spilled over him. The spoon continued to move quickly between
the bowl and his mouth. He was robbed of speech. And the girl's eyes,
as surely as he was alive, were beginning to laugh at him. They were a
wonderful brown, with little, golden specks in them, like the freckles
he had seen in wood-violets. Her lips parted. Between their bewitching
redness he saw the gleam of her white teeth. In a crowd, with her
glorious hair covered and her eyes looking straight ahead, one would
not have picked her out. But close, like this, with her eyes smiling at
him, she was adorable.

Something of Carrigan's thoughts must have shown in his face, for
suddenly the girl's lips tightened a little, and the warmth went out of
her eyes, leaving them cold and distant. He finished the soup, and she
rose again to her feet.

"Please don't go," he said. "If you do, I think I shall get up and
follow. I am quite sure I am entitled to a little something more than
soup."

"Nepapinas says that you may have a bit of boiled fish for supper," she
assured him.

"You know I don't mean that. I want to know why you shot me, and what
you think you are going to do with me."

"I shot you by mistake--and--I don't know just what to do with you,"
she said, looking at him tranquilly, but with what he thought was a
growing shadow of perplexity in her eyes. "Bateese says to fasten a big
stone to your neck and throw you in the river. But Bateese doesn't
always mean what he says. I don't think he is quite as bloodthirsty--"

"--As the young lady who tried to murder me behind the rock," Carrigan
interjected.

"Exactly, m'sieu. I don't think he would throw you into the
river--unless I told him to. And I don't believe I am going to ask him
to do that," she added, the soft glow flashing back into her eyes for
an instant. "Not after the splendid work Nepapinas has done on your
head. St. Pierre must see that. And then, if St. Pierre wishes to
finish you, why--" She shrugged her slim shoulders and made a little
gesture with her hands.

In that same moment there came over her a change as sudden as the
passing of light itself. It was as if a thing she was hiding had broken
beyond her control for an instant and had betrayed her. The gesture
died. The glow went out of her eyes, and in its place came a light that
was almost fear--or pain. She came nearer to Carrigan again, and
somehow, looking up at her, he thought of the little brush warbler
singing at the end of its b