sure you mean well, but you have more important things to tell
me of than a gift. Your letter spoke of my father. What, in God's name,
have you to tell me of my father?"

La Corriveau withdrew her hand from the basket and replied, "He is on
his way to New France in search of you. He knows you are here, lady."

"In Beaumanoir? Oh, it cannot be! No one knows I am here!" exclaimed
Caroline, clasping her hands in an impulse of alarm.

"Yes, more than you suppose, lady, else how did I know? Your father
comes with the King's letters to take you hence and return with you to
Acadia or to France." La Corriveau placed her hand in her basket, but
withdrew it again. It was not yet time.

"God help me, then!" exclaimed Caroline, shrinking with terror. "But the
Intendant; what said you of the Intendant?"

"He is ordered de par le Roi to give you up to your father, and he will
do so if you be not taken away sooner by the Governor."

Caroline was nigh fainting at these words. "Sooner! how sooner?" asked
she, faintly.

"The Governor has received orders from the King to search Beaumanoir
from roof to foundation-stone, and he may come to-morrow, lady, and find
you here."

The words of La Corriveau struck like sharp arrows into the soul of the
hapless girl.

"God help me, then!" exclaimed she, clasping her hands in agony. "Oh,
that I were dead and buried where only my Judge could find me at the
last day, for I have no hope, no claim upon man's mercy! The world will
stone me, dead or living, and alas! I deserve my fate. It is not hard to
die, but it is hard to bear the shame which will not die with me!"

She cast her eyes despairingly upward as she uttered this, and did
not see the bitter smile return to the lips of La Corriveau, who
stood upright, cold and immovable before her, with fingers twitching
nervously, like the claws of a fury, in her little basket, while she
whispered to herself, "Is it time, is it time?" but she took not out the
bouquet yet.

Caroline came still nearer, with a sudden change of thought, and
clutching the dress of La Corriveau, cried out, "O woman, is this all
true? How can you know all this to be true of me, and you a stranger?"

"I know it of a certainty, and I am come to help you. I may not tell you
by whom I know it; perhaps the Intendant himself has sent me," replied
La Corriveau, with a sudden prompting of the spirit of evil who stood
beside her. "The Intendant will hide you from this search, i