Mary Callen raised herself upon her elbow, and looked at the priest in
piteous bewilderment. "It is dreadful," she said. . . . "Poor woman!
. . . And he had forgotten--forgotten me. I was dead to him, and am
dead to him now. There's nothing left but to draw the cold sheet of the
grave over me. Better for me if I had never come--if I had never come,
and instead were lyin' by his father and mother beneath the rowan."

The priest took her wrist firmly in his. "These are not brave nor
Christian words, from a brave and Christian girl. But I know that grief
makes one's words wild. Shon McGann shall be found. In the days when I
saw him most and best, he talked of you as an angel gone, and he had
never sought another woman had he known that you lived. The Mounted
Police, the Riders of the Plains, travel far and wide. But now, there
has come from the farther West a new detachment to Fort Cypress, and they
may be able to help us. But listen. There is something more. The man
Pretty Pierre, did he not speak puzzling words concerning himself and
Shon McGann? And did he not say to you at the last that they were even
now? Well, can you not guess?"

Mary Callen's bosom heaved painfully and her eyes stared so at the candle
in the window that they seemed to grow one with the flame. At last a new
look crept into them; a thought made the lids close quickly as though it
burned them. When they opened again they were full of tears that shone
in the shadow and dropped slowly on her cheeks and flowed on and on,
quivering too in her throat.

The priest said: "You understand, my child?"

And she answered: "I understand. Pierre, the outlaw, was her husband."