a factor to be
reckoned with, for Marchand had plenty of money as well as a bad nature.
He saw he was in for a big fight with Manitou, and he had to think it
out.

So this time he went pigeon-shooting.

He got his pigeons, and the slaughter did him good. As though in keeping
with the situation, he shot on both sides of the Sagalac with great good
luck, and in the late afternoon sent his Indian lad on ahead to Lebanon
with the day's spoil, while he loitered through the woods, a gun slung
in the hollow of his arm. He had walked many miles, but there was still
a spring to his step and he hummed an air with his shoulders thrown back
and his hat on the back of his head. He had had his shooting, he had
done his thinking, and he was pleased with himself. He had shaped his
homeward course so that it would bring him near to Gabriel Druse's
house.

He had seen Fleda only twice since the episode at Carillon, and met her
only once, and that was but for a moment at a Fete for the hospital
at Manitou, and with other people present--people who lay in wait for
crumbs of gossip.

Since the running of the Rapids, Fleda had filled a larger place in the
eyes of Manitou and Lebanon. She had appealed to the Western mind:
she had done a brave physical thing. Wherever she went she was made
conscious of a new attitude towards herself, a more understanding
feeling. At the Fete when she and Ingolby met face to face, people
had immediately drawn round them curious and excited. These could not
understand why the two talked so little, and had such an every-day
manner with each other. Only old Mother Thibadeau, who had a heart
that sees, caught a look in Fleda's eyes, a warm deepening of colour, a
sudden embarrassment, which she knew how to interpret.

"See now, monseigneur," she said to Monseigneur Lourde, nodding towards
Fleda and Ingolby, "there would be work here soon for you or Father
Bidette if they were not two heretics."

"Is she a heretic, then, madame?" asked the old white-headed priest, his
eyes quizzically following Fleda.

"She is not a Catholic, and she must be a heretic, that's certain," was
the reply.

"I'm not so sure," mused the priest. Smiling, he raised his hat as he
caught Fleda's eyes. He made as if to go towards her, but something in
her look held him back. He realized that Fleda did not wish to speak
with him, and that she was even hurrying away from her father, who
lumbered through the crowd as though unconscious