But I know that grief
makes one's words wild. Shon McGann shall be found. In the days when I
saw him most and best, he talked of you as an angel gone, and he had
never sought another woman had he known that you lived. The Mounted
Police, the Riders of the Plains, travel far and wide. But now, there
has come from the farther West a new detachment to Fort Cypress, and they
may be able to help us. But listen. There is something more. The man
Pretty Pierre, did he not speak puzzling words concerning himself and
Shon McGann? And did he not say to you at the last that they were even
now? Well, can you not guess?"
Mary Callen's bosom heaved painfully and her eyes stared so at the candle
in the window that they seemed to grow one with the flame. At last a new
look crept into them; a thought made the lids close quickly as though it
burned them. When they opened again they were full of tears that shone
in the shadow and dropped slowly on her cheeks and flowed on and on,
quivering too in her throat.
The priest said: "You understand, my child?"
And she answered: "I understand. Pierre, the outlaw, was her husband."
Father Corraine rose and sat beside the table, his book of offices open
before him. At length he said: "There is much that might be spoken; for
the Church has words for every hour of man's life, whatever it be; but
there comes to me now a word to say, neither from prayer nor psalm, but
from the songs of a country where good women are; where however poor the
fireside, the loves beside it are born of the love of God, though the
tongue be angry now and then, the foot stumble, and the hand quick at a
blow.
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