"As I sit at my dinner, with the sun shining and the woods green and
glad, and all the world gay, I have see what happened all over again.
I have see his strong hands; his bad face laugh at my words; I have see
him raise his riding-whip and cut me across the head. I have see him
stagger and fall from the blows I give him with the knife--the knife
which never was found--why, I not know, for I throw it on the ground
beside him! There, as I sit in the open day, a thousand times I have see
him shiver and fall, staring, staring at me as if he see a dreadful
thing. Then I stand up again and strike at him--at his ghost!--as I did
that day in the woods. Again I see him lie in his blood, straight and
white--so large, so handsome, so still! I have shed tears--but what are
tears! Blind with tears I have call out for the devils of hell to take
me with them. I have call on God to give me death. I have prayed, and I
have cursed. Twice I have travelled to the grave where he lies. I have
knelt there and have beg him to tell the truth to God, and say that he
torture me till I kill him. I have beg him to forgive me and to haunt me
no more with his bad face. But never--never--never--have I one quiet
hour until you come, M'sieu'; nor any joy in my heart till I tell you the
black truth--M'sieu'! M'sieu!"

He buried his face between Charley's feet, and held them with his hands.

Charley laid a hand on the shaggy head as though it were that of a child.
"Be still--be still, Jo," he said gently.

Since that night of St. Jean Baptiste's festival, no word of the past,
of the time when Charley turned aside the revanche of justice from a man
called Joseph Nadeau, had been spoken between them. Out of the delirium
of his drunken trance had come Charley's recognition of the man he knew
now as Jo Portugais. But the recognition had been sent again into the