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“How do you come here, Pierre?”

He lifted his eyes heavily to Mary Callen, and she told Father Corraine what had been told her. When she had finished, Pierre added:

“I am no coward, as you will witness; but as I said, neither gaol nor death do I wish. Well, if they should come here, and you said, Pierre is not here, even though I was in the next room, they would believe you, and they would not search. Well, I ask such sanctuary.”

The priest recoiled and raised his hand in protest. Then, after a moment, he said:

“How do you deserve this? Do you know what you ask?”

“Ah, oui, I know it is immense, and I deserve nothing: and in return I can offer nothing, not even that I will repent. And I have done no good in the world; but still perhaps I am worth the saving, as may be seen in the end. As for you, well, you will do a little wrong so that the end will be right. So?”

The priest’s eyes looked out long and sadly at the man from under his venerable brows, as though he would see through him and beyond him to that end; and at last he spoke in a low, firm voice:

“Pierre, you have been a bad man; but sometimes you have been generous, and of a few good acts I know–“

“No, not good,” the other interrupted. “I ask this of your charity.”

“There is the law, and my conscience.”

“The law! the law!” and there was sharp satire in the half-breed’s voice. “What has it done in the West? Think, ‘mon pere!’ Do you not know a hundred cases where the law has dealt foully? There was more justice before we had law. Law–” And he named over swiftly, scornfully, a score of names and incidents, to which Father Corraine listened intently. “But,” said Pierre, gently, at last, “but for your conscience, m’sieu’, that is greater than law. For you are a good man and a wise man; and you know that I shall pay my debts of every kind some sure day. That should satisfy your justice, but you are merciful for the moment, and you will spare until the time be come, until the corn is ripe in the ear. Why should I plead? It is foolish. Still, it is my whim, of which, perhaps, I shall be sorry tomorrow… Hark!” he added, and then shrugged his shoulders and smiled. There were sounds of hoof beats coming faintly to them. Father Corraine threw open the door of the other room of the hut, and said “Go in there–Pierre. We shall see… we shall see.”

The outlaw looked at the priest, as if hesitating; but, after, nodded meaningly to himself, and entered the room and shut the door. The priest stood listening. When the hoof-beats stopped, he opened the door, and went out. In the dark he could see that men were dismounting from their horses. He stood still and waited. Presently a trooper stepped forward and said warmly, yet brusquely, as became his office: “Father Corraine, we meet again!”

The priest’s face was overswept by many expressions, in which marvel and trouble were uppermost, while joy was in less distinctness.

“Surely,” he said, “it is Shon McGann.”

“Shon McGann, and no other.–I that laughed at the law for many a year, though never breaking it beyond repair,–took your advice, Father Corraine, and here I am, holding that law now as my bosom friend at the saddle’s pommel. Corporal Shon McGann, at your service.”

They clasped hands, and the priest said: “You have come at my call from Fort Cypress?”

“Yes. But not these others. They are after a man that’s played ducks and drakes with the statutes–Heaven be merciful to him, I say. For there’s naught I treasure against him; the will of God bein’ in it all, with some doin’ of the Devil, too, maybe.”

Pretty Pierre, standing with ear to the window of the dark room, heard all this, and he pressed his upper lip hard with his forefinger, as if something disturbed him.