"No, not good," the other interrupted. "I ask this of your charity."
"There is the law, and my conscience."
"The law! the law!" and there was sharp satire in the half-breed's voice. "What has it done in the West? Think, 'mon pere!' Do you not know a hundred cases where the law has dealt foully? There was more justice before we had law. Law—" And he named over swiftly, scornfully, a score of names and incidents, to which Father Corraine listened intently. "But," said Pierre, gently, at last, "but for your conscience, m'sieu', that is greater than law. For you are a good man and a wise man; and you know that I shall pay my debts of every kind some sure day. That should satisfy your justice, but you are merciful for the moment, and you will spare until the time be come, until the corn is ripe in the ear. Why should I plead? It is foolish. Still, it is my whim, of which, perhaps, I shall be sorry tomorrow . . . Hark!" he added, and then shrugged his shoulders and smiled. There were sounds of hoof beats coming faintly to them. Father Corraine threw open the door of the other room of the hut, and said "Go in there—Pierre. We shall see . . . we shall see."
The outlaw looked at the priest, as if hesitating; but, after, nodded meaningly to himself, and entered the room and shut the door. The priest stood listening. When the hoof-beats stopped, he opened the door, and went out. In the dark he could see that men were dismounting from their horses. He stood still and waited. Presently a trooper stepped forward and said warmly, yet brusquely, as became his office: "Father Corraine, we meet again!"
The priest's face was overswept by many expressions, in which marvel and trouble were uppermost, while joy was in less distinctness.
"Surely," he said, "it is Shon McGann."
"Shon McGann, and no other.—I that laughed at the law for many a year, though never breaking it beyond repair,—took your advice, Father Corraine, and here I am, holding that law now as my bosom friend at the saddle's pommel. Corporal Shon McGann, at your service."
They clasped hands, and the priest said: "You have come at my call from
Fort Cypress?"
"Yes. But not these others. They are after a man that's played ducks and drakes with the statutes—Heaven be merciful to him, I say. For there's naught I treasure against him; the will of God bein' in it all, with some doin' of the Devil, too, maybe."
Pretty Pierre, standing with ear to the window of the dark room, heard all this, and he pressed his upper lip hard with his forefinger, as if something disturbed him.