s of my uncle? Did that
explain why my life had been three times spared? One code of morals
for the church and another for the trade is the way of many a man; but
would the agents of a Puritan deacon murder a rival in the dark of a
forest, or lead Indians to massacre the crew of partners, or take furs
gotten at the price of a tribe's extermination?

Turning that question over, I heard the inner door-flap lift. There
was no time to regain the couch, but a quick swerve took me out of the
firelight in the shadow of a great wolfskin against the wall. You will
laugh at the old idea of honour, but I had promised not to spy, and I
never raised my eyes from the floor. There was no sound but the
gurgling of the spring in the dark and the sharp crackle of the flame.

Thinking the wind had blown the flap, I stepped from hiding. Something
vague as mist held back in shadow. The lines of a white-clad figure
etched themselves against the cave wall. It floated out, paused, moved
forward.

Then I remember clutching at the wolfskin like one clinching a
death-grip of reality, praying God not to let go a soul's anchor-hold
of reason.

For when the figure glided into the slant blue rays of the shafted
flame it was Hortense--the Hortense of the dreams, sweet as the child,
grave as the grown woman-Hortense with closed eyes and moving lips and
hands feeling out in the dark as if playing invisible keys.

She was asleep.

Then came the flash that lighted the clouds of the past.

The interloper, the pirate, the leader of Indian marauders, the
defrauder of his partners, was M. Picot, the French doctor, whom Boston
had outlawed, and who was now outlawing their outlawry. We do not
reason out our conclusions, as I said before. At our supremest moments
we do not _think_. Consciousness leaps from summit to summit like the
forked lightnings across the mountain-peaks; and the mysteries of life
are illumined as a spread-out scroll. In that moment of joy and fear
and horror, as I crouched back to the wall, I did not _think_. I
_knew_--knew the meaning of all M. Picot's questionings on the fur
trade; of that murderous attack in the dark when an antagonist flung
down his weapon; of the spying through the frosted woods; of the
figures in the white darkness; of the attempt to destroy Ben Gillam's
fort; of the rescue from the crest of the hill; and of all those
strange delirious dreams.

It was as if the past focused itself to one flaming