me take him,"
explained Pierre as he placed the rugs on the floor. "No can find, no
can break down stone door. Other way Simon not know--only m'sieur and
me. Old Caribou he come that way; he see you tied and know it time to
come here. Soon time to kill Simon come as well."

"When in Heaven's name _will_ it come?" I cried.

"Come soon. His _diable_ tell me," answered Pierre Caribou.

The chamber was as silent as the grave, except for the gurgling of a
spring of water somewhere and the occasional pattering fall of a drop
of moisture from the roof. And truly this might prove our grave, I
thought, and none would find our bones in this heart of the cliff
through all the ages that would come.

The flight seemed to have exhausted the last flicker of vitality in the
old man, for he sank down upon the blankets in a somnolent condition.
I could readily understand how his perpetual fear of discovery,
intensified through many years of solitude, had grown to be an
obsession, and how Leroux's idle threats had stimulated his weakened
will to one last effort to escape.

Jacqueline knelt by his side. She paid no attention to me, except that
once she asked for water. Pierre brought her some from the spring in a
tin cup, and when she raised her head I could see that her lip was
swollen from the blow of Leroux's fist.

The old man's hands were moving restlessly. Jacqueline bent over him
and whispered, and he stirred and cried out petulantly. He missed his
roulette-wheel, his constant companion through those years, his coins,
and paper. In his way perhaps he was suffering the most of all.

"I go now," Pierre announced. "To-morrow I come for you, take all
through tunnel. You stay here till I come; all sleep till morning."

"I will go with you, Pierre," I said, still under my obsession. But he
laid his heavy hand upon my arm and pushed me away.

"You no kill Simon," he answered. "Why you no kill him again when you
have sword? Only _diable_ can kill him. When time come _diable_ tell
old Caribou. You sleep now. I not work for you now. I go for take my
woman and gal safe through tunnel to place I know. When my woman and
gal safe I come back to _m'sieur_ and _ma'm'selle_."

It was a brave and simple declaration of first principles, and none the
less affecting, because it came from the lips of a faithful, ignorant
old man. It was just such simple loyalty that natures like Leroux's
never knew, frustrating the most c