Her eyes followed the ray of the moon. On the rocker of the cradle she
saw a man's foot with the turned-up toe of a _botte sauvage_. It
seemed as if the smoke of a familiar pipe was in the room. She heard
her husband's voice softly humming:

"_Petit rocher de la haute montagne,
Je viens finir ici cette campagne.
Ah, doux echos, entendez mes soupirs;
En languissant je vais bientot mourir!_"

Trembling, she entered the room, with a cry on her lips.

"Ah! Pat, _mon ami_, what is it? How camest thou here?"

As she spoke, the cradle ceased rocking, the moon-ray faded on the
bare floor, the room was silent.

She fell upon her knees, sobbing.

"My God, I have seen his double, his ghost. My man is dead!"

II

In the steep street of Quebec which is called "Side of the Mountain,"
there is a great descending curve; and from this curve, at the right,
there drops a break-neck flight of steps, leading by the shortest way
to the Lower Town.

As I came down these steps, after dining comfortably at the Chateau
Frontenac, on the same night when Angelique was sleeping alone beside
the twins in the little house of Saint Gerome, I was aware of a merry
fracas below me in the narrow lane called "Under the Fort." The gas
lamps glimmered yellow in the gulf; the old stone houses almost
touched their gray foreheads across the roadway; and in the cleft
between them a dozen roystering companions, men and girls, were
shouting, laughing, swearing, quarrelling, pushing this way and that
way, like the waves on a turbulent eddy of the river before it decides
which direction to follow. In the centre of the noisy group was a big
fellow with a black mustache.

"I tell you, my boys," he cried, "we go to the Rue Champlain, to the
_Moulin Gris_ of old Trudel. There is good stuff to drink there; we'll
make a night of it! My m'sieu' comes to seek me, but he will not find
me until to-morrow. Shut your mouth, you Louis. What do we care for
the police? Come, Suzanne, _marchons_!"

Then he broke out into song:

"_Ce n'est point du raisin pourri,
C'est le bon vin qui danse!
C'est le bon vin qui danse ici,
C'est le bon vin qui danse!_"

Even through its too evident disguise in liquor I knew the voice of my
errant Pat. Would it be wise to accost him at such a moment, in such
company? The streets of the Lower Town were none too peaceful after
dark. And yet, if he were not altogether out of his head, it wo