be a
way out for you yet; I know a haven, a refuge. Only promise me;
promise not to give up to remorse and contrition too deeply."

Ringfield stood pale and quiet and gave the promise, but Father Rielle
and Lalonde ran along the road leading back from the fall until they
reached a point where the river was sufficiently frozen to admit of
walking across. Arrived at last among those who had left Poussette's a
quarter of an hour before, they were just in time to view the body of
the guide where it lay wedged between two large ice-covered boulders.
In a few minutes Martin drew it forth; Dr. Renaud was speedily
summoned, but life was surely quite extinct, and now the priest and
physician met in consultation as to the task of breaking the tragic
news to Miss Clairville. In a little while the whole of St. Ignace
gathered upon the river-bank to discuss the accident in voluble and
graphic French. It was seventeen years since any one had gone over the
fall in such a manner and only the oldest present remembered it.

The body of the unfortunate Englishman was taken to Gagnon's
establishment and placed in the room recently occupied by Ringfield,
who went home with the priest and to whom he seemed to turn in
ever-increasing confidence and respect.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE WILL OF GOD

"I hope, said she, that Heaven
Will give me patience to endure the things
Which I behold at home...."

The glorious noonday sun was lighting up all the road to Clairville and
making it possible for the peacock to revive his display of a
glistening fan of feathers tipped with frosted filaments that were only
rivalled by the pendant encrustations of the surrounding trees, and in
a window of the manor Pauline was standing looking at the bird after
showing Angeel the various little trifles she had brought with her.
The child's infirmity did not prevent her from enjoying the good things
of life; indeed, as frequently occurs in such cases, her senses were
almost preternaturally acute and her faculties bright and sensitive in
the extreme. In place of any system of general education, impossible
during those sequestered years at Hawthorne in charge of her incapable
mother, she had picked up one or two desultory talents which might yet
stand her instead of mere bookishness; she was never without a pencil
in her long white fingers and busied herself by the hour with little
drawings and pictures of what she had seen in her limited experience,