She stood perfectly still. At her feet was a dark excavation where was the skeleton of Ovi the King. This was the hidden burial-place of the modern Hiawatha of these savage islands, unknown even to the natives themselves, and kept secret with a half-superstitious reverence by this girl, who had discovered it a few months before.
“I had forgotten,” she said. “Please take my hand and set me right at the entrance.”
“Your hand, mademoiselle? Mine is so—! It is not dark.”
“I am blind now.”
“Blind—blind! Oh, the pitiful thing! Since when, mademoiselle?”
“Since the soldier fired on you-the shock....”
The convict knelt at her feet. “Ah, mademoiselle, you are a good angel. I shall die of grief. To think—for such as me!”
“You will live to love your wife and children. This is the will of God with me. Am I in the path now? Ah, thank you.”
“But, M. Laflamme—this will be a great sorrow to him.”
Twice she seemed about to speak, but nothing came save good-bye. Then she crept cautiously away among the bushes and along the narrow path, the eyes of the convict following her. She had done a deed which, she understood, the world would blame her for if it knew, would call culpable or foolishly heroic; but she smiled, because she understood also that she had done that which her own conscience and heart approved, and she was content.