, France,
everything, to follow you here. I was willing to live here, while you
lived, or till you should be free. And you curse me--you dare to curse
me! Now I will give you some cause to curse. You are a devil--I am a
sinner. Henceforth I shall be devil and sinner too.' With that she left
him. Since then she has been both devil and sinner, but not in the way
he meant; simply a danger to the safety of this dangerous community;
a Louise Michel--we had her here too!--without Louise Michel's high
motives. Gabrielle Rouget may cause a revolt of the convicts some day,
to secure the escape of Henri Durien, or to give them all a chance. The
Governor does not believe it, but I do. You noticed what I said about
the Morgue, and that?"

Shorland paced up and down the room for a time, and then said: "Great
heaven, suppose that by some hideous chance this woman, Gabrielle
Rouget, or Lucile Laroche, should prove to be Freeman's wife! The
evidence is so overwhelming. There evidently was some trick, some
strange mistake, about the Morgue and the burial. This is the fourteenth
of January; Freeman is to be married on the twenty-sixth! Monsieur, if
this woman should be his wife, there never was brewed an uglier scrape.
There is Freeman--that's pitiful; there is Clare Hazard--that's pitiful
and horrible. For nothing can be done; no cables from here, the Belle
Sauvage gone, no vessels or sails for two weeks. Ah well, there's only
one thing to do--find out the truth from Gabrielle if I can, and trust
in Providence."

"Well spoken," said M. Barre. "Have some more champagne. I make the most
of the pleasure of your company, and so I break another bottle. Besides,
it may be the last I shall get for a time. There is trouble brewing at
Bompari--a native insurrection--and we may have to move at any moment.
However this Gabrielle affair turns out, you have your business to do.
You want to see the country, to study our life-well, come with us. We
will house you, feed you as we feed, and you shall have your tobacco at
army prices."

Much as Blake Shorland was moved by the events of the last few hours
he was enough the soldier and the man of the world to face possible
troubles without the loss of appetite, sleep, or nerve. He had
cultivated a habit of deliberation which saved his digestion and
preserved his mental poise; and he had a faculty for doing the right
thing at the right time. From his stand-point, his late adventure in the
Cafe Voisin wa