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Was this peculiar softness to his last tones assumed or real? She looked at him inquiringly; but he moved away to the window, and stood gazing down the hillside towards the town below. His eyes smarted.

“I will die,” she said to herself in whispers–“I will die.” A minute passed, and then Pierre turned and said to her: “Lucy, he is coming up the hill. Listen. If you tell him that I have seen you, I will shoot him on sight, dead. You would save him, for a little, for an hour or two–or more? Well, do as I say; for these things must be according to the rules of the game, and I myself will tell him all at the Saints’ Repose. He gave me the lie there, and I will tell him the truth before them all there. Will you do as I say?”

She hesitated an instant, and then replied: “I will not tell him.”

“There is only one way, then,” he continued. “You must go at once from here into the woods behind there, and not see him at all. Then at ten o’clock you will come to the Saints’ Repose, if you choose, to know how the game has ended.”

She was trembling, moaning, no longer. A set look had come into her face; her eyes were steady and hard. She quietly replied: “Yes, I shall be there.”

He came to her, took her hand, and drew from her finger the wedding-ring which last night Shon McGann had placed there. She submitted passively. Then, with an upward wave of his fingers, he spoke in a mocking lightness, but without any of the malice which had first appeared in his tones, words from an old French song:

“I say no more, my lady
Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine!
I say no more, my lady,
As nought more can be said.”

He opened the door, motioned to the Indian woman, and, in a few moments, the broken-hearted Lucy Rives and her companion were hidden in the pines; and Pretty Pierre also disappeared into the shadow of the woods as Shon McGann appeared on the crest of the hill.

The Irishman walked slowly to the door, and pausing, said to himself: “I couldn’t run the big risk, me darlin’, without seein’ you again, God help me! There’s danger ahead which little I’d care for if it wasn’t for you.”

Then he stepped inside the house–the place was silent; he called, but no one answered; he threw open the doors of the rooms, but they were empty; he went outside and called again, but no reply came, except the flutter of a night-hawk’s wings and the cry of a whippoorwill. He went back into the house and sat down with his head between his hands. So, for a moment, and then he raised his head, and said with a sad smile: “Faith, Shon, me boy, this takes the life out of you! the empty house where she ought to be, and the smile of her so swate, and the hand of her that falls on y’r shoulder like a dove on the blessed altar-gone, and lavin’ a chill on y’r heart like a touch of the dead. Sure, nivir a wan of me saw any that could stand wid her for goodness, barrin’ the angel that kissed me good-bye with one foot in the stirrup an’ the troopers behind me, now twelve years gone, in ould Donegal, and that I’ll niver see again, she lyin’ where the hate of the world will vex the heart of her no more, and the masses gone up for her soul. Twice, twice in y’r life, Shon McGann, has the cup of God’s joy been at y’r lips, and is it both times that it’s to spill?–Pretty Pierre shoots straight and sudden, and maybe it’s aisy to see the end of it; but as the just God is above us, I’ll give him the lie in his throat betimes for the word he said agin me darlin’. What’s the avil thing that he has to say? What’s the divil’s proof he would bring? And where is she now? Where are you, Lucy? I know the proof I’ve got in me heart that the wreck of the world couldn’t shake, while that light, born of Heaven, swims up to your eyes whin you look at me!”