le my life on that, Carrigan!"

And because the Chief of Division with sixty years of experience behind
him, had believed that, Carmin Fanchet had not been held as an
accomplice in her brother's evildoing, but had gone back into her
wilderness uncrucified by the law that had demanded the life of her
brother. He would never forget the last time he had seen Carmin
Fanchet's eyes--great, black, glorious pools of gratitude as they
looked at grizzled old McVane; blazing fires of venomous hatred when
they turned on him. And he had said to McVane,

"The man pays, the woman goes--justice indeed is blind!"

McVane, not being a stickler on regulations when it came to Carrigan,
had made no answer.

The incident came back vividly to David as he waited for the promised
coming of Bateese. He began to appreciate McVane's point of view, and
it was comforting, because he realized that his own logic was
assailable. If McVane had been comparing the two women now, he knew
what his argument would be. There had been no absolute proof of crime
against Carmin Fanchet, unless to fight desperately for the life of her
brother was a crime. In the case of Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain there was
proof. She had tried to kill. Therefore, of the two, Carmin Fanchet
would have been the better woman in the eyes of McVane.

In spite of the legal force of the argument which he was bringing
against himself, David felt unconvinced. Carmin Fanchet, had she been
in the place of St. Pierre's wife, would have finished him there in the
sand. She would have realized the menace of letting him live and would
probably have commanded Bateese to dump him in the river. St. Pierre's
wife had gone to the other extreme. She was not only repentant, but was
making restitution, for her mistake, and in making that restitution had
crossed far beyond the dead-line of caution. She had frankly told him
who she was; she had brought him into the privacy of what was
undeniably her own home; in her desire to undo what she had done she
had hopelessly enmeshed herself in the net of the Law--if that Law saw
fit to act. She had done these things with courage and conviction. And
of such a woman, Carrigan thought, St. Pierre must be very proud.

He looked slowly about the cabin again and each thing that he saw was a
living voice breaking up a dream for him. These voices told him that he
was in a temple built because of a man's worship for a woman--and that
man was St. Pierre. Through the