she must be patient, more patient than her husband was ten
years ago."

"What will you do--tell me, what will you do?"

"I will play a game of cards--just one magnificent game; and the cards
shall settle it. All shall be quite fair, as when you and I played
in the little house by the Chaudiere--at first, Lucy,--before I was a
devil."

Was this peculiar softness to his last tones assumed or real? She looked
at him inquiringly; but he moved away to the window, and stood gazing
down the hillside towards the town below. His eyes smarted.

"I will die," she said to herself in whispers--"I will die." A minute
passed, and then Pierre turned and said to her: "Lucy, he is coming up
the hill. Listen. If you tell him that I have seen you, I will shoot him
on sight, dead. You would save him, for a little, for an hour or two--or
more? Well, do as I say; for these things must be according to the rules
of the game, and I myself will tell him all at the Saints' Repose. He
gave me the lie there, and I will tell him the truth before them all
there. Will you do as I say?"

She hesitated an instant, and then replied: "I will not tell him."

"There is only one way, then," he continued. "You must go at once from
here into the woods behind there, and not see him at all. Then at ten
o'clock you will come to the Saints' Repose, if you choose, to know how
the game has ended."

She was trembling, moaning, no longer. A set look had come into her
face; her eyes were steady and hard. She quietly replied: "Yes, I shall
be there."

He came to her, took her hand, and drew from her finger the wedding-ring
which last night Shon McGann had placed there. She submitted passively.
Then, with an upward wave of his fingers, he spoke in a mocking
lightness, but without any of the malice which had first appeared in his
tones, words from an old French song:

"I say no more, my lady
Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine!
I say no more, my lady,
As nought more can be said."

He opened the door, motioned to the Indian woman, and, in a few moments,
the broken-hearted Lucy Rives and her companion were hidden in the
pines; and Pretty Pierre also disappeared into the shadow of the woods
as Shon McGann appeared on the crest of the hill.

The Irishman walked slowly to the door, and pausing, said to himself:
"I couldn't run the big risk, me darlin', without seein' you again, God
help me! There's danger ahead which little I'd