The Shepherd of the North

by Richard Aumerle Maher

He threw back his head, laughing softly, and began to pace his cell rapidly. There was some other explanation. Either she had deliberately put his story aside in order to keep the whole of 221 their little time together entirely to themselves, or Ruth knew something that made his story unimportant.

She had been through the fire herself. Both she and the Bishop must have gone straight through it from their home in its front line to the rear of it at French Village. How, no one could tell. Jeffrey had heard wild tales of the exploit–– The French people had made many wonders of the coming of these two to them in the hour of their deliverance, the one the Bishop of their souls, the other the young girl just baptised by Holy Church and but little differing from the angels.

Who could tell, thought Jeffrey, what the fire might have revealed to one or both of these two as they went through it. Perhaps there were other men who had not been accounted for. Then he remembered Rafe Gadbeau. He had been with Rogers. He had once waylaid Jeffrey at Rogers’ command. Might it not be that the bullet which killed Rogers was intended for Jeffrey himself! He must have been almost in the line of that bullet, for Rogers had been facing him squarely and the bullet had struck Rogers fairly in the back of the head.

Or again, people had said that Rogers had possessed some sort of mysterious hold over Rafe Gadbeau, and that Gadbeau did his bidding unwillingly, under a pressure of fear. What if 222 Gadbeau there under the excitement of the fire, and certain that another man would be charged with the killing, had decided that here was the time and place to rid himself of the man who had made him his slave!

The thing fascinated him, as was natural; and, pacing his cell, stopping between mouthfuls of his food as he sat at the jail table, sitting up in his cot in the middle of the night to think, Jeffrey caught at every scrap of theory and every thread of fact that would fit into the story as it must have happened. He wandered into many blind trails of theory and explanation, but, strange as it was, he at last came upon the truth––and stuck to it.

Gadbeau had killed Rogers. Gadbeau had been caught in the fire and had almost burned to death. He had managed to reach the place where Ruth and the Bishop had found refuge. He had died there in their presence. He had confessed. The Catholics always told the truth when they were going to die. Ruth and the Bishop had heard him. Ruth knew. The Bishop knew.

When Ruth came again, he watched her closely; and saw––just what he had expected to see. Ruth knew. It was not only her love and her confidence in him. She had none of the little whispering, torturing doubts that must sometimes, unbidden, rise to frighten even his mother. Ruth knew.

That she should not tell him, or give him any 223 outward hint of what she was hiding in her mind, did not surprise him. It was a very serious matter this with Catholics. It was a sacred matter with anybody, to carry the secret of a dead man. Ruth would not speak unnecessarily of it. When the proper time came, and there was need, she would speak. For the present––Ruth knew. That was enough.

When the Bishop came down from Alden to see him, Jeffrey watched him as he had watched Ruth. He had never been very observant. He had never had more than a boy’s careless indifference and disregard of details in his way of looking at men and things. But much thinking in the dark had now given him intuitions that were now sharp and sensitive as those of a woman. He was quick to know that the grip of the Bishop’s hand on his, the look of the Bishop’s eye into his, were not those of a man who had been obliged to fight against doubts in order to keep his faith in him. That grip and that look were not those of a man who wished to believe, who tried to believe, who told himself and was obliged to keep on telling himself that he believed in spite of all. No. Those were the grip and the look of a man who knew. The Bishop knew.

It was even easier to understand the Bishop’s silence than it had been to see why Ruth might not speak of what she knew. The Bishop was an official in a high place, entrusted with a dark secret. 224 He must not speak of such things without a very serious cause. But, of course, there was nothing in this world so sacred as the life of an innocent man. Of course, when the time and the need came, the Bishop would speak.