n; but since he would not woo,
it appeared that this man was able to do some wooing for him.

"Of course," remarked O'Shea, "I see difficulties. If the doctor here
was a young man of parts, I'd easier put ye and Mammy in his care; but
old Skipper Pierre is no milksop."

Josephine looked, first alert, as if suspecting an ill-bred joke, and
then, as O'Shea appeared to be speaking to her quite seriously,
forgetting that Caius might overhear, there came upon her face a look of
gentle severity.

"That is not what I think of the doctor; I would trust him more quickly
than anyone else, except you, O'Shea."

The words brought to Caius a pang, but he hardly noticed it in watching
the other two, for the lady, when she had spoken, looked off again with
longing at the sea, and O'Shea, whose rough heart melted under the
trustful affection of the exception she made, for a moment turned away
his head. Caius saw in him the man whom he had only once seen before,
and that was when his child had died. It was but a few moments; the easy
quizzical manner sat upon him again.

"Oh, well, he hasn't got much to him one way or the other, but----" this
in low, confidential tones.

Caius could not hear her reply; he saw that she interrupted, earnestly
vindicating him. He drew his horse back a pace or two; he would not
overhear her argument on his behalf, nor would he trust O'Shea so far as
to leave them alone together.

The cleverness with which O'Shea drove her into a glow of enthusiasm for
Caius was a revelation of power which the latter at the moment could
only regard curiously, so torn was his heart in respect to the issue of
the trial. He was so near that their looks told him what he could not
hear, and he saw Josephine's face glow with the warmth of regard which
grew under the other's sneers. Then he saw O'Shea visibly cast that
subject away as if it was of no importance; he went near to her,
speaking low, but with the look of one who brought the worst news, and
Caius knew, without question, that he was pouring into her ears all the
evil he had ever heard of Le Maitre, all the detail of his present
drunken condition. Caius did not move; he did not know whether the scene
before him represented Satan with powerful grasp upon a soul that would
otherwise have passed into some more heavenly region, or whether it was
a wise and good man trying to save a woman from her own fanatical
folly. The latter seemed to be the case when he looked abo