ed her face in her hands, falling on her
knees beside the chair.

He bent above her: "You loved the young avocat better, eight years ago."

She sprang to her feet. "Ah, now I understand," she said. "That was why
you quarrelled with me; why you deserted me. You were not man enough to
say what made you so much the--so wicked and hard, so--"

"Be thankful, Lucy, that I did not kill you then," he interjected.

"But it is a lie," she cried; "a lie!"

She went to the door and called the Indian woman. "Ikni," she said. "He
dares to say evil of Andre and me. Think--of Andre!"

Ikni came to him, put her wrinkled face close to his, and said: "She
was yours, only yours; but the spirits gave you a devil. Andre, oh, oh,
Andre! The father of Andre was her father--ah, that makes your sulky
eyes to open. Ikni knows how to speak. Ikni nursed them both. If you had
waited you should have known. But you ran away like a wolf from a coal
of fire; you shammed death like a fox; you come back like the snake to
crawl into the house and strike with poison tooth, when you should be
with the worms in the ground. But Ikni knows--you shall be struck with
poison too, the Spirit of the Red Knife waits for you. Andre was her
brother."

He pushed her aside savagely: "Be still!" he said. "Get out-quick.
'Sacre'--quick!"

When they were alone again he continued with no anger in his tone: "So,
Andre the avocat and you--that, eh? Well, you see how much trouble has
come; and now this other--a secret too. When were you married to Shon
McGann?"

"Last night," she bitterly replied; "a priest came over from the Indian
village."

"Last night," he musingly repeated. "Last night I lost two thousand
dollars at the Little Goshen field. I did not play well last night; I
was nervous. In ten years I had not lost so much at one game as I did
last night. It was a punishment for playing too honest, or something;
eh, what do you think, Lucy--or something, 'hein?'"

She said nothing, but rocked her body to and fro.

"Why did you not make known the marriage with Shon?"

"He was to have told it to-night," she said.

There was silence for a moment, then a thought flashed into his
eyes, and he rejoined with a jarring laugh, "Well, I will play a game
to-night, Lucy Rives; such a game that Pretty Pierre will never be
forgotten in the Pipi Valley--a beautiful game, just for two. And the
other who will play--the wife of Francois Rives shall see if she will
wait; but