“I was sure I heard some noise before! You see you are mistaken. He is not yet gone.”
Mellow relief, powerful as sunshine, softened the swarthy pallor of Jacques’s face. He caught his candle from the chimney shelf and jammed its charred wick against a glowing coral knot in the log.
“Madame, that’s m’sieur at the gate. I know his stroke and his call. I’ll bring him up.”
No man can surely say, with all his ancestry at his back and his unproved nature within, what he can or cannot do in certain crises of his life.
“What is it, m’sieur?” exclaimed Jacques as he let Dollard through the gate.
“We went scarce a quarter of a league. I came back because I cannot leave her without telling her; it was a cowardly act!” exclaimed Dollard, darting into the house. “She must go with me to Montreal.”
XII.
DOLLARD’S CONFESSION.