esh that La
Corriveau is made!"

La Corriveau stood a few moments, reflecting what was best to be done.

All things considered, she decided to leave Angelique to come to of
herself, while she made the best of her way back to the house of Mere
Malheur, with the intention, which she carried out, of returning to St.
Valier with her infamous reward that very day.

CHAPTER XLII. "LET'S TALK OF GRAVES AND WORMS AND EPITAPHS."

About the hour that La Corriveau emerged from the gloomy woods of
Beauport, on her return to the city, the night of the murder of
Caroline, two horsemen were battering at full speed on the highway that
led to Charlebourg. Their dark figures were irrecognizable in the dim
moonlight. They rode fast and silent, like men having important business
before them, which demanded haste; business which both fully understood
and cared not now to talk about.

And so it was. Bigot and Cadet, after the exchange of a few words about
the hour of midnight, suddenly left the wine, the dice, and the gay
company at the Palace, and mounting their horses, rode, unattended by
groom or valet, in the direction of Beaumanoir.

Bigot, under the mask of gaiety and indifference, had felt no little
alarm at the tenor of the royal despatch, and at the letter of the
Marquise de Pompadour concerning Caroline de St. Castin.

The proximate arrival of Caroline's father in the Colony was a
circumstance ominous of trouble. The Baron was no trifler, and would as
soon choke a prince as a beggar, to revenge an insult to his personal
honor or the honor of his house.

Bigot cared little for that, however. The Intendant was no coward, and
could brazen a thing out with any man alive. But there was one thing
which he knew he could not brazen out or fight out, or do anything but
miserably fail in, should it come to the question. He had boldly and
wilfully lied at the Governor's council-table--sitting as the King's
councillor among gentlemen of honor--when he declared that he knew not
the hiding-place of Caroline de St. Castin. It would cover him with
eternal disgrace, as a gentleman, to be detected in such a flagrant
falsehood. It would ruin him as a courtier in the favor of the great
Marquise should she discover that, in spite of his denials of the fact,
he had harbored and concealed the missing lady in his own chateau.

Bigot was sorely perplexed over this turn of affairs. He uttered a
thousand curses upon all concerned in it, excep