"Tell me about this
girl. Who went with her?"

"Not so many," muttered Marquette, "because she go quiet, in the dark.
In the day the whole Settlement would follow, _non_? But Marc Lemarc,
he go; an' M'sieu Sefton, he go; an' M'sieu Ramon, he go. . . ."

"I'll give you a hundred dollars if you can tell me which way they
went!" broke in Drennen crisply. "I'll give you five hundred if you
can tell me why?"

"_Qui sait_?" grumbled Marquette. "They go, they go In the dark, they
go with horses runnin' like hell. M'am'selle sleep; then come Lemarc,
fas', to knock on her window. I hear. She dress damn fas', too, or
she don't dress at all; in one minute she's outside with Lemarc. I
hear Sefton; I hear Ramon Garcia, a little song in his throat. I hear
horses. I hear M'am'selle Ygerne laugh like it's fon! Then she wake
me an' she pay me; I see Lemarc give her money, gol' money, to pay.
Me, I go back to bed an' Mamma Jeanne suspec' it might be I flirt with
the M'am'selle by dark!"

He chuckled again and closed the door as Drennen turned abruptly and
went back down the street towards his dugout.

Marc Lemarc had robbed him of the ten thousand dollars. He began
there, strangely cool-thoughted. That didn't matter. He had half
expected it all along. He knew now, clearly, that, more than that, he
had half hoped for it. The money meant less than nothing to him; the
theft of it, he had thought, would show Ygerne just what sort of man
Lemarc was, would separate her from her companions, would draw her even
closer to him. But Ygerne, too, had gone with the money and with
Lemarc. Marquette had seen him hand her the gold that she might pay
her reckoning. Here was a contingency upon which he had not counted.

As soon as Lemarc had returned she had gone. Sefton had gone with
them. Ramon Garcia, too. Why Garcia?

A scene he had not forgotten, which now he could never forget, occupied
his mind so vividly that he did not see the material things among which
he was walking: Ramon Garcia at Ygerne's window, the gift of a few
field flowers, the kissing of a white hand.

Men who had known Drennen for years and who would have been surprised
at what was in the man's face yesterday, saw nothing new to note in him
to-day. He went his own way, he was silent, his face was hard and not
to be read. All day he was about the Settlement, in his own dugout a
large part of the time, going to his meals regularly at Joe's. It was