o-day, even though it make you
happier."

"We have burnt it for a propitiation, ma'amzelle; it no longer
exists." Bateese cast himself on his back at full length in the
herbage and gazed up through the drifting smoke into the tree-tops
and sky. "A-ah!" said he with a long sigh, "how good God has been to
me! How beautiful He has made all my life!" He propped himself on
one elbow and continued with shining eyes: "What things we were going
to do, in those days! What wonders we looked forward to! And all
the while we were doing the most wonderful thing in the world, for we
loved one another." He stretched out a hand and pointed. "There, by
the bend, the English boats will come in sight. Suppose, Dominique,
that as they come you launched out against them, and fought and sank
the fleet single-handed, like the men in the old tales--"

"He would save New France, and live in song," Diane put in.
"Would that not content any man, Bateese?" She threw back her head
with a gesture which Dominique noted; a trick of her childhood, when
in moments of excitement her long hair fell across her eyes and had
to be shaken back.

"Ma'amzelle," he pleaded, "there is yet one favour."

"Can I grant it easily?"

"I hope so; it is that you will let down your hair for us."

Diane blushed, but put up a hand and began to uncoil the tresses.
"Bateese has not answered me," she insisted. "I tell him that a man
who should do such a feat as he named would live in song for ever and
ever."

"But I say to you humbly, ma'amzelle, that though he lived in song
for ever and ever, the true sweetness of his life would be unknown to
the singers; for he found it here under the branches, and, stepping
forth to his great deed, he left the memory for a while, to meet him
again and be his reward in Heaven."

"And I say to you 'no,' and 'no,' and again 'no'!" cried Diane,
springing to her feet--the childish, impetuous Diane of old.
"It is in the great deed that he lives--the deed, and the moment that
makes him everlasting! If Dominique now, or I, as these English came
round the bend--"

She paused, meeting Dominique's eyes. She had not said "or you,"
and could not say it. Why? Because Bateese was a cripple.
"Bateese's is a cripple's talk," said their glances one to another,
guiltily, avoiding him.

Dominique's gaze, flinching a little, passed down the splendid coils
of her hair and rested on the grass at her feet. She lifted a tress
on her