, while you can. My first wish is--can not help
being--that you should escape. I would rather even have the clew fail
than have your name further connected with the matter."

"This is what we get by applying to a _man_," said Miss Lois, in high
indignation. "Always thinking of evil!"

"Yes, men do think of it. But Anne will yield to my judgment, will she
not?"

"I will do as you think best," she answered. But no color rose in her
pale face, as he had expected; the pressing danger and the fear clothed
the subject with a shroud.

Miss Lois did not hide her anger and disappointment. Yet she would not
leave Anne. And therefore the next morning Mrs. Young and her niece,
with health much improved by their sojourn in the country, bade good-by
to their hostess, and went southward in the little stage on their way
back to "Washington."

Pere Michaux was not seen at the farm-house at all; he had returned to
the village from the fields, and had taken rooms for a short sojourn at
the Timloe hotel.

The "Washington," in this instance, was a small town seventy miles
distant; here Mrs. Young and her niece took lodgings, and began, with
what patience they could muster, their hard task of waiting.

As for Pere Michaux, he went fishing.

EXTRACT FROM THE LETTER OF A SUMMER FISHERMAN.

"I have labored hard, Anne--harder than ever before in my life. I
thought I knew what patience was, in my experience with my Indians and
half-breeds. I never dreamed of its breadth until now! For my task has
been the hard one of winning the trust of a trustless mind--trustless,
yet crafty; of subduing its ever-rising reasonless suspicion; of rousing
its nearly extinct affections; of touching its undeveloped, almost dead,
conscience, and raising it to the point of confession. I said to myself
that I would do all this in sincerity; that I would make myself do it in
sincerity; that I would teach the poor creature to love me, and having
once gained his warped affection, I would assume the task of caring for
him as long as life lasted. If I did this in truth and real earnestness
I might succeed, as the missionaries of my Church succeed, with the most
brutal savages, _because_ they are in earnest. Undertaking this, of
course I also accepted the chance that all my labor, regarding the hope
that _you_ have cherished, might be in vain, and that this poor bundle
of clay might not be, after all, the criminal we seek. Yet had it been
so, my care of him thro