ded in due time to
put these fellows all out of his way. There were other matters as vital
to Rice Jones. Young Pierre Menard hovered vainly about him. The moment
Maria left him a squad of country politicians surrounded their political
leader, and he did some effectual work for his party by the light of the
St. John fire.

Darkness grew outside the irregular radiance of that pile, and the night
concert of insects could be heard as an interlude between children's
shouts and the hum of voices. Peggy Morrison's lifted finger caught
Maria's glance. It was an imperative gesture, meaning haste and secrecy,
and separation from her brother Rice. Maria laughed and shook her head
wistfully. The girlish pastimes of Midsummer Night were all done for
her. She thought of nights in her own wild county of Merionethshire,
when she had run, palpitating like a hare, to try some spell or charm
which might reveal the future to her; and now it was revealed.

An apparition from the other hemisphere came upon her that instant. She
saw a man standing by the friar's booth looking at her. What his eyes
said she could not, through her shimmering and deadly faintness,
perceive. How could he be here in Kaskaskia? The shock of seeing him
annihilated physical weakness in her. She stood on limbs of stone. Her
hand on her brother's arm did not tremble; but a pinched blueness spread
about her nostrils and eye sockets, and dinted sudden hollows in her
temples.

Dr. Dunlap took a step toward her. At that, she looked around for some
place to hide in, the animal instinct of flight arising first, and
darted from her brother into the graveyard. Rice beheld this freak with
quizzical surprise, but he had noted the disappearance of more than one
maid through that gate, and was glad to have Maria with them.

"Come on," whispered Peggy, seizing her. "Clarice Vigo has gone to fetch
Angelique, and then we shall be ready."

Behind the church, speaking all together like a chorus of blackbirds,
the girls were clustered, out of the bonfire's light. French and English
voices debated.

"Oh, I wouldn't do such a thing."

"Your mother did it when she was a girl."

"But the young men may find it out and follow."

"Then we'll run."

"I'm afraid to go so far in the dark."

"What, to the old Jesuit College?"

"It isn't very dark, and our old Dinah will go with us; she's waiting
outside the fence."

"But my father says none of our Indians are to be trusted in the