anded at Montreal, and she
hoped to get through the lines by venturing down the lakes. Yes, indeed!
Madame Clementine has told me that story."

He listened, turning his head attentively and keeping his eyes half
closed, and again worked his lips.

"Yes, yes. You know where she was taken care of?"

"It was at Madame Clementine's."

"I myself took her there." "And have you been there ever since?" He
passed over the trivial question, and when his voice arrived it gushed
without a stammer.

"I had a month of happiness. I have had thirty-five years of waiting.
When this island binds you to any one you remain bound. Since that month
with her I can do nothing but wait until she comes. I lost her, I don't
know how. We were in this cove together. She sat on this rock and waited
while I went up-the cliff to gather ferns for her. When I returned she
was gone. I searched the island for her. It kept on smiling as if
there never had been such a person! Something happened which I do not
understand, for she did not want to leave me. She disappeared as if the
earth had swallowed her!" I felt a rill of cold down my back like
the jetting of the spring that spouted from its ferny tunnel farther
eastward. Had he been thirty-five years on the island without ever
hearing the Old Mission story about bones found in the cliff above
us? Those who reached them by venturing down a pit as deep as a well,
uncovered by winter storms, declared they were the remains of a woman's
skeleton. I never saw the people who found them. It was an oft-repeated
Mission story which had come down to me. An Indian girl was missed from
the Mission school and never traced. It was believed she met her fate in
this rock crevasse. The bones were blue, tinged by a clay in which they
had lain. I tried to remember what became of the Southern girl who was
put ashore, her hair flying from a litter. Distinct as her tradition
remained, it ended abruptly. Even Madame Clementine forgot when and how
she left the island after she ceased to be an object of solicitude, for
many comers and goers trample the memory as well as the island.

Had his love followed him up the green tangled height and sunk so
swiftly to her death that it was accomplished without noise or outcry?
To this hour only a few inhabitants locate the treacherous spot. He
could not hide, even at Madame Clementine's, from all the talk of a
community. This unreasonable tryst of thirty-five years raised for the
firs