For Bedore was not dead when Elise's father left
him after their fight on the trap-line. It was you who saw the fight, and
finished the killing, and laid the crime on Elise's father. Mukoki, the
Indian, saw you. It is my day, Dupont, and I have waited long--"
The rest Dupont did not hear. For up from the crowd there went a mighty
roar. And through it a woman was making her way with outreaching
arms--and behind her followed the factor of Lac Bain.
THE FIDDLING MAN
Breault's cough was not pleasant to hear. A cough possesses manifold and
almost unclassifiable diversities. But there is only one cough when a man
has a bullet through his lungs and is measuring his life by minutes,
perhaps seconds. Yet Breault, even as he coughed the red stain from his
lips, was not afraid. Many times he had found himself in the presence of
death, and long ago it had ceased to frighten him. Some day he had
expected to come under the black shadow of it himself--not in a quiet and
peaceful way, but all at once, with a shock. And the time had come. He
knew that he was dying; and he was calm. More than that--in dying he was
achieving a triumph. The red-hot death-sting in his lung had given birth
to a frightful thought in his sickening brain. The day of his great
opportunity was at hand. The hour--the minute.
A last flush of the pale afternoon sun lighted up his black-bearded face
as his eyes turned, with their new inspiration, to his sledge.
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