They rode along the beach slowly togethe_The Mermaid: A Love Tale

She looked physically too exhausted to ride fast. Even yet probably,

within her heart, the conflict was going forward that had only been well

begun in her brief solitude of the sand valley.

Caius looked at her from time to time with feelings of fierce

indignation and dejection. The indignation was against Le Maître, the

dejection was wholly upon his own account; for he felt that his plan of

help had failed, and that where he had hoped to give strength and

comfort, he had only, in utter weakness, exacted pity. Caius had one

virtue in these days: he did not admire anything that he did, and he did

not even think much about the self he scorned. With regard to Josephine,

he felt that if her philosophy of life were true it was not for him to

presume to pity her. So vividly had she brought her conception of the

use of life before him that it was stamped upon his mind in a brief

series of pictures, clear, indelible; and the last picture was one of

which he could not think clearly, but it produced in him an idea of the

after-life which he had not before.

Then he thought again of the cloud under which Josephine was entering.

Her decision would in all probability cut down her bright, useful life

to a few short years of struggle and shame and sorrow. At last he spoke:

"But why do you think it right to sacrifice yourself to this man? It

does not seem to me right."

He knew then what clearness of thought she had, for she looked with

almost horror in her face.

"Sacrifice myself for Le Maître! Oh no! I should have no right to do

that; but to the ideal right, to God--yes. If I withheld anything from

God, how could I win my soul?"

"But how do you know God requires this?"

"Ah! I told you before. Why will you not understand? I have prayed. I

know God has taken this thing in his own hand."

Caius said no more. Josephine's way of looking at this thing might not

be true; that was not what he was considering just then. He knew that it

was intensely true for her, would remain true for her until the event of

death proved it true or false. This was the factor in the present

problem that was the enemy to his scheme. Then, furthermore, whether it

were true or false, he knew that there was in his mind the doubt, and

that doubt would remain with him, and it would prevent him from killing

Le Maître; it would even prevent him from abetting O'Shea, and he

supposed that that abetting would be necessary. Here was cause enough

for dejection--that the whole miserable progress of events which he

feared most should take place. And why? Because a woman held a glorious

faith which might turn out to be delusion, and because he, a man, had

not strength to believe for certain that it was a delusion.

It raised no flicker of renewed hope in Caius to meet O'Shea at the turn

of the shore where the boats of the seal fishery were drawn up. O'Shea

had a brisk look of energy that made it evident that he was still bent

upon accomplishing his design. He stopped in front of the lady's horse,

and said something to her which Caius did not hear.

"Have ye arranged that little picnic over to Prince Edward's," he called

to Caius.

Caius looked at Josephine. O'Shea's mere presence had put much of the

spiritual aspect of the case to flight, and he suddenly smarted under

the realization that he had never put the question to her since she had

known her danger--never put the request to her strongly at all.

"Come," said Josephine; "I am going home. I am going to send all my

girls to their own homes and get the house ready for my husband."

O'Shea, with imperturbable countenance, pushed off his hat and scratched

his head.

"I was thinking," he remarked casually, "that I'd jist send Mammy along

with ye to Prince Edward." (Mammy was what he always called his wife.)

"I am thinking he'll be real glad to see her, for she's a real

respectable woman."

"Who?" asked Josephine, puzzled.

"Prince Edward, that owns the island," said O'Shea. "And she's that down

in the mouth, it's no comfort for me to have her; and she can take the

baby and welcome. It's a fair sea." He looked to the south as he spoke.

"I'd risk both her and the brat on it; and Skipper Pierre is getting

ready to take the boat across the ice."

Caius saw that resolution had fled from Josephine. She too looked at the

calm blue southern sea, and agonized longing came into her eyes. It

seemed to Caius too cruel, too horribly cruel, that she should be

tortured by this temptation. Because he knew that to her it could be

nothing but temptation, he sat silent when O'Shea, seeing that the

lady's gaze was afar, signed to him for aid; and because he hoped that

she might yield he was silent, and did not come to rescue her from the

tormentor.

O'Shea gave him a look of undisguised scorn; but since he would not woo,

it appeared that this man was able to do some wooing for him.

"Of course," remarked O'Shea, "I see difficulties. If the doctor here

was a young man of parts, I'd easier put ye and Mammy in his care; but

old Skipper Pierre is no milksop."

Josephine looked, first alert, as if suspecting an ill-bred joke, and

then, as O'Shea appeared to be speaking to her quite seriously,

forgetting that Caius might overhear, there came upon her face a look of

gentle severity.

"That is not what I think of the doctor; I would trust him more quickly

than anyone else, except you, O'Shea."

The words brought to Caius a pang, but he hardly noticed it in watching

the other two, for the lady, when she had spoken, looked off again with

longing at the sea, and O'Shea, whose rough heart melted under the

trustful affection of the exception she made, for a moment turned away

his head. Caius saw in him the man whom he had only once seen before,

and that was when his child had died. It was but a few moments; the easy

quizzical manner sat upon him again.

"Oh, well, he hasn't got much to him one way or the other, but----" this

in low, confidential tones.

Caius could not hear her reply; he saw that she interrupted, earnestly

vindicating him. He drew his horse back a pace or two; he would not

overhear her argument on his behalf, nor would he trust O'Shea so far as

to leave them alone together.

The cleverness with which O'Shea drove her into a glow of enthusiasm for

Caius was a revelation of power which the latter at the moment could

only regard curiously, so torn was his heart in respect to the issue of

the trial. He was so near that their looks told him what he could not

hear, and he saw Josephine's face glow with the warmth of regard which

grew under the other's sneers. Then he saw O'Shea visibly cast that

subject away as if it was of no importance; he went near to her,

speaking low, but with the look of one who brought the worst news, and

Caius knew, without question, that he was pouring into her ears all the

evil he had ever heard of Le Maître, all the detail of his present

drunken condition. Caius did not move; he did not know whether the scene

before him represented Satan with powerful grasp upon a soul that would

otherwise have passed into some more heavenly region, or whether it was

a wise and good man trying to save a woman from her own fanatical

folly. The latter seemed to be the case when he looked about him at the

beach, at the boats, at the lighthouse on the cliff above, with a

clothes-line near it, spread with flapping garments. When he looked, not

outward, but inward, and saw Josephine's vision of life, he believed he

ought to go forward and beat off the serpent from the dove.

The colloquy was not very long. Then O'Shea led Josephine's horse nearer

to Caius.

"Madame and my wife will go with ye," he said. "I've told the men to get

the boat out."

"I did not say that," moaned Josephine.

Her face was buried in her hands, and Caius remembered how those pretty

white hands had at one time beckoned to him, and at another had angrily

waved him away. Now they were held helplessly before a white face that

was convulsed with fear and shame and self-abandonment.

"There ain't no particular hurry," remarked O'Shea soothingly; "but

Mammy has packed up all in the houses that needs to go, and she'll bring

warm clothes and all by the time the boat's out, so there's no call for

madame to go back. It would be awful unkind to the girls to set them

crying; and"--this to Caius--"ye jist go and put up yer things as quick

as ye can."

His words were accompanied by the sound of the fishermen putting rollers

under the small schooner that had been selected. The old skipper,

Pierre, had begun to call out his orders. Josephine took her hands from

her face suddenly, and looked towards the busy men with such eager

hungry desire for the freedom they were preparing for her that it seemed

to Caius that at that moment his own heart broke, for he saw that

Josephine was not convinced but that she had yielded. He knew that

Mammy's presence on the journey made no real difference in its guilt

from Josephine's standpoint; her duty to her God was to remain at her

post. She had flinched from it out of mere cowardice--it was a fall.

Caius knew that he had no choice but to help her back to her better

self, that he would be a bastard if he did not do it.

Three times he essayed to speak; he had not the right words; then, even

without them, he broke the silence hurriedly:

"I think you are justified in coming with me; but if you do what you

believe to be wrong--you will regret it. What does your heart say?

Think!"

It was a feeble, stammered protest; he felt no dignity in it; he almost

felt it to be the craven insult seen in it by O'Shea, who swore under

his breath and glared at him.

Josephine gave only a long sobbing sigh, as one awakening from a dream.

She looked at the boat again, and the men preparing it, and then at

Caius--straight in his eyes she looked, as if searching his face for

something more.

"Follow your own conscience, Josephine; it is truer than ours. I was

wrong to let you be tempted," he said. "Forgive me!"

She looked again at the boat and at the sea, and then, in the stayed

subdued manner that had become too habitual to her, she said to O'Shea:

"I will go home now. Dr. Simpson is right. I cannot go."

O'Shea was too clever a man to make an effort to hold what he knew to be

lost; he let go her rein, and she rode up the path that led to the

island road. When she was gone O'Shea turned upon Caius with a look of

mingled scorn and loathing.

"Ye're afraid of Le Maître coming after ye," he hissed; "or ye have a

girl at home, and would foind it awkward to bring her and madam face to

face; so ye give her up, the most angel woman that ever trod this earth,

to be done to death by a beast, because ye're afraid for yer own skin.

Bah! I had come to think better of ye."

With that he cut at the horse with a stick he had in his hand, and the

creature, wholly unaccustomed to such pain and indignity, dashed along

the shore, by chance turning homeward. Caius, carried perforce as upon

the wings of the wind for half a mile, was thrown off upon the sand. He

picked himself up, and with wet clothes and sore limbs walked to his

little house, which he felt he could no longer look upon as a home.

He could hardly understand what he had done; he began to regret it. A

man cannot see the forces at work upon his inmost self. He did not know

that Josephine's soul had taken his by the hand and lifted it up--that

his love for her had risen from earth to heaven when he feared the

slightest wrong-doing for her more than all other misfortune.

CHAPTER IX.

"GOD'S PUPPETS, BEST AND WORST."

All that long day a hot sun beat down upon the sea and upon the ice in

the bay; and the tide, with its gentle motion of flow and ebb, made

visibly more stir among the cakes of floating ice, by which it was seen

that they were smaller and lighter than before. The sun-rays were doing

their work, not so much by direct touch upon the ice itself as by

raising the temperature of all the flowing sea, and thus, when the sun

went down and the night of frost set in, the melting of the ice did not

cease.

Morning came, and revealed a long blue channel across the bay from its

entrance to Harbour Island. The steamer from Souris had made this

channel by knocking aside the light ice with her prow. She was built to

travel in ice. She lay now, with funnel still smoking, in the harbour, a

quarter of a mile from the small quay. The Gaspé schooner still lay

without the bay, but there was a movement of unfurling sails among her

masts, by which it was evident that her skipper hoped by the faint but

favourable breeze that was blowing to bring her down the same blue

highway.

It was upon this scene that Caius, wretched and sleepless, looked at

early dawn. He had come out of his house and climbed the nearest knoll

from which the bay could be seen, for his house and those near it looked

on the open western sea. When he reached this knoll he found that O'Shea

was there before him, examining the movements of the ship with his glass

in the gray cold of the shivering morning. The two men stood together

and held no communication.

Pretty soon O'Shea went hastily home again. Caius stood still to see the

sun rise clear and golden. There were no clouds, no vapours, to catch

its reflections and make a wondrous spectacle of its appearing. The blue

horizon slowly dipped until the whole yellow disc beamed above it; ice

and water glistened pleasantly; on the hills of all the sister isles

there was sunshine and shade; and round about him, in the hilly field,

each rock and bush cast a long shadow. Between them the sun struck the

grass with such level rays that the very blades and clumps of blades

cast their shadows also.

Caius had remained to watch if the breeze would strengthen with the

sun's uprising, and he prayed the forces of heat and cold, and all

things that preside over the currents of air, that it might not

strengthen but languish and die.

What difference did it make, a few hours more or less? No difference, he

knew, and yet all the fresh energy the new day brought him went forth in

this desire that Josephine might have a few hours longer respite before

she began the long weary course of life that stretched before her.

Caius had packed up all his belongings. There was nothing for him to do

but drive along the dune with his luggage, as he had driven four months

before, and take the steamer that night to Souris. The cart that took

him would no doubt bring back Le Maître. Caius had not yet hired a cart;

he had not the least idea whether O'Shea intended to drive him and bring

back his enemy or not. That would, no doubt, be Josephine's desire.

Caius had not seen Josephine or spoken to O'Shea; it mattered nothing to

him what arrangement they would or would not make for him.

As he still stood watching to see if the breeze would round and fill the

sails which the Gaspé schooner had set, O'Shea came back and called from

the foot of the knoll. Caius turned; he bore the man no ill will.

Josephine's horse had not been injured by the accident of yesterday, and

his own fall was a matter of complete indifference.

"I'm thinking, as ye packed yer bags, ye'll be going for the steamer."

O'Shea spoke with that indefinable insult in his tone which had always

characterized it in the days of their first intercourse, but, apart from

that, his manner was crisp and cool as the morning air; not a shade of

discouragement was visible.

"I am going for the steamer," said Caius, and waited to hear what offer

of conveyance was to be made him.

"Well, I'm thinking," said O'Shea, "that I'll just take the boat across

the bay, and bring back the captain from Harbour Island; but as his

honour might prefer the cart, I'll send the cart round by the dune.

There's no saying but, having been in tropical parts, he may be a bit

scared of the ice. Howsomever, knowing that he's in that haste to meet

his bride, and would, no doubt, grudge so much as a day spent between

here and there on the sand, I'll jist give him his chice; being who he

is, and a foine gintleman, he has his right to it. As for you"--the tone

instantly slipped into insolent indifference--"ye can go by one or the

other with yer bags."

It was not clear to Caius that O'Shea had any intention of himself

escorting Le Maître if he chose to go by the sand. This inclined him to

suppose that he had no fixed plan to injure him. What right had he to

suppose such plan had been formed? The man before him wore no look of

desperate passion. In the pleasant weather even the dune was not an

unfrequented place, and the bay was overlooked on all sides. Caius could

not decide whether his suspicion of O'Shea had been just or a monstrous

injustice. He felt such suspicion to be morbid, and he said nothing. The

futility of asking a question that would not be answered, the difficulty

of interference, and his extreme dislike of incurring from O'Shea

farther insult, were enough to produce his silence. Behind that lay the

fact that he would be almost glad if the murder was done. Josephine's

faith had inspired in him such love for her as had made him save her

from doing what she thought wrong at any cost; but the inspiration did

not extend to this. It appeared to him the lesser evil of the two.

"I will go with the boat," said Caius. "It is the quicker way."

He felt that for some reason this pleased O'Shea, who began at once to

hurry off to get the luggage, but as he went he only remarked grimly:

"They say as it's the longest way round that is the shortest way home.

If you're tipped in the ice, Mr. Doctor, ye'll foind that true, I'm

thinking."

Caius found that O'Shea's boat, a heavy flat-bottomed thing, was

already half launched upon the beach, furnished with stout boat-hooks

for pushing among the ice, as well as her oars and sailing gear. He was

glad to find that such speedy departure was to be his. He had no thought

of saying good-bye to Josephine.

CHAPTER X.

"DEATH SHRIVE THY SOUL!"

It was an immense relief to stand in the boat with the boat-hook, whose

use demanded all the skill and nerve which Caius had at command. For the

most part they could only propel the boat by pushing or pulling the bits

of ice that surrounded it with their poles. It was a very different sort

of travel from that which they had experienced together when they had

carried their boat over islands of ice and launched it in the great gaps

between them. The ice which they had to do with now would not have borne

their weight; nor was there much clear space for rowing between the

fragments. O'Shea pushed the boat boldly on, and they made their journey

with comparative ease until, when they came near the channel made by the

steamship, they found the ice lying more closely, and the difficulty of

their progress increased.

Work as they would, they were getting on but slowly. The light wind blew

past their faces, and the Gaspé schooner was seen to sail up the path

which the steamer had made across the bay.

"The wind's in the very chink that makes her able to take the channel.

I'm thinking she'll be getting in before us."

O'Shea spoke with the gay indifference of one who had staked nothing on

the hope of getting to the harbour first; but Caius wondered if this

short cut would have been undertaken without strong reason.

A short period of hard exertion, of pushing and pulling the bits of ice,

followed, and then:

"I'm thinking we'll make the channel, any way, before she comes by, and

then we'll just hail her, and the happy bridegroom can come off if he's

so moinded, being in the hurry that he is. 'Tain't many bridegrooms that

makes all the haste he has to jine the lady."

Caius said nothing; the subject was too horrible.

"Ye and yer bags could jist go on board the ship before the loving

husband came off; ye'd make the harbour that way as easy, and I'm

thinking the ice on the other side of the bay is that thick ye'd be

scared and want me to sit back in my boat and yelp for help, like a

froightened puppy dog, instead of making the way through."

Cains thought that O'Shea might be trying to dare him to remain in the

boat. He inclined to believe that O'Shea could not alone enter into

conflict with a strong unscrupulous man in such a boat, in such a sea,

with hope of success. At any rate, when O'Shea, presuming on his

friendship with the skipper, had accomplished no less a thing than

bringing the sailing vessel to a standstill, Caius was prepared to board

her at once.

The little boat was still among the ice, but upon the verge of clear

water. The schooner, already near, was drifting nearer. O'Shea was

shouting to the men on her deck. The skipper stood there looking over

her side; he was a short stout man, of cheery aspect. Several sailors,

and one or two other men who might be passengers, had come to the side

also. Beside the skipper stood a big man with a brown beard; his very

way of standing still seemed to suggest habitual sluggishness of mind or

manner; yet his appearance at this distance was fine. Caius discovered

that this was Le Maître; he was surprised, he had supposed that he would

be thin and dark.

"It's Captain Le Maître I've come for; it's his wife that's wanting to

see him," O'Shea shouted.

"He's here!"

The skipper gave the information cheerfully, and Le Maître made a slight

sign showing that it was correct.

"I'll just take him back, then, in the boat with me now, for it's easy

enough getting this way, but there's holes in the sand that makes

drivin' unpleasant. Howsomever, I can't say which is the best passage.

This city gentleman I've got with me now thinks he's lost his life

siveral times already since he got into this boat."

He pointed to Caius as he ended his invitation to Le Maître. The men on

the schooner all grinned. It was O'Shea's manner, as well as his words,

that produced their derision.

Caius was wondering what would happen if Le Maître refused to come in

the boat. Suspicion said that O'Shea would cause the boat to be towed

ashore, and would then take the Captain home by the quicksands. Would

O'Shea make him drunk, and then cast him headfirst into the swallowing

sand? It seemed preposterous to be harbouring such thought against the

cheerful and most respectable farmer at his side. What foundation had he

for it? None but the hearing of an idle boast that the man had made one

day to his wife, and that she in simplicity had taken for earnest.

Le Maître signified that he would go with O'Shea. Indeed, looked at from

a short distance, the passage through the ice did not look so difficult

as it had proved.

O'Shea and Caius parted without word or glance of farewell. Caius

clambered over the side of the schooner; the one thought in his mind was

to get a nearer view of Le Maître.

This man was still standing sleepily. He did not bear closer inspection

well. His clothes were dirty, especially about the front of vest and

coat; there was everything to suggest an entire lack of neatness in

personal habits; more than that, the face at the time bore unmistakable

signs that enough alcohol had been drunk to benumb, although not to

stupefy, his faculties: the eye was bloodshot; the face, weather-beaten

as it was, was flabby. In spite of all this, Caius had expected a more

villainous-looking person, and so great was his loathing that he would

rather have seen him in a more obnoxious light. The man had a certain

dignity of bearing; his face had that unfurrowed look that means a low

moral sense, for there is no evidence of conflict. His eyes were too

near each other; this last was, perhaps, the only sign by which Nature

from the outset had marred a really excellent piece of manly proportion.

Caius made these observations involuntarily. As Le Maître stepped here

and there in a dull way while a chest that belonged to him was being

lowered into the boat, Caius could not help realizing that his

preconceived notions of the man as a monster had been exaggerated; he

was a common man, fallen into low habits, and fixed in them by middle

age.

Le Maître got into the boat in seaman-like fashion. He was perfectly at

home there, and dull as his eye looked, he tacitly assumed command. He

took O'Shea's pole from him, stepped to the prow, and began to turn the

boat, without regarding the fact that O'Shea was still holding hasty

conversation with the men on the schooner concerning the public events

of the winter months--the news they had brought from the mainland.

Everything had been done in the greatest haste; it was not twelve

minutes after the schooner had been brought to a stand when her sails

were again turned to catch the breeze. The reason for this haste was to

prevent more sideways drifting, for the schooner was drifting with the

wind against the floating ice amongst which O'Shea's boat was lying. The

wind blew very softly; her speed when sailing had not been great, and

the drifting motion was the most gentle possible.

Caius had not taken his eyes from the boat. He was watching the strength

with which Le Maître was turning her and starting her for Cloud Island.

He was watching O'Shea, who, still giving back chaff and sarcasm to the

men on the schooner, was forced to turn and pick up the smaller pole

which Caius had relinquished; he seemed to be interested only in his

talk, and to begin to help in the management of the boat mechanically.

The skipper was swearing at his men and shouting to O'Shea with

alternate breath. The sails of the schooner had hardly yet swelled with

the breeze when O'Shea, bearing with all his might against a bit of ice,

because of a slip of his pole, fell heavily on the side of his own boat,

tipping her suddenly over on a bit of ice that sunk with her weight. Le

Maître, at the prow, in the violent upsetting, was seen to fall headlong

between two bits of ice into the sea.

"By----! Did you ever see anything like that?" The skipper of the

schooner had run to the nearest point, which was beside Caius.

Then followed instantly a volley of commands, some of which related to

throwing ropes to the small boat, some concerning the movement of the

schooner, for at this moment her whole side pressed against all the bits

of ice, pushing them closer and closer together.

The boat had not sunk; she had partially filled with water that had

flowed over the ice on which she had upset; but when the weight of Le

Maître was removed and O'Shea had regained his balance, the ice rose

again, righting the boat and almost instantly tipping her toward the

other side, for the schooner had by this time caused a jam. It was not

such a jam as must of necessity injure the boat, which was heavily

built; but the fact that she was now half full of water and that there

was only one man to manage her, made his situation precarious. The

danger of O'Shea, however, was hardly noticed by the men on the

schooner, because of the horrible fact that the closing of the bits of

ice together made it improbable that Le Maître could rise again.

For a moment there was an eager looking at every space of blue water

that was left. If the drowning man could swim, he would surely make for

such an aperture.

"Put your pole down to him where he went in!" The men on the schooner

shouted this to O'Shea.

"Put the rope round your waist!" This last was yelled by the skipper,

perceiving that O'Shea himself was by no means safe.

A rope that had been thrown had a noose, through which O'Shea dashed his

arms; then, seizing the pole, he struck the butt-end between the blocks

of ice where Le Maître had fallen.

It seemed to Caius that the pole swayed in his hands, as if he were

wrenching it from a hand that had gripped it strongly below; but it

might have been only the grinding of the ice.

O'Shea thrust the pole with sudden vehemence further down, as if in a

frantic effort to bring it better within reach of Le Maître if he were

there; or, as Caius thought, it might have been that, feeling where the

man was, he stunned him with the blow.

Standing in a boat that was tipping and grinding among the ice, O'Shea

appeared to be exercising marvellous force and dexterity in thus using

the pole at all.

The wind was now propelling the schooner forward, and her pressure on

the ice ceased. O'Shea threw off the noose of the rope wildly, and

looked to the men on the vessel, as if quite uncertain what to do next.

It was a difficult matter for anyone to decide. To leave him there was

manifestly impossible; but if the schooner again veered round, the

jamming of the ice over the head of La Maître would again occur. The men

on the schooner, not under good discipline, were all shouting and

talking.

"He's dead by now, wherever he is." The skipper made this quiet

parenthesis either to himself or to Caius. Then he shouted aloud: "Work

your boat through to us!"

O'Shea began poling vigorously. The ice was again floating loosely, and

it was but the work of a few minutes to push his heavy boat into the

open water that was in the wake of the schooner. There was a pause, like

a pause in a funeral service, when O'Shea, standing ankle-deep in the

water which his boat held, and the men huddled together upon the

schooner's deck, turned to look at all the places in which it seemed

possible that the body of Le Maître might again be seen. They looked and

looked until they were tired with looking. The body had, no doubt,

floated up under some cake of ice, and from thence would speedily sink

to a bier of sand at the bottom of the bay.

"By----! I never saw anything like that." It was the remark which began

and ended the episode with the skipper. Then he raised his voice, and

shouted to O'Shea: "It's no sort of use your staying here! Make the rope

fast to your boat, and come up on deck!"

But this O'Shea would not do. He replied that he would remain, and look

about among the ice a bit longer, and that, any way, it would be twice

as far to take his boat home from Harbour Island as from the place where

he now was. The schooner towed his boat until he had baled the water out

and got hold of his oars. The ice had floated so far apart that it

seemed easy for the boat to go back through it.

During this time excited pithy gossip had been going on concerning the

accident.

"You did all a man could do," shouted the captain to O'Shea consolingly,

and remarked to those about him: "There wasn't no love lost between

them, but O'Shea did all he could. O'Shea might as easy as not have gone

over himself, holding the pole under water that time."

The fussy little captain, as far as Caius could judge, was not acting a

part. The sailors were French; they could talk some English; and they

spoke in both languages a great deal.

"His lady won't be much troubled, I dare say, from all I hear." The

captain was becoming easy and good-natured again. He said to Caius: "You

are acquainted with her?"

"She will be shocked," said Caius.

He felt as he spoke that he himself was suffering from shock--so much so

that he was hardly able to think consecutively about what had occurred.

"They won't have an inquest without the body," shouted the captain to

O'Shea. Then to those about him he remarked: "He was as decent and

good-natured a fellow as I'd want to see."

The pronoun referred to Le Maître. The remark was perhaps prompted by

natural pity, but it was so instantly agreed to by all on the vessel

that the chorus had the air of propitiating the spirit of the dead.

CHAPTER XI.

THE RIDDLE OF LIFE.

The schooner slowly moved along, and lay not far from the steamship. The

steamship did not start for Souris until the afternoon. Caius was put on

shore there to await the hour of embarking. In his own mind he was

questioning whether he would embark with the steamer or return to Cloud

Island; but he naturally did not make this problem known to those around

him.

The skipper and several men of the schooner came ashore with Caius.

There was a great bustle as soon as they reached the small wharf because

of what they had to tell. It was apparent from all that was told, and

all the replies that were made, that no shadow of suspicion was to fall

upon O'Shea. Why should it? He had, as it seemed, no personal grudge

against Le Maître, whose death had been evidently an accident.

A man who bore an office akin to that of magistrate for the islands came

down from a house near the harbour, and the story was repeated to him.

When Caius had listened to the evidence given before this official

personage, hearing the tale again that he had already heard many times

in a few minutes, and told what he himself had seen, he began to wonder

how he could still harbour in his mind the belief in O'Shea's guilt. He

found, too, that none of these people knew enough about Josephine to see

any special interest attaching to the story, except the fact that her

husband, returning from a long voyage, had been drowned almost within

sight of her house. "Ah, poor lady! poor lady!" they said; and thus

saying, and shaking their heads, they dispersed to eat their dinners.

Caius procured the bundle of letters which had come for him by this

first mail of the year. He sauntered along the beach, soon getting out

of sight and hearing of the little community, who were not given to

walking upon a beach that was not in this case a highroad to any place.

He was on the shingle of the bay, and he soon found a nook under a high

black cliff where the sun beat down right warmly. He had not opened his

letters; his mind did not yet admit of old interests.

The days were not long passed in which men who continued to be good

husbands and fathers and staunch friends killed their enemies, when

necessary, with a good conscience. Had O'Shea a good conscience now?

Would he continue to be in all respects the man he had been, and the

staunch friend of Josephine? In his heart Caius believed that Le Maître

was murdered; but he had no evidence to prove it--nothing whatever but

what O'Shea's wife had said to him that day she was hanging out her

linen, and such talk occurs in many a household, and nothing comes of

it.

Now Josephine was free. "What a blessing!" He used the common idiom to

himself, and then wondered at it. Could one man's crime be another man's

blessing? He found himself, out of love for Josephine, wondering

concerning the matter from the point of view of the religious theory of

life. Perhaps this was Heaven's way of answering Josephine's appeal, and

saving her; or perhaps human souls are so knit together that O'Shea, by

the sin, had not blessed, but hindered her from blessing. It was a weary

round of questions, which Caius was not wise enough to answer. Another

They rode along the beach slowly together. She was content to go slowly.