Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/241

Rh woman felt strong hands under her arms, and Dick lifted her away.

"Pardon me," he said, and raised the dying man, holding him deftly towards the incoming wind. And, slow and more slow, through the following hour, the last fight was fought; weakly, and very nearly in silence, for the man was worn by years. At last Dick laid him down again.

"He has gone in peace, madame," he said, and walked to the door and stayed there until in a little she came to him.

The night was grave and pale with stars where the wandering wind blew the grass on the low-sloped hills. Night-hawks were calling, and their thin "peent peent" slid, fine as a thread, along the large stillness. The forest stood motionless, a black wedge with no end to it, and Dick turned his eyes from it to the little indistinct shape at his side.

"It is that you win much gratitude, monsieur, you men of the Mounted Police," she said, and her voice was lower and very steady.

"I have done no more than my duty, madame."

"Then of that common word you do make a beautiful thing," she answered, and Dick tuned on her in sudden bitterness.

"Do not offer me gratitude" he said. "I did not come here in pity" He broke off, tried to shape an apology, and felt her withered hand on his shoulder.

"You have done no more than your work, then," she said. "And a man's work is himself. I have lived long enough with a man to know them. But the one ennobles the other, monsieur."

"Not always." Dick spoke dryly. "We can shame our work, and it can shame us."

"And yet you can rise above shame nobly—you men," she said, as though remembering.

Dick moved with a sudden jerk.

"You think that?" she said. "I congratulate you on your—your imagination, madame."

She looked past him to the forest where in many thousand little round nests the warm eggs lay close to the mother's breast; where in many burrows the sharp-eared