Alice of Old Vincennes. Maurice Thompson

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      Rene laughed under his breath, standing a moment as if expecting her to come out again; but she did not, and he resumed his walk singing softly—

      "Elle a les joues vermeilles, vermeilles, Ma belle, ma belle petite."

      But ten to one he was not thinking of Madamoiselle Adrienne Bourcier. His mind, however, must have been absorbingly occupied; for in the straight, open way he met Father Beret and did not see him until he came near bumping against the old man, who stepped aside with astonishing agility and said—

      "Dieu vous benisse, mon fils; but what is your great hurry—where can you be going in such happy haste?" Rene did not stop to parley with the priest. He flung some phrase of pleasant greeting back over his shoulder as he trudged on, his heart beginning a tattoo against his ribs when the Roussillon place came in sight, and he took hold of his mustache to pull it, as some men must do in moments of nervousness and bashfulness. If sounds ever have color, the humming in his ears was of a rosy hue; if thoughts ever exhale fragrance, his brain overflowed with the sweets of violet and heliotrope.

      He had in mind what he was going to say when Alice and he should be alone together. It was a pretty speech, he thought; indeed a very thrilling little speech, by the way it stirred his own nerve-centers as he conned it over.

      Madame Roussillon met him at the door in not a very good humor.

      "Is Mademoiselle Alice here?" he ventured to demand.

      "Alice? no, she's not here; she's never here just when I want her most. V'la le picbois et la grive—see the woodpecker and the robin—eating the cherries, eating every one of them, and that girl running off somewhere instead of staying here and picking them," she railed in answer to the young man's polite inquiry. "I haven't seen her these four hours, neither her nor that rascally hunchback, Jean. They're up to some mischief, I'll be bound!"

      Madame Roussillon puffed audibly between phrases; but she suddenly became very mild when relieved of her tirade.

      "Mais entrez," she added in a pleasant tone, "come in and tell me the news."

      Rene's disappointment rushed into his face, but he managed to laugh it aside.

      "Father Beret has just been telling me," said Madame Roussillon, "that our friend Long-Hair made some trouble last night. How about it?"

      Rene told her what he knew and added that Long-Hair would probably never be seen again.

      "He was shot, no doubt of it," he went on, "and is now being nibbled by fish and turtles. We tracked him by his blood to where he jumped into the Wabash. He never came out."

      Strangely enough it happened that, at the very time of this chat between Madame Roussillon and Rene Alice was bandaging Long-Hair's wounded leg with strips of her apron. It was under some willows which overhung the bank of a narrow and shallow lagoon or slough, which in those days extended a mile or two back into the country on the farther side of the river. Alice and Jean went over in a pirogue to see if the water lilies, haunting a pond there, were yet beginning to bloom. They landed at a convenient spot some distance up the little lagoon, made the boat fast by dragging its prow high ashore, and were on the point of setting out across a neck of wet, grassy land to the pond, when a deep grunt, not unlike that of a self-satisfied pig, attracted them to the willows, where they discovered Long-Hair, badly wounded, weltering in some black mud.

      His hiding-place was cunningly chosen, save that the mire troubled him, letting him down by slow degrees, and threatening to engulf him bodily; and he was now too weak to extricate himself. He lifted his head and glared. His face was grimy, his hair matted with mud. Alice, although brave enough and quite accustomed to startling experiences, uttered a cry when she saw those snaky eyes glistening so savagely amid the shadows. But Jean was quick to recognize Long-Hair; he had often seen him about town, a figure not to be forgotten.

      "They've been hunting him everywhere," he said in a half whisper to Alice, clutching the skirt of her dress. "It's Long-Hair, the Indian who stole the brandy; I know him."

      Alice recoiled a pace or two.

      "Let's go back and tell 'em," Jean added, still whispering, "they want to kill him; Oncle Jazon said so. Come on!"

      He gave her dress a jerk; but she did not move any farther back; she was looking at the blood oozing from a wound in the Indian's leg.

      "He is shot, he is hurt, Jean, we must help him," she presently said, recovering her self-control, yet still pale. "We must get him out of that bad place."

      Jean caught Alice's merciful spirit with sympathetic readiness, and showed immediate willingness to aid her.

      It was a difficult thing to do; but there was a will and of course a way. They had knives with which they cut willows to make a standing place on the mud. While they were doing this they spoke friendly words to Long-Hair, who understood French a little, and at last they got hold of his arms, tugged, rested, tugged again, and finally managed to help him to a dry place, still under the willows, where he could lie more at ease. Jean carried water in his cap with which they washed the wound and the stolid savage face. Then Alice tore up her cotton apron, in which she had hoped to bear home a load of lilies, and with the strips bound the wound very neatly. It took a long time, during which the Indian remained silent and apparently quite indifferent.

      Long-Hair was a man of superior physique, tall, straight, with the muscles of a Vulcan; and while he lay stretched on the ground half clad and motionless, he would have been a grand model for an heroic figure in bronze. Yet from every lineament there came a strange repelling influence, like that from a snake. Alice felt almost unbearable disgust while doing her merciful task; but she bravely persevered until it was finished.

      It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun would be setting before they could reach home.

      "We must hurry back, Jean," Alice said, turning to depart. "It will be all we can do to reach the other side in daylight. I'm thinking that they'll be out hunting for us too, if we don't move right lively. Come."

      She gave the Indian another glance when she had taken but a step. He grunted and held up something in his hand—something that shone with a dull yellow light. It was a small, oval, gold locket which she had always worn in her bosom. She sprang and snatched it from his palm.

      "Thank you," she exclaimed, smiling gratefully. "I am so glad you found it."

      The chain by which the locket had hung was broken, doubtless by some movement while dragging Long-Hair out of the mud, and the lid had sprung open, exposing a miniature portrait of Alice, painted when she was a little child, probably not two years old. It was a sweet baby face, archly bright, almost surrounded with a fluff of golden hair. The neck and the upper line of the plump shoulders, with a trace of richly delicate lace and a string of pearls, gave somehow a suggestion of patrician daintiness.

      Long-Hair looked keenly into Alice's eyes, when she stooped to take the locket from his hand, but said nothing.

      She and Jean now hurried away, and, so vigorously did they paddle the pirogue, that the sky was yet red in the west when they reached home and duly received their expected scolding from Madame Roussillon.

      Alice sealed Jean's lips as to their adventure; for she had made up her mind to save Long-Hair if possible, and she felt sure that the only way to do it would be to trust no one but Father Beret.

      It turned out that Long-Hair's СКАЧАТЬ