The Bishop laid the man’s head back so that he lay as easy as it was possible and spoke a word or two in that astonishing French of his which was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the North Country.

But for a long time the man seemed unable to go farther. He saw the Bishop slip the little pocket stole around his neck and seemed to know what it was and what it was for. The swollen lips, however, only continued to mumble the words with which they had begun:

“Mon Pere, je me ’cuse––”

Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or better than he could speak French. But there are times when a man reverts to the tongue of his mother. And confession, especially in the face of death, is one of these.

Again the Bishop lowered the man’s head and changed the position of the body, while he fanned what air there was across the gasping mouth with his hat.

Now the man tried to gather his straying wits 175 to him. With a sharp effort that seemed to send a tremor through his whole long body he forced his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered word of encouragement from the Bishop, he began hoarsely that precise, recitative form of confession that the good priests of Lower Canada have been drilling into the children for the last three hundred years.

Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed way it worked easily, mechanically. Since five years he had not confessed. At that time he had received the Sacrament. He went through the “table of sins” with the methodical care of a man who knows that if he misses a step in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the story of the young men of his people in the hills, in the lumber camps, in the sawmills, in the towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill country would have told the same story, of hard work and anger and fighting in the camps, of drink and debauch in the towns when they went down to spend their money; and would have told it in exactly the same way. The Bishop had heard the story ten thousand times.

But now––Mon Pere, je me ’cuse––there was something more, something that would not fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day. It had begun a long time ago and it was just coming to an end here at the feet of the Bishop. Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For 176 the Bishop had found blood caked on the man’s shirt, in the back, just below the shoulder blade. There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a wound from which ordinarily the man would have fallen and stayed lying where he fell.

He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards, as it unrolled itself to his mind.

“I die, Mon Pere, I die,” he began between gasps. “I die. Since the afternoon I have been dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down, if I could have had two minutes free from the fire, I would have lain down to die. But shall a man lie down in hell before he is dead? No.

“All day I have run from the fire. I could not lie down to die till I had found a free place where my soul could breathe out. Here I breathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes and the deer ran out from the fire, and they ran no faster than I ran. But I could not run out of its way. All day long men followed the line of the fire and fought around its edge. They fought the fire, but they hunted me. All the day long they hunted me and drove me always back into the fire when I would run out.

“They hunted me because in the early morning they had seen me with the men who set the fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand to the fire. Why was I with those men? Why did I go with them when they went to set the fire? Ah, that is a longer tale.

“Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in a drinking place. All were drinking. There was a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow. Mon Pere, I struck no blow. But my knife––my knife was found in the man’s heart. Who struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad that comes now into the hills found my knife. He traced it to me. He showed the knife to me. It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no word to the law. With the knife he could hang me. But he said no word. Only to me he said, ‘Some day I may need you.’

“Last winter that man the detective came into the hills. Now he was not a detective. He was Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. He would buy the land from the people.

“The people would not sell. You know of the matter. In June he came again. He was angry, because other men above him were angry. He must force the people to sell. He must trick the people. He saw me. ‘You,’ he said, ‘I need you.’

“Mon Pere, that man owned me. On the point of my knife, like a pinch of salt, he held my life. Never a moment when I could say, I will do this, I will do that. Always I must do his bidding. For him I lied to my own people. For him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killed the young Whiting. Always I must do as he told. He called and I came. He bade me do and I did.

“M’sieur does not know the sin of hate. It is the wild beast of all sins. And fear, too, that is the father of sin. For fear begets hate. And hate goes raging to do all sin.

“So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before my eyes was always the face of this man, threatening with that knife of mine.

“Yesterday, in the morning came a message that I must meet him at the railroad. He would come to the end of the rail and we would go up into the high hills. I knew what was to be done. To myself, I rebelled. I would not go. I swore I would not go. A girl, a good girl that loved me, begged me not to go. To her I swore I would not go.

“I went. Fear, Mon Pere, fear is the father of all. I went because there was that knife before my eyes. I believe that good girl followed into the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me back at the last moment. I do not know.

“I went because I must go. I must be there in case any one should see. If any of us that went was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must be seen. I must be known to have been there. If any one was to be punished, I was that one. Rogers must be free, do you see. I would have to take the blame. I would not dare to speak.

“Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain. We were seven. And of the seven I alone 179 was to take the blame. They would swear it upon me. I knew.

“Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the reach of his tongue. And his speech was, ‘You owe me this. Now you must pay.’

“In the first light the torches were got ready. We scattered along the fringe of the highest trees. Rogers kept me with him. A moment he went out into the clearing. Then he came running back. He had seen other men watching for us. I ran a little way. He came running behind with a lighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled to me to light my torch. Again I ran, deeper into the wood. Again he came after me, the red flare of the fire running after him.

“Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the wood! The red rush of fire in the air! The red flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate! Fire!” With a terrible convulsion the man drew himself up in the Bishop’s arms, gazing wildly at the fire all about them, and screaming:

“On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers when he stopped!”

He fell back as the scream died in his throat.

The Bishop began the words of the Absolution. Some whisper of the well-remembered sound must have reached down to the soul of Rafe Gadbeau in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously, his lips began to form the words of the Act of Contrition.

As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran through the body in his arms. He knelt there holding the empty shell of a man.

Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away, resting against the flank of her horse, had time to be awed and subdued by the terrific forces of this world and the other that were at work about her. This world, with the exception of this little island on which she stood, was on fire. The wind had almost entirely died out. On every side the flames rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance, place, all were blotted out. There was no east, no west; no north, no south. Only an impenetrable ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only these few bare rocks and this inverted bowl of lurid, hot, cinder-laden air out of which she must get the breath of life.

Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst, just as she had seen a rabbit and a belated woodchuck bursting. And that man had lain himself down to die. And here, of all places, he had found the hand of the mighty, the omnipresent Catholic Church reached out ready to him!

She was only a young girl. But since that night when the Bishop had come to her as she held her father dying in her arms she had thought much. Thought had been pressed upon her. Forces had pressed themselves in upon her mind. The things that she had been hearing and reading since her childhood, the thoughts of the people among 181 whom she had grown up, the feeling of loyalty to her own kind, all these had fought in her against the dominion of the Catholic Church which challenged them all.

Because she had so recently come under its influence, the Catholic Church seemed ever to be unfolding new wonders to her. It seemed as though she stepped ever from one holy of holies into another more wonderful, more awesome. Yet always there seemed to be something just beyond, some deeper, more mysterious meaning to which she could not quite attain. Always a door opened, only to disclose another closed door beyond it.

Here surely she stood as near to naked truth as it was possible to get. Here were none of the forms of words, none of the explanations, none of the ready-made answers of the catechism. Here were just two men. One was a bad man, a man of evil life. He was dying. In a few moments his soul must go––somewhere. The other was a good man. To-day he had risked his life to save the lives of this man and others––for Ruth was quick to suspect that Gadbeau had been caught in the fire because other men were chasing him.

Now these two men had a question to settle between them. In a very few minutes these two men must settle whether this bad man’s soul was presently going to Hell or to Heaven for all eternity. You see, she was a very direct young 182 person. She took her religion at its word, straight in the eyes, literally.

So far she had not needed to take any precautions against hearing anything that was said. The dull roar of the fire all about them effectually silenced every other sound. Then, without warning, high above the noise of the fire, came the shrill, breaking voice of Gadbeau, screaming:

“On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers as he stopped!”

Involuntarily she turned and started towards the men. Gadbeau had fallen back in the Bishop’s arms and the Bishop was leaning over, apparently talking to him. She knew that she must not go near until the Bishop gave her leave. She turned back and putting her hands up to her ears buried her face in Brom Bones’ mane.

But she could not put away the words that she had heard. Never, so long as she lived, was she able to forget them. Like the flash of the shot itself, they leaped to her brain and seared themselves there. Years afterwards she could shut her eyes and fairly see those words burning in her mind.

When it was ended, the Bishop called to her and she went over timidly. She heard the Bishop say:

“He is gone. Will you say a prayer, Ruth?”

Then the Bishop began to read slowly, in the light of the flames, the Prayers for the Departed. Ruth kneeling drew forth her beads and among 183 the Mysteries she wept gently––why, she knew not.

When the Bishop had finished, he knelt a while in silence, looking into the face of the dead. Then he arose and folded the long arms on the tattered breast and straightened the body.

Ruth rose and watched him in a troubled way. Once, twice she opened her lips to speak. But she did not know what to say or how to say it. Finally she began:

“Bishop, I––I heard––”

“No, child. You heard nothing,” the Bishop interrupted quietly, “nothing.”

Ruth understood. And for a little space the two stood there looking down. The dead man’s secret lay between them, buried under God’s awful seal.

The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping Father Brady’s storm coat which he had brought wrapped it gently over the head and body of the dead man as a protection from the showers of glowing cinders that rained down upon everything.

Then they took up the interminable vigil of the night, standing at their horses’ heads, their faces buried in the manes, their arms thrown over the horses’ eyes.

As the night wore on the fire, having consumed everything to the east and south, moved on deliberately into the west and north. But the sharp, 184 acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still kept them in exquisite, blinded torture.

The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost to black as the fires to the east died almost out in that last, lifeless hour of the night. The light of the morning showed a faint, sickly white through the smoke banks on the high hills. When it was time for the sun to be rising over Bald Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting the heavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead and away into the west. They saw the world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not a land-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and here and there a great tree still standing smoking like a burnt-out torch.

They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at the figure of the man lying there on his rocky bier, picked their way down to the sloping hillside. The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives. Now they must reach Little Tupper and water if they would have their horses live. Intolerable, frightful thirst was already swelling their own lips and they knew that the plight of the horses was inevitably worse.

Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country. They must travel circuitously, avoiding the places that had been wooded for the fallen trees would still be burning and would block them everywhere. The road was impossible because it had largely run through wooded places and the trees 185 would have fallen across it. Their situation was not desperate, but at any moment a horse might drop or turn mad for water.

For two hours they plodded steadily over the hills through the hot, loose-lying ashes. In all the world it seemed that not man nor beast nor bird was alive. The top of the earth was one grey ruin, draped with the little sworls of dust and ashes that the playful wind sent drifting up into their mouths and eyes.

They dared not ride faster than a walk, for the ashes had blown level over holes and traps of all sorts in which a galloping horse would surely break his leg. Nor would it have been safe to put the horses to any rapid expenditure of energy. The little that was left in them must be doled out to the very last ounce. For they did not yet know what lay between them and French Village and the lake. If the fire had not reached the lake during the night then it was always a possibility that, with this fresh morning wind, a new fire might spring up from the ashes of the old and place an impassable barrier between them and the water.

When this thought came to them, as it must, they involuntarily quickened their pace. The impulse was to make one wild dash for the lake. But they knew that it would be nothing short of madness. They must go slowly and carefully, enduring the torture with what fortitude they could.

The story which the Bishop had heard from the 186 lips of the dying man had stirred him profoundly. He now knew definitely, what yesterday he had suspected, that men had been sent into the hills by the railroad people to set fire to the forests, thereby driving the people out of that part of the country which the railroad wished to possess. He was moved to anger by the knowledge, but he knew that he must try to drive that knowledge back into the deepest recess of his mind; must try to hide it even from himself, lest in some unguarded moment, some time of stress and mental conflict, he should by word or look, by a gesture or even by an omission, reveal even his consciousness of that knowledge. Now he knew that the situation which last night he had thought to meet in French Village would almost certainly confront him there this morning, if indeed he ever succeeded in reaching there. And he must be doubly on his guard lest the things which he might learn to-day should in his mind confuse themselves with what he had last night learned under the seal of the confessional.

Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been hearing the words of that last cry of the dying man. She did not know how near they came to her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had stood with his gun levelled upon the man whom Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she would to keep back the knowledge which she knew she must never under any circumstances reveal, those words 187 came ringing upon her ears. And she knew that the secret would haunt her and taunt her always.

As they came over the last of the ridges, the grey waste of the country sloping from all sides to the lake lay open before them. There was not a ruin, not a standing stick to show them where little French Village had once stood along the lake. The fire had gone completely around the lake to the very water edge and a back draught had drawn it up in a circle around the east slope. There it had burned itself out along the forest line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward the west, burning its way down to the settled farm lands. But there would be no more fire in this region.

“Would the people make their way down the river,” the Bishop asked; “or did they escape back into the higher hills?”

“I don’t think they did either,” Ruth answered as she scanned the lake sharply. “There is something out there in the middle of the lake, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they made rafts out of the logs and went through the fire that way. They’d be better off than we were, and that way they could save some things. If they had run away they would have had to drop everything.”

The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake, pricked up their ears and started briskly down the slope. It was soon plain that Ruth was right in her conjecture. They could now make out five 188 or six large rafts which the people had evidently thrown together out of the logs that had been lying in the lake awaiting their turn at the sawmill. These were crowded with people, standing as they must have stood all through the night; and now the freshening wind, aided by such help as the people could give it with boards and poles, was moving all slowly toward the shore where their homes had been.

The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he rode fetlock deep through the ashes of what had been the street of a happy little village and watched his people coming sadly back to land. There was nothing for them to come back to. They might as well have gone to the other side of the lake to begin life again. But they would inevitably, with that dumb loyalty to places, which people share with birds, come back and begin their nests over again.

For nearly an hour they stood on the little beach, letting the horses drink a little now and then, and watching the approach of the rafts. When they came to the shallow water, men and boys jumped yelling from the rafts and came wading ashore. In a few moments the rafts were emptied of all except the very aged or the crippled who must be carried off.

They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable Bishop and the girl with wonder and a little superstition, for it was plain that these two people 189 must have come straight through the fire. But when Father Ponfret came running forward and knelt at the Bishop’s feet, a great glad cry of wondering recognition went up from all the French people. It was their Bishop! He who spoke the French of the most astonishing! His coming was a sign! A deliverance! They had come through horrors. Now all was well! The good God had hidden His face through the long night. Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger to say that all was well!

Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of spirits that makes their race what it is, they threw themselves on their knees begging his blessing. The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand slowly. He was infinitely humbled by the quick, spontaneous outburst of their faith. He had done nothing for them; could do nothing for them. They were homeless, pitiable, without a hope or a stick of shelter. Yet it had needed but the sight of his face to bring out their cheery unbounded confidence that God was good, that the world was right again.

The other people, the hill people of the Bishop’s own blood and race, stood apart. They did not understand the scene. They were not a kind of people that could weep and laugh at once. But they were not unmoved. For years they had heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Some two or three old men of them saw him now through 190 a mist of memory and battle smoke riding a mad horse across a field. They knew that this was the man. That he should appear out of the fire after the nightmare through which they had passed was not so much incredible as it was a part of the strange things that they had always half believed about him.

Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues around the Bishop. Father Ponfret, a quick, eager little man of his people, would drag the Bishop’s story from him by very force. Had he dropped from Heaven? How had he come to be in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the fire?

The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the folly of his own imprudence, and how he had been saved from the consequences of it by the quickness and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret translated freely and with a fine flourish. Then the Bishop told of the coming of Rafe Gadbeau and how the man had died with the Sacrament. They nodded their heads in silence. There was nothing to be said. They knew who the man was. He had done wickedly. But the good God had stretched out the wing of His great Church over him at the last. Why say more? God was good. No?

Ruth Lansing went among her own hill people, grouped on the outskirts of the crowd that pressed around the Bishop, answering their eager questions 191 and asking questions of her own. There was just one question that she wanted to ask, but something kept it back from her lips. There was no reason at all why she should not ask them about Jeffrey Whiting. Some of them must at least have heard news of him, must know in what direction he had gone to fight the fire. But some unnamed dread seemed to take possession of her so that she dared not put her crying question into words.

Some one at her elbow, who had heard what the French people were saying, asked:

“You’re sure that was Gadbeau that crawled out of the fire and died, Miss Lansing?”

“Yes. I knew him well, of course. It was Gadbeau, certainly,” Ruth answered without looking up.

Then a tall young fellow in front of her said:

“Then that’s two of ’em done for. That was Gadbeau. And Jeff Whiting shot Rogers.”

“He did not!” Ruth blazed up in the young man’s face. “Jeffrey Whiting did not shoot Rogers! Rafe––!”

The horror of the thing she had been about to do rushed upon her and blinded her. The blood came rushing up into her throat and brain, choking her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered. The young man, Perry Waite, caught her by the arm as she seemed about to fall. She struggled a moment for control of herself, then managed to gasp:

“It’s nothing–– Let me go.”

Perry Waite looked sharply into her face. Then he took his hand from her arm.

Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped away and crowded herself in among the people who stood around the Bishop. Here no one would be likely to speak to her. And here, too, she felt a certain relief, a sense of security, in being surrounded by people who would understand. Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet the mere feeling that she stood among those who could have understood gave her strength and a feeling of safety even against herself which she could not have had among her own kind.

But she was not long left with her feeling of security. A wan, grey-faced girl with burning eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm and drew her out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal, though Ruth found it difficult to recognise in her the red-cheeked, sprightly French girl she had met in the early summer.

“You saw Rafe Gadbeau die,” the girl said roughly, as she faced Ruth sharply at a little distance from the crowd. “You were there, close? No?”

“Yes, the fire was all around,” Ruth answered, quaking.

“How did he die? Tell me. How?”

“Why––why, he died quickly, in the Bishop’s arms.”

“I know. Yes. But how? He confessed?”

“He––he went to confession, you mean. Yes, I think so.”

But the girl was not to be evaded in that way.

“I know that,” she persisted. “I heard M’sieur the Bishop. But did he confess––about Rogers?”

“Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know I didn’t hear anything. I couldn’t––”

“He didn’t say nothing, except in confession?” the girl questioned swiftly.

“Nothing at all,” Ruth answered, relieved.

“And you heard?” the girl returned shrewdly.

“Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know that.”

“I know you are lying,” Cynthe said slowly. “That is right. But I do not know. Will you always be able to lie? I do not know. You are Catholic, yes. But you are new. You are not like one of us. Sometime you will forget. It is not bred in the bone of you as it is bred in us. Sometime when you are not thinking some one will ask you a question and you will start and your tongue will slip, or you will be silent––and that will be just as bad.”

Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She dared not speak, did not even raise her eyes, for any assurance of silence or even a reassuring look to the girl would be an admission that she must not make.

“Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did not hear a word! You cannot speak to me. But swear it to your soul,” said the girl in a low, tense whisper; “swear that you will never, sleeping or waking, laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let woman or man know that you heard. Swear it. And while you swear, remember.” She drew Ruth close to her and almost hissed into her ear:

“Remember–– You love Jeffrey Whiting!”

She dropped Ruth’s arm and turned quickly away.

Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind lost in a whirl of fright and bewilderment. She did not know where to turn. She could not grapple with the racing thoughts that went hurtling through her mind.

This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was half crazed with her love and her grief. And she was determined to protect his name from the dark blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is sometimes given to those beside themselves with some great grief or strain, the girl had seen Ruth’s terrible secret bare in its hiding place and had plucked it out before Ruth’s very eyes.

The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened, thought Ruth. She had broken the seal of the confessional! She had been entrusted with the most terrible secret that a man could have to tell, under the most awful bond that God could put upon a secret. And the secret had escaped her!

She had said no word at all. But, just as surely as if she had repeated the cry of the dying man in the night, Ruth knew that the other girl had taken her secret from her.

And with that same uncanny insight, too, the girl had looked into the future and had shown Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her. Nay, what a burden it was already becoming. For already she was afraid to speak to any one, afraid to go near any person that she had ever known.

And that girl had stripped bare another of Ruth’s secrets, one that had been hidden even from herself. She had said:

“Remember–– You love Jeffrey Whiting.”

In ways, she had always loved him. But she now realised that she had never known what love was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up in the eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to clutch and tear for the dead name of the man whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it was, and it came burning up in her heart to protect the dear name of her own beloved one, her man. Already men were putting the brand of Cain upon him! Already the word was running from mouth to mouth over the hills–– The word of blood! And with it ran the name of her love! Jeffrey, the boy she had loved since always, the man she would love forever!

He would hear it from other mouths. But, 196 oh! the cruel, unbearable taunt was that only two days ago he had heard it first from her own lips! Why? Why? How? How had she ever said such a thing? Ever thought of such a thing?

But she could not speak as the French girl had spoken for her man. She could not swear the mouths to silence. She could not cry out the bursting, torturing truth that alone would close those mouths. No, not even to Jeffrey himself could she ever by word, or even by the faintest whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew more than his and other living mouths could tell her! Never would she be able to look into his eyes and say:

I know you did not do it.

Only in her most secret heart of hearts could she be glad that she knew. And even that knowledge was the sacred property of the dead man. It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of her mind. Love, horror, and the awful weight of God’s seal pressed in upon her to crush her. There was no way to turn, no step to take. She could not meet them, could not cope with them.

Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd and down to where Brom Bones stood by the lake. There the kindly French women found her, her face buried in the colt’s mane, crying hysterically. They bathed her hands and face and soothed her, and when she was a little quieted they gave her drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing 197 that she would need strength above all things, took what was given and silently faced the galling weight of the burden that was hers.

The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole situation. The first thing to be decided was whether the people should try to hold out where they were or should attempt at once to walk out to the villages on the north or west. To the west it would mean forty miles of walking over ashes with hardly any way of carrying water. To the north it would mean a longer walk, but they could follow the river and have water at hand. The danger in that direction was that they might come into the path of a new fire that would cut them off from all help.

Even if they did come out safe to the villages, what would they do there? They would be scattered, penniless, homeless. There was nothing left for them here but the places where their homes had been, but at least they would be together. The cataclysm through which they had all passed, which had brought the prosperous and the poverty-stricken alike to the common level of just a few meals away from starvation, would here bind them together and give them a common strength for a new grip on life. If there was food enough to carry them over the four or five days that would be required to get supplies up from Lowville or from the head of the new railroad, then they should stay here.

The Bishop went swiftly among them, where already mothers were drawing family groups aside and parcelling out the doles of food. Already these mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree and drawing around them and theirs the circle of the hearth, even though it was a circle drawn only in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor kindly of eye and understanding of heart, but by no means to be evaded. Unsuspected stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came forth from nondescript bundles of clothing and were laid under his eye. It appeared that Arsene LaComb had stayed in his little provision store until the last moment portioning out what was his with even hand, to each one as much as could be carried. The Bishop saw that it was all pitifully little for those who had lived in the village and for those refugees who had been driven in from the surrounding hills. But, he thought, it would do. These were people born to frugality, inured to scanty living.

The thing now was to give them work for their hands, to put something before them that was to be accomplished. For even in the ruin of all things it is not well for men to sit down in the ashes and merely wait. They had no tools left but the axes which they had carried in their hands to the rafts, but with these they could hew some sort of shelter out of the loose logs in the lake. A rough shack of any kind would cover at least 199 the weaker ones until lumber could be brought up or until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at the outlet of the lake. It would be slow work and hard and a makeshift at the best. But it would put heart into them to see at least something, anything, begin to rise from the hopeless level of the ashes.

Three of the hill men had managed to keep their horses by holding desperately to them all through the day before and swimming and wading them through the night in the lake. These the Bishop despatched to what, as near as he could judge, were the nearest points from which messages could be gotten to the world outside the burnt district. They bore orders to dealers in the nearest towns for all the things that were immediately necessary for the life and rebuilding of the little village. With the orders went the notes of hand of all the men gathered here who had had a standing of credit or whose names would mean anything to the dealers. And, since the world outside would well know that these men had now nothing that would make the notes worth while, each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of Alden. For the Bishop knew that there was no time to wait for charity and its tardy relief. Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone makes the life of the world go on, must be established at once. And it was characteristic of Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of 200 penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he was signing obligations upon himself and his diocese. He was simply writing down his gospel of his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men. And it is a commentary upon that faith of his that he was never presented with a single one of the notes he signed that day.

All the day long men toiled with heart and will, dragging logs and driftwood from the lake and cutting, splitting, shaping planks and joists for a shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and spikes from the ruins of what had been their homes. So that when night came down over the hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of women and children. And the light spirited, sanguine people raised cheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new French Village that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. Then Father Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to the Good Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from far Chicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had never been out of their childhood hearing. They sang it now, old and young, good and bad, their eyes filling with the quick-welling tears, their hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence on the lilt of the air. Even the Bishop, whose singing voice approached a scandal and whose 201 French has been spoken of before, joined in loud and unashamed.

Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men, sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.

Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very old man to-night, laid his head upon a saddle and a folded blanket and considered the Mysteries of God and His world, as the beads slipped through his fingers and unfolded their story to him.

Two men were stumbling fearfully down through the ashes of the far slope to the lake. All day long they had lain on their faces in the grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The fire had gone on past them leaving them safe. But behind them rose tier upon tier of barren rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly of unknown country. They could not go that way. They were not, in fact, fit for travel in any direction. For all the day before they had run, dodging like hunted rats, between a line of fire––of their own making––before them, and a line of armed men behind them. They had outrun the fire and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun the men and escaped them. They were free of those two enemies. But a third enemy had 202 run with them all through the day yesterday and had stayed with them through all the horror of last night and it had lain with them through all the blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable, scorching thirst, drying their bones, splitting their lips, bulging their eyes. And all day long, down there before their very eyes, taunting them, torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and sweet and deep and wide. It was worse than the mirage of any desert, for they knew that it was real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense of sight. They could perhaps have stood the torture of one sense. But this lake came up to them through all their senses. They could feel the air from it cool upon their brows. The wind brought the smell of water up to taunt their nostrils. And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy that they heard the lapping of the little waves against the rocks. This last they knew was an illusion. But, for the matter of that, all might as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their enemies who had yesterday chased them with death in their hearts, were scattered around the shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one who might come out of the fringe of shrub and grass beyond the line of the burnt ground. No living thing could move down that bare and whitened hillside toward the lake without being marked by those armed men. And, for these two men, to be seen meant to die.

So they had lain all day on their faces and raved in their torture. Now when they saw the fires on the shore where French Village had been beginning to die down they were stumbling painfully and crazily down to the water.

They threw themselves down heavily in the burnt grass at the edge of the lake and drank greedily, feverishly until they could drink no more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the grass and rested until they could return to drink. When they had fully slaked their thirst and rested to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they realised now that thirst was not the only thing in the world. It had taken up so much of their recent thought that they had forgotten everything else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came upon them and they knew that if they would live and travel––and they must travel––they would have to have food at once.

Over there at the end of the lake where the cooking fires had now died out there were men lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There was food over there, food in plenty, food to be had for the taking! Now it did not seem that thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any great thing to be feared. Hunger was the only real enemy. Food was the one thing that they must have, before all else and in spite of all else. They would go over there and take the food in the face of all the world!

Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water side picking drowsily at a few wisps of half-burnt grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself. There was a great deal wrong with the world. He had not, it seemed, seen a spear of fresh grass for an age. And as for oats, he did not remember when he had had any. It was true that Ruth had dug up some baked potatoes out of a field for him and he had been glad to eat them, but––Fresh grass! Or oats!

Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his hobbles. It was nothing to be alarmed at, of course. But he did not like strange hands around him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and thought no more of the matter.

A few moments later a man went running softly toward the horse. He carried a bundle of tinned meats and preserves slung in a coat. At peril of his life he had crept up and stolen them from the common pile that was stacked up at the very door of the shanty where the women and children slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom Bones’ bridle and tried to launch himself across the colt’s back. In his leap a can of meat fell and a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom Bones’ hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside.

A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping a rifle and kicking the embers into a blaze. He saw the man struggling with the horse and fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror 205 leaped and plunged head down towards the water, shot dead through his stout, faithful heart.

In a moment twenty men were running into the dark, shouting and shooting at everything that seemed to move, while the women and children screamed and wailed their fright within the little building.

The two men running with the food for which they had been willing to give their lives dropped flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men running wildly stumbled over them. They were quickly secured and hustled and kicked to their feet and brought back to the fire.

They must die. And they must die now. They were in the hands of men whose homes they had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced with the most terrible of deaths; men who for thirty-six hours now had been thirsting to kill them. The hour had come.

“Take them down to the gully. Build a fire and dig their graves.” Old Erskine Beasley spoke the sentence.

A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer. A cry that suggested the snapping of jaws let loose upon the prey.

Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst of the crowd, laying hands upon the two cowering men, and spoke. A moment before he had caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be 206 done. But he had cried to God against the sin that had whispered at his heart, and he spoke now calmly, as one assured.

“Do we do wisely, men?” he questioned. “These men are guilty. We know that, for you saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just, for they planned what might have been death for you and yours. But shall only these two be punished? Are there not others? And if we silence these two now forever, how shall we be ever able to find the others?”

“We’ll be sure of these two,” said a sullen voice in the crowd.

“True,” returned the Bishop, raising his voice. “But I tell you there are others greater than any of these who have come into the hills risking their lives. How shall we find and punish those other greater ones? And I tell you further there is one, for it is always one in the end. I tell you there is one man walking the world to-night without a thought of danger or disgrace from whose single mind came all this trouble upon us. That one man we must find. And I pledge you, my friends and my neighbours,” he went on raising his hand, “I pledge you that that one man will be found and that he will do right by you.

“Before these men die, bring a justice––there is one of the village––and let them confess before the world and to him on paper what they 207 know of this crime and of those who commanded it.”

A grudging silence was the only answer, but the Bishop had won for the time. Old Toussaint Derossier, the village justice, was brought forward, fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers, and made to sit upon an up-turned bucket with a slab across his knee and write in his long hand of the rue Henri the story that the men told.

They were ready to tell. They were eager to spin out every detail of all they knew for they felt that men stood around them impatient for the ending of the story, that they might go on with their task.

The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet to come. He must save these men, not only because it was his duty as a citizen and a Christian and a priest, but because he foresaw that his friend, Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused of the killing of a certain man, and that these men might in that day be able to tell something of that story which he himself could but must not tell.

The temper of the crowd was perhaps running a little lower when the story of the men was finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure that he could hold them back from their purpose. Nevertheless he spoke simply and with a determination that was not to be mistaken. At the 208 first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry out their intention, he said:

“My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall not, I say. Shall not. I will prevent. I will put this old body of mine between. You shall not move these men from this spot. And if they are shot, then the bullets must pass through me.

“You will call this thing justice. But you know in your hearts it is just one thing––Revenge.”

“What business is it of yours?” came an angry voice out of the crowd.

“It is not my business,” said the Bishop solemnly. “It is the business of God. Of your God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest? Have I no right to speak God’s name to you, because we do not believe all the same things? My business is with the souls of men––of all men. And never in my life have I so attended to my own business as I am doing this minute, when I say to you in the name of God, of the God of my fathers and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder upon your souls this night. Have you wives? Have you mothers? Have you sweethearts? Can you go back to them with blood upon your hands and say: A man warned us, but he had no business!

“Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear not. Justice shall be done. And you will see right in the end. As you believe in your God, oh! believe me now! You shall see right!”

The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw it in the faces of the men about him. God had spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was glad.

He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over them.

Then he went down near to the lake where a girl kneeling beside her dead pet wept wildly. The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done his noble part in saving the life of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden. But that Bishop of Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful words, had now no word that he could dare to say in comfort to this grief.

He covered his face and turned, walking away through the ashes into the dark. And as he walked, fingering his beads, he again considered the things of God and His world.