erfunctory, and Quebec was very far away.

"M'sieu'!" was the respectful response, and Grassette's fingers
twitched.

"It was my sister's son you killed, Grassette," said the Governor in a
low, strained voice.

"Nom de Dieu!" said Grassette hoarsely.

"I did not know, Grassette," the Governor went on "I did not know it was
you."

"Why did you come, m'sieu'?"

"Call him 'your Honour,"' said the Sheriff sharply. Grassette's
face hardened, and his look turned upon the Sheriff was savage and
forbidding. "I will speak as it please me. Who are you? What do I care?
To hang me--that is your business; but, for the rest, you spik to me
differen'. Who are you? Your father kep' a tavern for thieves, vous
savez bien!" It was true that the Sheriff's father had had no savoury
reputation in the West.

The Governor turned his head away in pain and trouble, for the man's
rage was not a thing to see--and they both came from the little parish
of St. Francis, and had passed many an hour together.

"Never mind, Grassette," he said gently. "Call me what you will. You've
got no feeling against me; and I can say with truth that I don't want
your life for the life you took."

Grassette's breast heaved. "He put me out of my work, the man I kill. He
pass the word against me, he hunt me out of the mountains, he call--tete
de diable! he call me a name so bad. Everything swim in my head, and I
kill him."

The Governor made a protesting gesture. "I understand. I am glad his
mother was dead. But do you not think how sudden it was? Now here, in
the thick of life, then, out there, beyond this world in the darkin
purgatory."

The brave old man had accomplished what everyone else, priest, lawyer,
Sheriff and watcher, had failed to do: he had shaken Grassette out of
his blank isolation and obdurate unrepentance, had touched some chord of
recognisable humanity.

"It is done--well, I pay for it," responded Grassette, setting his jaw.
"It is two deaths for me. Waiting and remembering, and then with the
Sheriff there the other--so quick, and all."

The Governor looked at him for some moments without speaking. The
Sheriff intervened again officiously.

"His Honour has come to say something important to you," he remarked
oracularly.

"Hold you--does he need a Sheriff to tell him when to spik?" was
Grassette's surly comment. Then he turned to the Governor. "Let us speak
in French," he said in patois. "This rope-twister will not understan'.
He