nd leave her alone.

Then in a moment more he did go, and she heard his quick steps down
through the trees, and heard, a little later, the engine of the
motor-car start up with a sudden loud volley of explosions. And so she
was left to her solitary watch. She noticed, as she turned to go
indoors, that the blackness of the night was just beginning to gray
toward dawn.

* * * * *

XXIX

THE SCALES OF INJUSTICE

Ste. Marie slept soundly until mid-morning--that it to say, about ten
o'clock--and then awoke with a dull pain in his head and a sensation of
extreme giddiness which became something like vertigo when he attempted
to rise. However, with the aid of the old Michel he got somehow
up-stairs to his room and made a rather sketchy toilet.

Coira came to him there, and while he lay still across the bed told him
about the happenings of the night after he had received his injury. She
told him also that the motor was waiting for him outside the wall, and
that Richard Hartley had sent a message by the chauffeur to say that he
was very busy in Paris making arrangements about Stewart, who had come
out of his strange state of half-insensibility only to rave in a
delirium.

"So," she said, "you can go now whenever you are ready. Arthur is with
his family, Captain Stewart is under guard, and your work is done. You
ought to be glad--even though you are suffering pain."

Ste. Marie looked up at her. "Do I seem glad, Coira?" said he.

And she said: "You will be glad to-morrow--and always, I hope and pray.
Always! Always!"

The man held one hand over his aching eyes.

"I have," he said, "queer half-memories. I wish I could remember
distinctly."

He looked up at her again.

"I dropped down by the gate in the wall. When I awoke I was in a room in
the house. How did that happen?"

"Oh," she said, turning her face away, "we got you up to the house
almost at once."

But Ste. Marie frowned thoughtfully.

"'We'? Who do you mean by 'we'?"

"Well, then, I," the girl said. "It was not difficult."

"Coira," cried the man, "do you mean that you carried me bodily all that
long distance? _You_?"

"Carried or dragged," she said. "As much one as the other. It was not
very difficult. I'm strong for a woman."

"Oh, child! child!" he cried. And he said: "I remember more. It was you
who held Stewart and kept him from shooting me. I heard the shot and I
heard you scream. The last thought I