Page:Harris Dickson--The black wolf's breed.djvu/276

250 pointed directly at me from out the dusty glass. It was as if the hand of the dead had told me who I was.

It had been no blind chance, then, which led me to the Paris house of the "Black Wolf's Head;" the girl's ring with the same device, and the grewsome narrative beneath the shadow of the Wolf at the Norman ruin—nothing less than fate had brought these lights to me.

Verily some more logical power than unreasoning accident must direct the steps of men. A God of justice perhaps had placed these tokens in my path. And soldiers call this "Fortune."

I dispatched Pachaco to Biloxi with the news of death, and long before the afternoon our few simple arrangements for his funeral had been made.

"Bury me here, Placide, beneath this great oak," he had said to me one day. "The Infinite Mercy will consecrate the grave of penitence, wherever it may be."

He had his wish.