en stood abashed before her agony. Behind the little door where
she stood there was a muffled groaning. She trembled, but her arms
were spread out before the door as though on a cross, and her lips kept
murmuring: "O God, let him die! Let him die! Oh spare him agony!"

Suddenly she stood still and listened-listened, with staring eyes that
saw nothing. In the room men shrank back, for they knew that death was
behind the little door, and that they were in the presence of a sorrow
greater than death.

Suddenly she turned upon them with a gesture of piteous triumph and
said:

"You cannot have him now."

Then she swayed and fell forward to the floor as the Cure and George
Fournel entered the room. The Cure hastened to her side and lifted up
her head.

George Fournel pushed the men back who would have entered the bath-room,
and himself, bursting the door open, entered. Louis lay dead upon the
floor. He turned to the constables.

"As she said, you cannot have him now. You have no right here. Go. I had
a warning from the man he killed. I knew there would be trouble. But I
have come too late," he added bitterly.

An hour later the house was as still as the grave. Madame Marie sat with
the doctor beside the bed of her dear mistress, and in another room,
George Fournel, with the Avocat, kept watch beside the body of the
Seigneur of Pontiac. The face of the dead man was as peaceful as that of
a little child.

.........................

At ninety years of age, the present Seigneur of Pontiac, one Baron
Fournel, lives in the Manor House left him by Madelinette Lajeunesse the
great singer, when she died a quarter of a century ago. For thirty years
he followed her from capital to capital of Europe and America to hear
her sing; and to this day he talks of her in language more French
than English in its ardour. Perhaps that is because his heart beats in
sympathy with the Frenchmen he once disdained.

THE ABSURD ROMANCE OF P'TITE LOUISON

The five brothers lived with Louison, three miles from Pontiac, and
Medallion came to know them first through having sold them, at an
auction, a slice of an adjoining farm. He had been invited to their
home, intimacy had grown, and afterwards, stricken with a severe
illness, he had been taken into the household and kept there till he was
well again. The night of his arrival, Louison, the sister, stood with
a brother on either hand--Octave and Florian--and received him with
a c