm take the whirlwind."  He threw out his chest.
+
+"What is it you came here for?" she asked, with meaning.
+
+"Yourself an' the mockin' bird in yer voice," he answered.
+
+"Then that is enough," she said.  "You come for me, I go for you.  Get
+in."
+
+A moment afterwards, taking advantage of the obscured moon, they were
+carried out on the current diagonally down the stream, and came quickly
+to that point on the shore where an English picket was placed.  They had
+scarcely touched the shore when the click of a musket was heard, and a
+"Qui-va-la?" came from the thicket.
+
+McGilveray gave the pass-word, and presently he was on the bank saluting
+the sentry he had left three hours before.
+
+"Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre!" said the girl again with a gay
+insolence, and pushed the boat out into the stream.
+
+"A minnit, a minnit, me darlin'," said McGilveray.
+
+"Keep your promise," came back, softly.
+
+"Ah, come back wan minnit!"
+
+"A flirt!" said the sentry.
+
+"You will pay for that," said the girl to the sentry, with quick anger.
+
+"Do you love me, Irishman?" she added, to McGilveray.
+
+"I do--aw, wurra, wurra, I do!" said McGilveray.  "Then you come and get
+me by ze front door of ze city," said she, and a couple of quick strokes
+sent her canoe out into the dusky middle of the stream; and she was soon
+lost to view.
+
+"Aw, the loike o' that!  Aw, the foine av her-the tip-top lass o' the
+wide world!" said he.
+
+"You're a fool, an' there'll be trouble from this," said the sentry.
+
+There was trouble, for two hours later the sentry was found dead; picked
+off by a bullet from the other shore when he showed himself in the
+moonlight; and from that hour all friendliness between the pickets of the
+English and the French ceased on the Montmorenci.
+
+But the one witness to McGilveray's adventure was dead, and that was why
+no man knew wherefore it was that McGilveray took an oath to drink no
+more till they captured Quebec.
+
+From May to September McGilveray kept to his resolution.  But for all
+that time he never saw "the tip-top lass o' the wide world."  A time
+came, however, when McGilveray's last state was worse than his first, and
+that was the evening before the day Quebec was taken.  A dozen prisoners
+had been captured in a sortie from the Isle of Orleans to the mouth of
+the St. Charles River.  Among these prisoners was the grinning corporal
+who had captured McGilveray and then released him.
+
+Two strange things happened.  The big, grinning corporal escaped from
+captivity the same night, and McGilveray, as a non-com said, "Got
+shameful drunk."  This is one explanation of the two things.  McGilveray
+had assisted the grinning corporal to escape.  The other explanation
+belongs to the end of the story.  In any case, McGilveray "got shameful
+drunk," and "was going large" through the camp.  The end of it was his
+arrest for assisting a prisoner to escape and for being drunk and
+disorderly.  The band of Anstruther's regiment boarded H.M.S. Leostaf
+without him, to proceed up the river stealthily with the rest of the
+fleet to Cap Rouge, from whence the last great effort of the heroic Wolfe
+to effect a landing was to be made.  McGilveray, still intoxicated but
+intelligent, watched them go in silence.
+
+As General Wolfe was about to enter the boat which was to convey him to
+the flag-ship, he saw McGilveray, who was waiting under guard to be taken
+to Major Hardy's post at Point Levis.  The General knew him well, and
+looked at him half sadly, half sternly.
+
+"I knew you were free with drink, McGilveray," he said, "but I did not
+think you were a traitor to your country too."
+
+McGilveray saluted, and did not answer.
+
+"You might have waited till after to-morrow, man," said the General, his
+eyes flashing.  "My soldiers should have good music to-morrow."
+
+McGilveray saluted again, but made no answer.
+
+As if with a sudden thought the General waved off the officers and men
+near him, and betkcned McGilveray to him.
+
+"I can understand the drink in a bad soldier," he said, "but you helped a
+prisoner to escape.  Come, man, we may both be dead to-morrow, and I'd
+like to feel that no soldier in my army is wilfully a foe of his
+country."
+
+"He did the same for me, whin I was taken prisoner, yer Excillincy, an'
+--an', yer Excillincy, 'twas a matter of a woman, too."
+
+The General's face relaxed a little.  "Tell me the whole truth," said he;
+and McGilveray told him all.  "Ah, yer Excillincy," he burst out, at
+last, "I was no traitor at heart, but a fool I always was!  Yer
+Excillincy, court-martial and death's no matter to me; but I'd like to
+play wan toon agin, to lead the byes tomorrow.  Wan toon, Gineral, an'
+I'll be dacintly shot before the day's over-ah, yer Excillincy, wan toon
+more, and to be wid the byes followin' the Gineral!"
+
+The General's face relaxed still more.
+
+"I take you at your word," said he.  He gave orders that McGilveray
+should proceed at once aboard the flag-ship, from whence he should join
+Anstruther's regiment at Cap Rouge.
+
+The General entered the boat, and McGilveray followed with some non-com.
+officers in another.  It was now quite dark, and their motions, or the
+motions of the vessels of war, could not be seen from the French
+encampment or the citadel.  They neared the flag-ship, and the General,
+followed by his officers, climbed up.  Then the men in McGilveray's boat
+climbed up also, until only himself and another were left.
+
+At that moment the General, looking down from the side of the ship, said
+sharply to an officer beside him: "What's that?"
+
+He pointed to a dark object floating near the ship, from which presently
+came a small light with a hissing sound.
+
+"It's a fire-organ, sir," was the reply.
+
+A fire-organ was a raft, carrying long tubes like the pipes of an organ,
+and filled with explosives.  They were used by the French to send among
+the vessels of the British fleet to disorganise and destroy them.  The
+little light which the General saw was the burning fuse.  The raft had
+been brought out into the current by French sailors, the fuse had been
+lighted, and it was headed to drift towards the British ships.  The fleet
+was now in motion, and apart from the havoc which the bursting fire-organ
+might make, the light from the explosion would reveal the fact that the
+English men-o'-war were now moving towards Cap Rouge.  This knowledge
+would enable Montcalm to detect Wolfe's purpose, and he would at once
+move his army in that direction.  The west side of the town had meagre
+military defenses, the great cliffs being thought impregnable.  But at
+this point Wolfe had discovered a narrow path up a steep cliff.
+
+McGilveray had seen the fire-organ at the same moment as the General.
+"Get up the side," he said to the remaining soldier in his boat.  The
+soldier began climbing, and McGilveray caught the oars and was instantly
+away towards the raft.  The General, looking over the ship's side,
+understood his daring purpose.  In the shadow, they saw him near it, they
+saw him throw a boat-hook and catch it, and then attach a rope; they saw
+him sit down, and, taking the oars, laboriously row up-stream toward the
+opposite shore, the fuse burning softly, somewhere among the great pipes
+of explosives.  McGilveray knew that it might be impossible to reach the
+fuse--there was no time to spare, and he had set about to row the
+devilish machine out of range of the vessels which were carrying Wolfe's
+army to a forlorn hope.
+
+For minutes those on board the man-o'-war watched and listened.
+Presently nothing could be seen, not even the small glimmer from the
+burning fuse.
+
+Then, all at once, there was a terrible report, and the organ pipes
+belched their hellish music upon the sea.  Within the circle of light
+that the explosion made, there was no sign of any ship; but, strangely
+tall in the red glare, stood McGilveray in his boat.  An instant he stood
+so, then he fell, and presently darkness covered the scene.  The furious
+music of death and war was over.  There was silence on the ship for a
+time as all watched and waited.  Presently an officer said to the
+General: "I'm afraid he's gone, sir."
+
+"Send a boat to search," was the reply.  "If he is dead"--the General
+took off his hat "we will, please God, bury him within the French citadel
+to-morrow."
+
+But McGilveray was alive, and in half-an-hour he was brought aboard the
+flag-ship, safe and sober.  The General praised him for his courage, and
+told him that the charge against him should be withdrawn.
+
+"You've wiped all out, McGilveray," said Wolfe.  "We see you are no
+traitor."
+
+"Only a fool of a bandmaster who wanted wan toon more, yer Excillincy,"
+said McGilveray.
+
+"Beware drink, beware women," answered the General.
+
+But advice of that sort is thrown away on such as McGilveray.  The next
+evening after Quebec was taken, and McGilveray went in at the head of his
+men playing "The Men of Harlech," he met in the streets the woman that
+had nearly been the cause of his undoing.  Indignation threw out his
+chest.
+
+"It's you, thin," he said, and he tried to look scornfully at her.
+
+"Have you keep your promise?" she said, hardly above her breath.
+
+"What's that to you?" he asked, his eyes firing up.  "I got drunk last
+night--afther I set your husband free--afther he tould me you was his
+wife.  We're aven now, decaver!  I saved him, and the divil give you joy
+of that salvation--and that husband, say I."
+
+"Hoosban'--" she exclaimed, "who was my hoosban'?"
+
+"The big grinning corporal," he answered.
+
+"He is shot this morning," she said, her face darkening, "and, besides,
+he was--nevare--my hoosban'."
+
+"He said he was," replied McGilveray, eagerly.
+
+"He was awway a liar," she answered.
+
+"He decaved you too, thin?" asked McGilveray, his face growing red.
+
+She did not answer, but all at once a change came over her, the half-
+mocking smile left her lips, tears suddenly ran down her cheeks, and
+without a word she turned and hurried into a little alley, and was lost
+to view, leaving McGilveray amazed and confounded.
+
+It was days before he found her again, and three things only that they
+said are of any moment here.  "We'll lave the past behind us," he said-
+"an' the pit below for me, if I'm not a good husband t' ye!"
+
+"You will not drink no more?" she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Not till the Frenchies take Quebec again," he answered.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+We'll lave the past behind us
+The furious music of death and war was over
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LANE HAD NO TURNING, PARKER, V4 ***
+
+********** This file should be named 6240.txt or 6240.zip **********
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