man, a stranger among
its companions, because it was of the present. Philip stepped to one
side, so that the light from the lamp shone from behind him, and he
wondered if the picture had been condemned to hang with its face to the
wall because it typified the existent rather than the past. He looked
more closely, and drew back step by step, until he was in the proper
focus to bring out every expression in the lovely face. In the picture
he saw each moment a greater resemblance to Jeanne. The eyes, the hair,
the sweetness of the mouth, the smile, brought to him a vision of
Jeanne herself. The woman in the picture was older than Jeanne, and his
first thought was that it must be a sister, or her mother. It came to
him in the next breath that this would be impossible, for Jeanne had
been found by Pierre in the deep snows, on her dead mother's breast.
And this was a painting of life, of youth, of beauty, and not of death
and starvation.

He returned the forbidden picture to the position in which he had found
it against the wall, half ashamed of the act and thoughts into which
his curiosity had led him. And yet, after all, it was not curiosity. He
told himself that as he washed himself and groomed his disheveled
clothes.

An hour had passed when he heard a low tap at the door, and Pierre came
in. In that time the half-breed had undergone a transformation. He was
dressed in an exquisite coat of yellow buckskin, with the same
old-fashioned cuffs he had worn when Philip first saw him, trousers of
the same material, buckled below the knees, and boot-moccasins with
flaring tops. He wore a new rapier at his waist, and his glossy black
hair was brushed smoothly back, and fell loose upon his shoulders. It
was the courtier, and not Pierre the half-breed, who bowed to Philip.

"M'sieur, are you ready?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Philip.

"Then we will go to M'sieur d'Arcambal, the master of Fort o' God."

They passed out into the hall, which was faintly illumined now, so that
Philip caught glimpses of deep shadows and massive doors as he followed
behind Pierre. They turned into a second hall, at the end of which was
an open door through which came a flood of light. At this door Pierre
stopped, and with a bow allowed his companion to pass in ahead of him.
The next moment Philip stood in a room twice as large as the one he had
left. It was brilliantly lighted by three or four lamps; he had only an
instant's vision of numberless she