t dat hoodoo, little Mas'?" he demanded of me as I passed
into the hall beneath the candle in a tall stand of silver which he
held high over my head.

"Yes, good Cato," I made answer to him and I was indeed glad that I
had now of a habit put his gift under the heel of my left foot. It
gave me great courage.

"De Governor is up in his room and you kin go right up. I never heard
of no such doings as is going on in dis house dis night with that
there wild man with a gun five feet long, coming and going like de
wind. Go on up, honey, and see what you kin do to dem with dat
hoodoo." With which information good Cato started me up the stairs.
"First door to the right, front, and don't knock," he called in a
whisper that might have come from his tomb in death as he slowly
retired into the darkness below with his candle.

For a very long minute I stood before that door in the dim light that
came through one of the wide windows from the moon without.

"What is this madness that you perform, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and
Bye?" I made demand of myself while my knees trembled in the trousers
of heavy gray worsted.

"Robert Carruthers goes to his chief in an hour of need and he is
descended of that Madam Donaldson who had no fear of the Indian or the
bear when there was danger to her beloved," I made answer to myself
and softly I turned the handle of that door and entered the room of
the Gouverneur Faulkner.

"Is that you, Robert?" came a question in his voice from a large table
over by the window. The room was entirely in shadow, except for the
shaded light upon the table, under whose rays I remarked the head and
shoulders of that Gouverneur Faulkner, at whose bidding I had come out
into the dead of the night. "Come over here and walk softly, so as not
to stir up Jenkins," he commanded me and I went immediately to his
side, even if I did experience a difficulty in the breath of Roberta,
Marquise of Grez and Bye.

"What is it that you wish, my Gouverneur Faulkner?" I asked as I
looked down upon him as he sat with a paper in his hand regarding it
intently. And as I looked I observed that he, as well as I, had not
entirely disrobed after that very brilliant reception. He had
discarded his coat of the raven and also what is called a vest in
America, and he was very beautiful to me in the whiteness of his very
fine linen above which his dark bronze hair with its silver crests,
that I had always observed to be in a very sleek ord