kly and with a quiet joy.

He turned to the motion of her hand, and saw Laforce asleep on a couch.

Soon afterwards, as he passed from the house, he turned towards the
window. The broken shutter was gone.

He knew now the meaning of the bonfire the night before.

THE FINDING OF FINGALL

"Fingall! Fingall!--Oh, Fingall!"

A grey mist was rising from the river, the sun was drinking it
delightedly, the swift blue water showed underneath it, and the top of
Whitefaced Mountain peaked the mist by a hand-length. The river brushed
the banks like rustling silk, and the only other sound, very sharp and
clear in the liquid monotone, was the crack of a woodpecker's beak on a
hickory tree.

It was a sweet, fresh autumn morning in Lonesome Valley. Before
night the deer would bellow reply to the hunters' rifles, and the
mountain-goat call to its unknown gods; but now there was only the wild
duck skimming the river, and the high hilltop rising and fading into the
mist, the ardent sun, and again that strange cry--

"Fingall!--Oh, Fingall! Fingall!"

Two men, lounging at a fire on a ledge of the hills, raised their eyes
to the mountain-side beyond and above them, and one said presently:

"The second time. It's a woman's voice, Pierre." Pierre nodded, and
abstractedly stirred the coals about with a twig.

"Well, it is a pity--the poor Cynthie," he said at last.

"It is a woman, then. You know her, Pierre--her story?"

"Fingall! Fingall!--Oh, Fingall!"

Pierre raised his head towards the sound; then after a moment, said:

"I know Fingall."

"And the woman? Tell me."

"And the girl. Fingall was all fire and heart, and devil-may-care.
She--she was not beautiful except in the eye, but that was like a flame
of red and blue. Her hair, too--then--would trip her up, if it hung
loose. That was all, except that she loved him too much. But women--et
puis, when a woman gets a man between her and the heaven above and the
earth beneath, and there comes the great hunger, what is the good! A man
cannot understand, but he can see, and he can fear. What is the good! To
play with life, that is not much; but to play with a soul is more than a
thousand lives. Look at Cynthie."

He paused, and Lawless waited patiently. Presently Pierre continued:

Fingall was gentil; he would take off his hat to a squaw. It made no
difference what others did; he didn't think--it was like breathing to
him. How can you tell the way things happen? Cyn