this young
Whiting!"

Ruth bit back an angry protest, and schooled herself to listen quietly
as he led her to a seat.

As they left the other girl standing in the middle of the platform,
Ruth, looking back, caught a swift glance of what she knew was
jealous anger in her eyes. Ruth was sorry. She did not want to make an
enemy of this girl. But she felt that she must use every effort to get
this man to tell her all he would.

"One rascal, I tell you," repeated Gadbeau. "First he stop all the
people. He say don' sell nodding. Den he sell his own farm, him. He
sell some more; he got big price. Now he skip the country, right out.
An' he leave these poor French people in the soup.

"But I"--he sat back tapping himself on the chest--"I got hinfluence
with that railroad. They buy now from us. To-morrow morning, nine
o'clock, here comes that railroad lawyer on French Village. We sell
out everything on the option to him."

"But," objected Ruth, trying to draw him out, "if Jeffrey Whiting
should come back before then?"

"He don' come back, that fellow."

"How do you know?"

"I know, I-- He don' come back. I tell you that."

"Jeffrey Whiting will be here before nine o'clock to-morrow," she
said, turning suddenly upon him.

"Eh? M'm'selle, what you mean? What you know?" he questioned
excitedly.

"Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at us," she smiled as she
arose, "and I think you are in for a lecture."

Through all the long day, while she ate and listened to the fun and
talked to Father Ponfret about her convent life, she did not let Rafe
Gadbeau out of her sight or mind for an instant. She knew that she had
alarmed him. She was certain that he knew what had happened to Jeffrey
Whiting. And she was waiting for him to betray himself in some way.

When Arsene LaComb rang the bell for Vespers, she waited by the bell
ringer to see that Gadbeau came into the church. He took his place
among the men, and then Ruth dropped quietly into a pew near the door.
When the people rose to sing the _Tantum Ergo_, she saw Gadbeau slip
unnoticed out of the church. She waited tensely until the singing was
finished, then she almost ran to the door.

Gadbeau, mounted on one of the ponies that had been standing all day
in the little woods, was riding away in the direction of the trail
which she had come down this morning. She fairly flew down the street
to Arsene LaComb's store. There was not a pony in the hills that Brom
Bones co