It was more than exultation. It
was a feeling of POSSESSION.
In the hollow of his hand he--Blake, the man-hunter--held the fate of
this woman. She was the Fiddler's wife--and the Fiddler was a murderer.
Marie heard the sudden deep breath that forced itself from his lips, a
gasp that would have been a cry of triumph if he had given it voice.
"You are in pain, m'sieu," she exclaimed, turning toward him quickly.
"A little," he said, smiling at her. "Will you help me to sit up, Marie?"
He saw ahead of him another and more thrilling game than the man-hunt
now. And Marie, unsuspicious, put her arms about the shoulders of the
Pharisee and helped him to rise. They ate their supper with a narrow
table between them. If there had been a doubt in Blake's mind before
that, the half hour in which she sat facing him dispelled it utterly. At
first the amazing beauty of Thoreau's wife had impinged itself upon his
senses with something of a shock. But he was cool now. He was again
master of his old cunning. Pitilessly and without conscience, he was
marshaling the crafty forces of his brute nature for this new and more
thrilling fight--the fight for a woman.
That in representing the Law he was pledged to virtue as well as order
had never entered into his code of life. To him the Law was force--power.
It had exalted him. It had forged an iron mask over the face of his
savagery.
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