“Ah,” rejoined the trooper, “perhaps it is the woman who was riding with the half-breed. We found her dead horse.”
The priest nodded. Shon McGann looked at the crouching figure by the table pityingly. As he looked he was stirred, he knew not why. And she, though she did not look, knew that his gaze was on her; and all her will was spent in holding her eyes from his face, and from crying out to him.
“And Pretty Pierre,” said the trooper, “is not here with her?”
There was an unfathomable sadness in the priest’s eyes, as, with a slight motion of the hand towards the room, he said: “You see—he is not here.”
The trooper and his men immediately mounted; but one of them, young Tim Kearney, slid from his horse, and came and dropped on his knee in front of the priest.
“It’s many a day,” he said, “since before God or man I bent a knee—more shame to me for that, and for mad days gone; but I care not who knows it, I want a word of blessin’ from the man that’s been out here like a saint in the wilderness, with a heart like the Son o’ God.”
The priest looked at the man at first as if scarce comprehending this act so familiar to him, then he slowly stretched out his hand, said some words in benediction, and made the sacred gesture. But his face had a strange and absent look, and he held the hand poised, even when the man had risen and mounted his horse. One by one the troopers rode through the faint belt of light that stretched from the door, and were lost in the darkness, the thud of their horses’ hoofs echoing behind them. But a change had come over Corporal Shon McGann. He looked at Father Corraine with concern and perplexity. He alone of those who were there had caught the unreal note in the proceedings. His eyes were bent on the darkness into which the men had gone, and his fingers toyed for an instant with his whistle; but he said a hard word of himself under his breath, and turned to meet Father Corraine’s hand upon his arm.
“Shon McGann,” the priest said, “I have words to say to you concerning this poor girl.”
“You wish to have her taken to the Fort, I suppose? What was she doing with Pretty Pierre?”
“I wish her taken to her home.”