CHAPTER XIV.

THÉRÈSE'S REVENGE.

The daylight had returned, but the sun was not yet up, and the air was cold, when a heavy hand was laid upon the sleeping squaws, and shook them roughly.

"What are yez doin' here? Stailin' is it ye're afther, eh?"

"Sleep here all night," was Thérèse's answer, as she slowly regained her feet. She was stiff with cold. "No home to go to--come here."

"A shindy at home was it? Turned out of doors is it ye are? Sarves ye right, maybe. But it's a could sleepin' place, _al_ the same, and wan niver knows. The gates won't be opened these two hours, but ye can come in this way. Here's an empty luggige room, where yez cuddn't do no harm ef ye wanted."

He ushered them in, closed the door behind them, and turned the key with a knowing wink.

"Oi'm clair of yez now, me beauties. The pollisman can do as he thinks best when he comes on at sivin o'clock. Oi've catched them if they're wanted, an' that's as much as they kin expect from a night watchman."

The police sergeant arrived at his appointed time. The squaws had accepted their confinement with a contented mind, and were asleep. Under the shelter of a roof and on a wooden floor, they could stretch themselves at length, which was grateful after the cramped position of the night.

Their apathetic indifference convinced the man of authority that their tale was true; they had come on the pier while the gates were open the evening before, and fallen asleep. It was wrong, as he assured them, and he could take them up for it; but to what good end? he asked himself. He was a _virtuoso_ in malefactors, and did not care to encumber himself with a capture out of which so little credit with his superiors could be got, as three squawks sleeping on a pier.

"Look out, now!" he said, shaking his finger at them. "I let you off this time, but if"--another shake of his finger--"but if ever--I--catch-you here again--you may look out for squalls."

Thérèse had lifted her head in dull indifference; but at the sound of his voice her face changed. She looked at him. It was now long ago since she had heard that voice before--when she was quite a girl, the speaker quite a young man--but the occasion was a momentous one. It was when she had been arrested by mistake instead of Fidèle. If only it had been Fidèle indeed; and if Fidèle had been punished then as she deserved, she would not have come back again, like the hungry ghosts of the long forgotten dead, to push the living from their stools and bring them to ruin.

There kindled a red coal down deep at the bottom of Thérèse's eyes and made them glow and burn, and the surging blood rose to her weather-beaten cheek and reddened it behind the scarce transparent; skin the lips parted, and the white teeth glistened, and for the moment Thérèse in her fury looked handsomer, if in an evil way, than she had ever done in her youth. It was no apathetic face now, carven in walnut wood, but rather the features of a snake-haired fury, as one may see them at times in the caverns of a red-coal fire.

She laid her hand upon the sergeant as he was turning to go, after having discharged his prisoners.

"I know you," she said, as he turned in surprise. "Remember me?"

"You? Where have I seen you? When was it?"

"Long ago--_enfante perdue_--Remember now?"

"What? You the woman that stole the child, and the nuns got off? Yes, I remember you. You should be at the _Isle aux Noix_ now, I do believe. Look out, as I said a little ago, or you'll go there yet, some day. Don't you be expecting the ladies will do as much for you next time."

"_Enfante encore perdue?_"

"To be sure. Do you know where it is?"

"_Morte_," grunted Thérèse, with a wicked flash of her eye--"ze bones."

"Murder? Do you say it was murdered? Did you see it done? Did you do it yourself?"

"No. Fidèle and Paul."

"Will you swear out an information. There is a reward still out. It has not been withdrawn that ever I heard. If I get you that reward, is it a bargain that I am to draw it for you and keep half? Is it a bargain?"

"Bargain."

"And you will swear an information?"

"Vill swear."

"Where shall I find you?--to-morrow morning, say?"

Thérèse shook her head despondingly, and looked at her children. "Hungry."

"Who's your buck?"

"Paul was."

"I know Paul. Has he turned you off?"

"Got Fidèle."

"Aha! That's it, is it? And you know where those bones are? Sure?"

"Svear."

"Then you'll get even with them yet, my beauty. And, stay, here's a dollar for you. You say you're hungry, and Paul has turned you out of doors. Be on the Lachine side of the ferry this evening. I may have to lock you up, but you'll be well used."

That evening, at sunset, the police landed Paul and Fidèle, both handcuffed, on the Lachine wharf, where Thérèse joined the party of her own accord, and they all proceeded by train to Montreal. Thérèse could not refrain from uttering one cluck of triumph as she passed her late master and looked at his bonds, while he shot her a look of fury and strained at his handcuffs in a way which showed it was well that they were strong; and then all the party subsided into the stony stillness of their ordinary demeanour.

There was nothing very striking in the first examination which followed. Thérèse recollected having seen a small grave dug in the back kitchen, and an empty box laid beside it. Then Fidèle had come in and exchanged clothes with her, and then she (Thérèse) went away. Neither Fidèle nor the baby had been seen afterwards. She herself had been taken up and accused of stealing the child, but it had been shown that she had not left Caughnawaga on the day of the kidnapping, and she had been acquitted. After that Paul had taken her as his squaw, and they had lived together ever since. A fortnight ago Fidèle had returned, and since then she had suffered much ill-usage, and finally been turned out of doors.

The evidence seemed sufficient, but in court it would need as corroboration the finding of the bones; therefore, there was a remand, and two days later the prisoners were brought before the magistrate again. The persons sent to dig under the floor had found a box, which was produced, and a thrill of hushed excitement ran through the court room; the male prisoner, even, threw aside his sullen stolidity, turned to the constable in charge, and spoke a few words. The constable conveyed the message to the Crown attorney, who addressed the magistrate, and he forthwith appointed counsel for the defence, leaning back in his chair, and allowing the young _avocat_ a few minutes to converse with his client. The lawyer listened to Paul, shook his head, raised his hand in remonstrance, and spoke soothingly; but the red man's anger, having once found voice, grew fiercer and more determined every moment. He shook out his long straight hair as a furious animal will toss his mane, and gnashed his teeth, while his usually dull eyes blazed like living coals. He put aside the arguments and remonstrances of his adviser with a gesture of impatience, and, looking to the magistrate, rose to his feet. The advocate, seeing that his client was impracticable, preferred to take the work upon himself, and addressed the bench.

He told "that, in spite of all which he could say, the prisoner--the male one--while disclaiming art and part in the crime of murder, was resolved to claim from the court that he should not stand his trial alone, or in company only with the ignorant squaw who sat at his side. Whatever had taken place--and here, in tribute to his own professional credit, he must be permitted to say that it was sorely against his wish and advice that he was now driven to admit that anything _had_ taken place, and he would have defied the learned counsel opposite to prove that there had, and more, to bring it home to these much-injured Indians--it was but right that the instigator should be brought to stand his trial by the side of his instruments, and he claimed of the court to permit the prisoner Paul to swear an information against Ralph Herkimer, financier, broker, banker,"--"and bankrupt," some one muttered--"for conspiring with and suborning, and inciting by promise of gain, the prisoner Paul to steal, kidnap, abduct, and make away with the infant daughter of George Selby, professor of music, in the city of Montreal." He told "how the said Herkimer had continued to pay an annual stipend or pension to the said Paul during many years, till, on pressing the said Paul to make away with the said child, Paul had declared that he could not, and the said stipend or pension had ceased to be paid from that day forward."

It was with enhanced interest that, when this had been settled, and a warrant ordered to issue for Herkimer's apprehension, the box was placed on the table, and the lid ordered to be removed.

His worship, the magistrate, arranged his spectacles on his nose, the county attorney compressed his lips to steady his nerves, lest the sight of horror to be disclosed should disturb his delicate sensibilities; and, then, as the lid came away, there appeared--what might once have been a lock of hay! Time and mildew had done much to destroy it, the shaking it had undergone since it was disturbed had contributed yet more towards returning it to its primal condition of dust; but hay it was, most surely, though even as they looked it seemed crumbling away under the light and the freer air. The finders had identified the box. It was manifestly the one referred to by the chief witness. But where were the bones? Where any evidence of murder? Not a morsel was there of bone, or even a lock of hair.

The magistrate shrugged his shoulders. He was a disinterested party, and could appreciate without alloy of personal feeling the humour of his court holding inquest upon an empty box. The Crown prosecutor bit his lip, infinitely disconcerted, and the sergeant of police looked foolish. There was still the charge of kidnapping, however, that was sworn to by the chief witness, whose evidence, after all, was confirmed by the box. It was a grave, a box, and a live baby which she had seen, and she had not said that she saw the murder. The male prisoner's own statement and confession, after being warned, was also in evidence against him. His counsel turned and looked at him, as much as to say, "I told you so; but you _would_ speak out, notwithstanding my advice. Now, take the consequence."

Paul was more surprised than anybody at the discovery of emptiness within the box. His jaw actually dropped in amazement, notwithstanding the natural rigidity of his facial muscles. He might have got off, it almost seemed; but then there would have been no information laid against Herkimer, and ever since the day he had been dismissed with contumely from his office before all those sniggering clerks, his fingers had been itching to be at the man's throat, and only prudence had restrained them. Fidèle's face remained unchanged, for, naturally, she was not surprised; but there came a twinkle of childish humour into her face to see how all those arrogant whites had been fooled by a poor squaw.

Thérèse was disappointed, but not more than her experiences as a squaw had long taught her to bear. The down-trodden are not much crushed when an expectation gives way. Her foes, it was true, were not to be tried for their lives, but they were still to be locked up, and punished in some sort later on, while she herself, an indispensable witness, would be well cared for till all was settled.