mind was just beginning to rouse itself to the
significance of the events of the past day and night, and he was like
one bewildered by a great mystery, and startled by visions of a possible
tragedy. Fate had played with him strangely. It had linked him with
happenings that were inexplicable and unusual, and he believed that they
were not without their meaning for him. More or less of a fatalist, he
was inspired by the sudden and disturbing thought that they had happened
by inevitable necessity.

Vividly he saw again the dark, haunting eyes of the woman in the coach,
and heard again the few low, tense words with which she had revealed to
him her quest of a man--a man by the name of Michael O'Doone. In her
presence he had felt the nearness of tragedy. It had stirred him deeply,
almost as deeply as the picture she had left in her seat--the picture
hidden now against his breast--like a thing which must not be betrayed,
and which a strange and compelling instinct had made him associate in
such a startling way with Tavish. He could not get Tavish out of his
mind; Tavish, the haunted man; Tavish the man who had fled from the
Firepan Creek country at just about the time the girl in the picture had
stood on the rock beside the pool; Tavish, terror-driven by a spirit of
the dead! He did not attempt to reason the matter, or bare the folly of
his alarm. He did not ask himself about the improbability of it all, but
accepted without equivocation that strong impression as it had come to
him--the conviction that the girl on the rock and the woman in the coach
were in some way identified with the flight of Tavish, the man he had
never seen, from that far valley in the northwest mountains.

The questions he asked himself now were not to establish in his own mind
either the truth or the absurdity of this conviction. He was determining
with himself whether or not to confide in Father Roland. It was more
than delicacy that made him hesitate; it was almost a personal shame.
For a long time he had kept within his breast the secret of his own
tragedy and dishonour. That it was _his_ dishonour, almost as much as
the woman's, had been his own conviction; and how, at last, he had come
to reveal that corroding sickness in his soul to a man who was almost a
stranger was more than he could understand. But he had done just that.
Father Roland had seen him stripped down to the naked truth in an hour
of great need, and he had put out a hand in time to