t of Le Gardeur intruded itself. Rising
suddenly, she bade La Corriveau be gone about her business, lest she
should be tempted to change her mind.

La Corriveau laughed at the last struggle of dying conscience, and bade
Angelique go to bed. It was two hours past midnight, and she would bid
Fanchon let her depart to the house of an old crone in the city who
would give her a bed and a blessing in the devil's name.

Angelique, weary and agitated, bade her be gone in the devil's name, if
she preferred a curse to a blessing. The witch, with a mocking laugh,
rose and took her departure for the night.

Fanchon, weary of waiting, had fallen asleep. She roused herself,
offering to accompany her aunt in hopes of learning something of her
interview with her mistress. All she got was a whisper that the jewels
were found. La Corriveau passed out into the darkness, and plodded her
way to the house of her friend, where she resolved to stay until she
accomplished the secret and cruel deed she had undertaken to perform.

CHAPTER XXXVI. THE BROAD, BLACK GATEWAY OF A LIE.

The Count de la Galissoniere was seated in his cabinet a week after the
arrival of La Corriveau on her fatal errand. It was a plain, comfortable
apartment he sat in, hung with arras, and adorned with maps and
pictures. It was there he held his daily sittings for the ordinary
despatch of business with a few such councillors as the occasion
required to be present.

The table was loaded with letters, memorandums, and bundles of papers
tied up in official style. Despatches of royal ministers, bearing the
broad seal of France. Reports from officers of posts far and near in New
France lay mingled together with silvery strips of the inner bark of the
birch, painted with hieroglyphics, giving accounts of war parties on
the eastern frontier and in the far west, signed by the totems of Indian
chiefs in alliance with France. There was a newly-arrived parcel
of letters from the bold, enterprising Sieur de Verendrye, who was
exploring the distant waters of the Saskatchewan and the land of the
Blackfeet, and many a missive from missionaries, giving account of wild
regions which remain yet almost a terra incognita to the government
which rules over them.

At the Governor's elbow sat his friend Bishop Pontbriand with a
secretary immersed in papers. In front of him was the Intendant with
Varin, Penisault, and D'Estebe. On one side of the table, La Corne
St. Luc was examini