"Put camphor under Ma'amselle Peggy's nose, Wachique," whispered Achille.
Peggy found Rice's chair, and sat down; but as soon as she returned to a consciousness of the bottle under her nose and an arm around her, she said,—
"Go away. A Morrison never faints."
Angélique was kneeling like a nun. She felt the push of a foot.
"Stop that crying," said Peggy fiercely. "I hate to hear it. What right have you to cry?"
"No right at all. But the whole Territory will weep over this."
"What right has the Territory in him now? The Territory will soon find another brilliant man."
"And this poor tiny girl, Peggy, so near her death, what had she done to deserve that it should come in this form? Are men gone mad in this flood, that Dr. Dunlap, for a mere political feud, should seek out Monsieur Reece Zhone in my father's house, and shoot him down before our eyes? I am dazed. It is like a nightmare."
Peggy set her mouth and looked abroad into the brightening night.
Angélique dropped her face in her hands and shook with sobbing. The three girlish figures, one rigid on the bed, another rigid in the chair, and the third bending in vicarious suffering between them, were made suddenly clear by an illumination of the moon as it began to find the western window. Wachique had busied herself seeking among piles of furniture for candles, which she considered a necessity for the dead. The house supply of wax tapers was in the submerged cellar. So she took the lantern from its nail and set it on the floor at the head of the two pallets, and it threw scattered spots of lustre on Rice's white forehead and Maria's hair. This humble shrouded torch, impertinent as it looked when the lily-white moonlight lay across it, yet reminded beholders of a stable, and a Child born in a stable who had taught the race to turn every sorrow into glory.