st--temporarily at least--in Black Roger Audemard. Not long ago
the one question to which, above all others, he had desired an answer
was, why had Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain worked so desperately to kill
him and so hard to save him afterward? Now, as he looked about him, the
question which repeated itself insistently was, what relationship did
she bear to this mysterious lord of the north, St. Pierre?

Undoubtedly she was his daughter, for whom St. Pierre had built this
luxurious barge of state. A fierce-blooded offspring, he thought, one
like Cleopatra herself, not afraid to kill--and equally quick to make
amends when there was a mistake.

There came the quiet opening of the cabin door to break in upon his
thought. He hoped it was Jeanne Marie-Anne returning to him. It was
Nepapinas. The old Indian stood over him for a moment and put a cold,
claw-like hand to his forehead. He grunted and nodded his head, his
little sunken eyes gleaming with satisfaction. Then he put his hands
under David's arms and lifted him until he was sitting upright, with
three or four pillows at his back.

"Thanks," said Carrigan. "That makes me feel better. And--if you don't
mind--my last lunch was three days ago, boiled prunes and a piece of
bannock--"

"I have brought you something to eat, M'sieu David," broke in a soft
voice behind him.

Nepapinas slipped away, and Jeanne Marie-Anne stood in his place. David
stared up at her, speechless. He heard the door close behind the old
Indian. Then Jeanne Marie-Anne drew up a chair, so that for the first
time he could see her clear eyes with the light of day full upon her.

He forgot that a few days ago she had been his deadliest enemy. He
forgot the existence of a man named Black Roger Audemard. Her slimness
was as it had pictured itself to him in the hot sands. Her hair was as
he had seen it there. It was coiled upon her head like ropes of spun
silk, jet-black, glowing softly. But it was her eyes he stared at, and
so fixed was his look that the red lips trembled a bit on the verge of
a smile. She was not embarrassed. There was no color in the clear
whiteness of her skin, except that redness of her lips.

"I thought you had black eyes," he said bluntly. "I'm glad you haven't.
I don't like them. Yours are as brown as--as--"

"Please, m'sieu," she interrupted him, sitting down close beside him.
"Will you eat--now?"

A spoon was at his mouth, and he was forced to take it in or have its
contents