love of a woman who did not love him, trusting to this paper to absolve him from purgatory.
Stripped of clogging words the details of the whole affair were bald; much more bald than Dick had hoped for. They told how Robison had gone to bring Andree back from the English Mission: how they had met Ogilvie in the trail; how the two men had quarrelled and Ogilvie had pulled out his knife. How Andree had snatched the knife and stabbed Ogilvie, and how Robison had dragged him off into the coulée and flung him down among the thick undergrowth and snow. The paper also told how he had intended to bury the bones as soon as the snow was gone, and how he had subdued Andree's alarm at what she had done by promising to shoulder the possible results. It desired any priest who should receive this paper to pray for the soul of Kesikak Robison, who had died to save the life of another, and added that Ducane would pay all the necessary charges.
Both men had signed this, and at the foot was set in full the oath by which Ducane swore to deliver the paper and pay the money. This Ducane had signed alone.
Dick folded the paper and put it back in the pocket-book. He was thinking first that Ducane had either money concealed about his rags, or that he was in communication with some person "outside." In the latter case there might be the chance of bail perhaps, or of influence set to work to free him. Dick made a mental note of that. Then he considered the other matter. It was probable that if Andree had pleaded manslaughter at the beginning she might have got off lightly. For Ogilvie was known to have been drunk, and had assuredly been impertinent. But she had Robison's death also on her shoulders now. Dick understood at last her cry to him in Grange's back-parlour on the day of the trial.
"If he want to die, why do it matter?" she had said; and he knew Andree sufficiently to deduce her reasoning. She did not want to die, and if Robison did, why should she not let him? Dick grinned over the simplicity of it. Andree's wits would not carry her further than that, and most assuredly her conscience would not. For there was in Andree a quality which belongs to a certain class of masculine minds; the quality which enables a person to
