galloped up. For the first time in the ride, Nic stuck spurs harshly
into the sorel's side. With a grunt of pain the horse sprang madly on.
A half-dozen leaps more and they were across, even as the bridge began to
turn; for Baby had not recognised the little black notary, and supposed
him to be one of Nic's pursuers; the others he saw further back in the
road. It was only when Shangois was a third of the way across, that he
knew the mare's rider. There was no time to turn the bridge back, and
there was no time for Shangois to stop the headlong pace of the mare.
She gave a wild whinny of fright, and jumped cornerwise, clear out across
the chasm, towards the moving bridge. Her front feet struck the timbers,
and then, without a cry, mare and rider dropped headlong down to the
river beneath, swollen by the autumn rains.

Baby looked down and saw the mare's head thrust above the water, once,
twice; then there was a flash of a sabre--and nothing more.

Shangois, with his dreams of malice and fighting, and the secrets of a
half-dozen parishes strapped to his back, had dropped out of Bonaventure,
as a stone crumbles from a bank into a stream, and many waters pass over
it, and no one inquires whither it has gone, and no one mourns for it.




CHAPTER XVII

ON Sunday morning Ferrol lay resting on a sofa in a little room off the
saloon. He had suffered somewhat from the bruise on his head, and while
the Lavilettes, including Christine, were at mass, he remained behind,
alone in the house, save for two servants in the kitchen. From where he