he ring of fire grows in your head, and then you will make your scarlet
robe, and go out, but you will never find It--never. God hid first, and
then It hides.... It hides, that which you lost--It hides, and you can
not find It again. You go hunting, hunting, but you can not find It."

My heart was pinched with pain. I understood her. She did not know her
lover now at all. If Alixe and her mother at the Manor could but care
for her, I thought. But alas! what could I do? It were useless to ask
her to go to the Manor; she would not understand.

Perhaps there come to the disordered mind flashes of insight,
illuminations and divinations, greater than are given to the sane, for
she suddenly said in a whisper, touching me with a nervous finger, "I
will go and tell her where to hide. They shall not find her. I know
the woodpath to the Manor. Hush! she shall own all I have--except the
scarlet robe. She showed me where the May-apples grew. Go,"--she pushed
me gently away--"go to your prison, and pray to God. But you can not
kill Francois Bigot, he is a devil." Then she thrust into my hands a
little wooden cross, which she took from many others at her girdle. "If
you wear that, the ring of fire will not grow," she said. "I will go
by the woodpath, and give her one, too. She shall live with me: I will
spread the cedar branches and stir the fire. She shall be safe. Hush!
Go, go softly, for their wicked eyes are everywhere, the were-wolves!"

She put her fingers on my lips for an instant, and then, turning, stole
softly away towards the St. Charles River.

Doltaire's mockery brought me back to myself.

"So much for the beads of the addled; now for the bowls of sinful man,"
said he.

III. THE WAGER AND THE SWORD

As I entered the Intendant's palace with Doltaire I had a singular
feeling of elation. My spirits rose unaccountably, and I felt as though
it were a fete night, and the day's duty over, the hour of play was
come. I must needs have felt ashamed of it then, and now, were I not
sure it was some unbidden operation of the senses. Maybe a merciful
Spirit sees how, left alone, we should have stumbled and lost ourselves
in our own gloom, and so gives us a new temper fitted to our needs. I
remember that at the great door I turned back and smiled upon the ruined
granary, and sniffed the air laden with the scent of burnt corn--the
peoples bread; that I saw old men and women who could not be moved by
news of victory, shaki