e was a flash of a sabre--and nothing more.

Shangois, with his dreams of malice and fighting, and the secrets of
a half-dozen parishes strapped to his back, had dropped out of
Bonaventure, as a stone crumbles from a bank into a stream, and many
waters pass over it, and no one inquires whither it has gone, and no one
mourns for it.

CHAPTER XVII

ON Sunday morning Ferrol lay resting on a sofa in a little room off the
saloon. He had suffered somewhat from the bruise on his head, and while
the Lavilettes, including Christine, were at mass, he remained behind,
alone in the house, save for two servants in the kitchen. From where he
lay he could look down into the village. He was thinking of the tangle
into which things had got. Feeling was bitter against him, and against
the Lavilettes also, now that the patriots were defeated. It had gone
about that he had warned the Governor. The habitants, in their blind
way, blamed him for the consequences of their own misdoing. They blamed
Nicolas Lavilette. They blamed the Lavilettes for their friend ship with
Ferrol. They talked and blustered, yet they did not interfere with the
two soldiers who kept guard at the home of the Regimental Surgeon. It
was expected that the Cure would speak of the Rebellion from the altar
this morning. It was also rumoured that he would have something to say
about the Lavilettes; and Christine had insisted upon going. He laughed
to think of her fury when he suggested that the Cure would probably have
something unpleasant to say about himself. She would go and see to that
herself, she said. He was amused, and yet he was not in high spirits,
for he had coughed a great deal since the incident of the day before,
and his strength was much weakened.

Presently he heard a footstep in the room, and turned over so that he
might see. It was Sophie Farcinelle.

Before he had time to speak or to sit up, she had dropped a hand on his
shoulder. Her face was aflame.

"You have been badly hurt, and I'm very sorry," she said. "Why haven't
you been to see me? I looked for you. I looked every day, and you didn't
come, and--and I thought you had forgotten. Have you? Have you, Mr.
Ferrol?"

He had raised himself on his elbow, and his face was near hers. It
was not in him to resist the appealing of a pretty woman, and he had
scarcely grasped the fact that he was a married man, his clandestine
meetings with his wife having had, to this point, rather an air of
adv