kill, you have drink. Ver' well, now, you will be sorry for dat, and say
your prayer. Perhaps, after hunder fifty tousen' years of purgator', you
will be forgive and go to Heaven. But first, when you die, we will put
you way down in de leetla warm house in de ground, on de side of de hill,
in de Parish of Bon'venture, because it is de only place for a gipsy like
Vanne Castine.'

"You ask me-ah! I see you look at me, M'sieu' le Notaire, you look at me
like a leetla dev'. You t'ink I come for somet'ing else"--his black eyes
flashed under his brow, he shook his head, and his hands clinched--"You
ask me why I come back? I come back because there is one thing I care
for mos' in all de worl'. You t'ink I am happy to go about with a damn
brown bear and dance trough de village? Moi?--no, no, no! What a Jack
I look when I sing--ah, that fool's song all down de street! I come back
for one thing only, M'sieu' Shangois.

"You know that night--ah, four, five years ago? You remember, M'sieu'
Shangois? Ah! she was so beautiful, so sweet; her hair it fall down
about her face, her eyes all black, her cheeks like the snow, her lips,
her lips!--You rememb' her father curse me, tell me to go. Why? Because
I have kill a man! Eh bien, what if I kill a man! He would have kill
me: I do it to save myself. I say I am not guilty; but her father say I
am a sc'undrel, and turn me out de house.

"De girl, Christine, she love me. Yes, she love Vanne Castine. She say
to me, 'I will go with you. Go anywhere, and I will go!'

"It is night and it is all dark. I wait at de place, an' she come. We
start to walk to Montreal. Ah! dat night, it is like fire in my heart.
Well, a great storm come down, and we have to come back. We come to your