"Good-evening" without apparently
knowing or caring who he was. The horse they knew, no doubt, that was
enough.

He made the same round as before, beginning at the other end. At the
house where the woman was ill the girl who was nursing her remained. At
the next house the young girl, who was dressed for the road, ingenuously
claimed his protection for her homeward way.

"I will go with you, monsieur, it will be more safe for me."

So he put her on his horse, but they did not talk to one another.

At the third house they found Madame Le Maitre weeping passionately over
a dead baby, and the lout of a boy weeping with her. It surprised Caius
to feel suddenly that he could almost have wept, too, and yet he
believed that the child was better dead.

Someone had been out into the winter fields and gathered the small white
everlasting flowers that were still waving there, and twined them in the
curls of the baby's hair, and strewed them upon the meagre gray sheet
that covered it.

When they rode down to the village they were all quite silent. Caius
felt as if he had lived a long time upon this island. His brain was full
of plans for a hospital and for disinfecting the furniture of the
houses.

He visited the good man in whose barn he had slept the preceding night.
He went to his little house and fed himself and his horse. He discovered
his portmanteaus that O'Shea had promised to deliver, and found that
their contents had not been tampered with; but even this did not bring
his mind back with great interest to the events of the former night. He
was thinking of other things, and yet he hardly knew of what he was
thinking.

CHAPTER X.

A LIGHT-GIVING WORD.

The next morning, before Caius went out, he wrote a short statement of
all that had occurred beside the quicksand. The motive that prompted him
to do this was the feeling that it would be difficult for him to make
the statement to Madame Le Maitre verbally. He began to realize that it
was not easy for him to choose the topics of conversation when they were
together.

She did not ride with him next day, as now he knew the road, but in the
course of the morning he saw her at the house where the three children
were ill, and she came out into the keen air with him to ask some
questions, and no doubt for the necessary refreshment of leaving the
close house, for she walked a little way on the dry, frozen grass.

Heavy as was the material of her cloak and hood