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Shon continued. “I’m glad I wasn’t sent after him as all these here know; for it’s little I’d like to clap irons on his wrists, or whistle him to come to me with a Winchester or a Navy. So I’m here on my business, and they’re here on theirs. Though we come together it’s because we met each other hereaway. They’ve a thought that, maybe, Pretty Pierre has taken refuge with you. They’ll little like to disturb you, I know. But with dead in your house, and you givin’ the word of truth, which none other could fall from your lips, they’ll go on their way to look elsewhere.”

The priest’s face was pinched, and there was a wrench at his heart. He turned to the others. A trooper stepped forward.

“Father Corraine,” he said, “it is my duty to search your house; but not a foot will I stretch across your threshold if you say no, and give the word that the man is not with you.”

“Corporal McGann,” said the priest, “the woman whom I thought was dead did not die, as you shall see. There is no need for inquiry. But she will go with you to Fort Cypress. As for the other, you say that Father Corraine’s threshold is his own, and at his own command. His home is now a sanctuary–for the afflicted.” He went towards the door. As he did so, Mary Callen, who had been listening inside the room with shaking frame and bursting heart, dropped on her knees beside the table, her head in her arms. The door opened. “See,” said the priest, “a woman who is injured and suffering.”

“Ah,” rejoined the trooper, “perhaps it is the woman who was riding with the half-breed. We found her dead horse.”

The priest nodded. Shon McGann looked at the crouching figure by the table pityingly. As he looked he was stirred, he knew not why. And she, though she did not look, knew that his gaze was on her; and all her will was spent in holding her eyes from his face, and from crying out to him.

“And Pretty Pierre,” said the trooper, “is not here with her?”

There was an unfathomable sadness in the priest’s eyes, as, with a slight motion of the hand towards the room, he said: “You see–he is not here.”

The trooper and his men immediately mounted; but one of them, young Tim Kearney, slid from his horse, and came and dropped on his knee in front of the priest.

“It’s many a day,” he said, “since before God or man I bent a knee–more shame to me for that, and for mad days gone; but I care not who knows it, I want a word of blessin’ from the man that’s been out here like a saint in the wilderness, with a heart like the Son o’ God.”

The priest looked at the man at first as if scarce comprehending this act so familiar to him, then he slowly stretched out his hand, said some words in benediction, and made the sacred gesture. But his face had a strange and absent look, and he held the hand poised, even when the man had risen and mounted his horse. One by one the troopers rode through the faint belt of light that stretched from the door, and were lost in the darkness, the thud of their horses’ hoofs echoing behind them. But a change had come over Corporal Shon McGann. He looked at Father Corraine with concern and perplexity. He alone of those who were there had caught the unreal note in the proceedings. His eyes were bent on the darkness into which the men had gone, and his fingers toyed for an instant with his whistle; but he said a hard word of himself under his breath, and turned to meet Father Corraine’s hand upon his arm.

“Shon McGann,” the priest said, “I have words to say to you concerning this poor girl.”