us stroked his moustache with the action habitual to drawing-room
gallantry; then, instead of persisting, he formed his question a little
differently:

"Who is Mr. Le Maitre?"

"Sea-captain," said O'Shea.

"Oh! then _where_ is he?"

"Don't know."

"Isn't that rather strange, that his wife should be here, and that you
should not know where the husband is?"

"I can't see the ships on the other side of the world."

"Where did he go to?"

"Well, when he last sailed"--deliberately--"he went to Newcastle. His
ship is what they call a tramp; it don't belong to any loine. So at
Newcastle she was hired to go to Africy. Like enough, there she got
cargo for some place else."

"Oh! a very long voyage."

"She carries steam; the longest voyage comes to an end quick enough in
these days."

"Has Madame Le Maitre always lived on this island? Was she married
here?"

"She came here a year this October past. She came from a place near the
Pierced Rock, south of Gaspe Basin. I lived there myself. I came here
because the skipper had good land here that she said I could farm."

Caius meditated on this.

"Then, you have known her ever since she was a child?"

"Saw her married."

"What does her husband look like?"

"Well"--a long pause of consideration--"like a man."

"What sort of a man?"

"Neither like you nor me."

"I never noticed that we were alike."

"You trim your beard, I haven't any; the skipper, he's hairy."

Caius conceived a great disgust for the captain. He felt pretty well
convinced also that he was no favourite with O'Shea. He would have liked
much to ask if Madame Le Maitre liked her husband, but if his own
refinement had not forbidden, he had a wholesome idea that O'Shea, if
roused, would be a dangerous enemy.

"I don't understand why, if she is married, she wears the dress of a
religious order."

"Never saw a nun dressed jist like her. Guess if you went about kissing
and embracing these women ye would find it an advantage to be pretty
well covered up; but"--here a long time of puffing at the pipe--"it's an
advantage for more than women not to see too much of an angel."

"Has she any relations, anyone of her own family? Where do they live?"

There was no answer.

"I suppose you knew her people?"

O'Shea sprang up and opened the house door, and the snow drove in as he
held it.

"I thought," he said, "I heard a body knocking."

"No one knocked," said Caius impatiently.

"I heard someone