ed in those furs for which he had staked his life like many a
gamester of the wilderness, M. Picot lay buried in that sandy stretch
outside the cave door. Turning to lead Hortense away before Le Borgne
and the blackamoor began filling the grave, I found her stonily silent
and tearless.

But it was she who led me.

Scrambling up the hillside like a chamois of the mountains, she flitted
lightly through the greening to a small open where campers had built
night fires. Her quick glance ran from tree to tree. Some wood-runner
had blazed a trail by notching the bark. Pausing, she turned with the
frank, fearless look of the wilderness woman. She was no longer the
elusive Hortense of secluded life. A change had come--the change of
the hothouse plant set out to the bufferings of the four winds of
heaven to perish from weakness or gather strength from hardship. Your
woman of older lands must hood fair eyes, perforce, lest evil masking
under other eyes give wrong intent to candour; but in the wilderness
each life stands stripped of pretence, honestly good or evil, bare at
what it is; and purity clear as the noonday sun needs no trick of
custom to make it plainer.

"Is not this the place?" she asked.

Looking closer, from shrub to open, I recognised the ground of that
night attack in the woods.

"Hortense, then it was you that I saw at the fire with the others?"

She nodded assent. She had not uttered one word to explain how she
came to that wild land; nor had I asked.

"It was you who pleaded for my life in the cave below my feet?"

"I did not know you had heard! I only sent Le Borgne to bring you
back!"

"I hid as he passed."

"But I sent a message to the fort----"

"Not to be bitten by the same dog twice--I thought that meant to keep
away?"

"What?" asked Hortense, passing her hand over her eyes. "Was that the
message he gave you? Then monsieur had bribed him! I sent for you to
come to us. Oh, that is the reason you never came----"

"And that is the reason you have hidden from me all the year and never
sent me word?"

"I thought--I thought--" She turned away. "Ben Gillam told monsieur
you had left Boston on our account----"

"And you thought I wanted to avoid you----"

"I did not blame you," she said. "Indeed, indeed, I was very
weak--monsieur must have bribed Le Borgne--I sent word again and
again--but you never answered!"

"How could you misunderstand--O Hortense, after that night in the