basse-cour, with the other
priest. Also two sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, who came with him."

"Father Anselm!" echoed Mother Carron, dully, in a sort of groan. "So
much for my plan.... And the sisters?... So much for Bibi's! We're all
finely cooked, the lot of us!" But even in disaster she could keep the
uses of habit. "Sacred pig, you take your own time!" she scolded. "Was
that your signal?"

"Not for them," sighed Carron. "We gave no signal for them, seeing who
they were. But a carriole is climbing by the road--"

In fact through the heavy tropic night and the open doorway there
reached our ears as we hearkened a grind of wheels, the muffled jolting
of a cart.

"Two militaires on the driver's seat," continued Carron, unhurried,
unvarying. "And inside--another man: a man in a black coat. The runner
who brought word is not quite sure, but he thinks--"

"Eh?"

"It is M. de Nou!"

So once more, to clinch the tragedy, there befell that phrase so often
repeated: and this time like the summons of fate, this time invoking the
very presence of the monster himself, soon to descend upon us. Bombiste
gave an obscene chuckle. He had been wriggling and scowling these last
few tense moments in a furious temper at the neglect of himself and his
black box. But I think no one else in the room drew breath until Mother
Carron, with a remnant of vigor, summed the whole desperate business and
spread it in a sweep to Bibi-Ri and cried, as she had cried before--

"What are you going to do about it now?"

Bibi-Ri fell back three paces to the archway. He drew the door shut. He
swung into place the bar. Then he walked over toward the foot of the
stairs.

It had been my share, if you have followed me, to see many curious
changes wrought upon my luckless friend during some few hours. It was my
fortune at the end to see him himself. Simply. The proper spirit of a
man rising to a situation no longer tolerable. Figure to yourself this
eager little chap: high-keyed, timid, fervid: something of a buffoon,
always a victim of his perceptions. Do you remember that cry of his when
he spoke of his coming release? "Able to taste it," he had said. What do
you suppose he must have been tasting at this crisis? Such a perceptive,
whimsical poor devil!... But yet capable of an ultimate gesture as far
above bitterness as above rage or despair.

"Why," he said, with his wry smile that I knew so well and from all his
little height, "why--since I ca