He seized a couple of spades and a bar of iron, and bidding Bigot go
before him with the lights, they returned to the chamber of death.

"Now for work! This sad business must be done well, and done quickly!"
exclaimed Cadet. "You shall see that I have not forgotten how to dig,
Bigot!"

Cadet threw off his coat, and setting to work, pulled up the thick
carpet from one side of the chamber. The floor was covered with broad,
smooth flags, one of which he attacked with the iron bar, raised the
flagstone and turned it over; another easily followed, and very soon a
space in the dry brown earth was exposed, large enough to make a grave.

Bigot looked at him in a sort of dream. "I cannot do it, Cadet! I cannot
dig her grave!" and he threw down the spade which he had taken feebly in
his hand.

"No matter, Bigot! I will do it! Indeed, you would only be in my way.
Sit down while I dig, old friend. Par Dieu! this is nice work for the
Commissary General of New France, with the Royal Intendant overseeing
him!"

Bigot sat down and looked forlornly on while Cadet with the arms of a
Hercules dug and dug, throwing out the earth without stopping for the
space of a quarter of an hour, until he had made a grave large and deep
enough to contain the body of the hapless girl.

"That will do!" cried he, leaping out of the pit. "Our funeral
arrangements must be of the briefest, Bigot! So come help me to shroud
this poor girl."

Cadet found a sheet of linen and some fine blankets upon a couch in the
secret chamber. He spread them out upon the floor, and motioned to Bigot
without speaking. The two men lifted Caroline tenderly and reverently
upon the sheet. They gazed at her for a minute in solemn silence, before
shrouding her fair face and slender form in their last winding-sheet.
Bigot was overpowered with his feelings, yet strove to master them, as
he gulped down the rising in his throat which at times almost strangled
him.

Cadet, eager to get his painful task over, took from the slender finger
of Caroline a ring, a love-gift of Bigot, and from her neck a golden
locket containing his portrait and a lock of his hair. A rosary hung at
her waist; this Cadet also detached, as a precious relic to be given
to the Intendant by and by. There was one thread of silk woven into the
coarse hempen nature of Cadet.

Bigot stooped down and gave her pale lips and eyes, which he had
tenderly closed, a last despairing kiss, before veiling her face wi