"Ay, now you talk reasonably. Now you are coming to yourself, Bigot. We came to remove her alive from here, did we not? We must now remove her dead. She cannot remain where she is at the risk of certain discovery to-morrow."

"No, the secret chamber would not hide such a secret as that," replied Bigot, recovering his self-possession. "But how to remove her? We cannot carry her forth without discovery." Bigot's practical intellect was waking up to the danger of leaving the murdered girl in the Chateau.

Cadet rose and paced the room with rapid strides, rubbing his forehead, and twitching his mustache violently. "I will tell you what we have got to do, Bigot! Par Dieu! we must bury her where she is, down there in the vaulted chamber."

"What, bury her?" Bigot looked at him with intense surprise.

"Yes, we must bury her in that very chamber, Bigot. We must cover up somebody's damnable work to avert suspicion from ourselves! A pretty task for you and me, Bigot! Par Dieu! I could laugh like a horse, if I were not afraid of being overheard."

"But who is to dig a grave for her? surely not you or I," replied Bigot with a look of dismay.

"Yes, gentlemen as we are, you and I must do it, Bigot. Zounds! I learned to dig and delve when I was a stripling at Charlebourg, and in the trenches at Louisbourg, and I have not yet forgotten the knack of it! But where to get spades, Bigot; you are master here and ought to know."

"I, how should I know? It is terrible, Cadet, to bury her as if we had murdered her! Is there no other way?"

"None. We are in a cahot and must get our cariole out of it as best we can! I see plainly we two shall be taxed with this murder, Bigot, if we let it be discovered! Besides, utter ruin awaits you from La Pompadour if she finds out you ever had this girl at Beaumanoir in keeping. Come!

time for parley is past; where shall we find spades? We must to work, Bigot!"

A sudden thought lighted up the eyes of the Intendant, who saw the force of Cadet's suggestion, strange and repulsive as it was. "I think I know," said he; "the gardeners keep their tools in the old tower, and we can get there by the secret passage and return."

"Bravo!" exclaimed Cadet, encouragingly, "come, show the way, and we will get the tools in a trice! I always heard there was a private way underground to the old tower. It never stood its master in better stead than now; perhaps never worse if it has let in the murderer of this poor girl of yours."

Bigot rose up, very faint and weak; Cadet took his arm to support him, and bidding him be firm and not give way again at sight of her dead body, led him back to the chamber of death. "Let us first look around a moment," said he, "to find, if possible, some trace of the hellish assassins."

The lamps burned brightly, shedding a glare of light over every object in the secret chamber.

Cadet looked narrowly round, but found little trace of the murderers.

The drawers of the escritoire stood open, with their contents in great disorder, a circumstance which at once suggested robbers. Cadet pointed it out to Bigot with the question:

"Kept she much money, Bigot?"

"None that I know of. She asked for none, poor girl! I gave her none, though I would have given her the King's treasury had she wished for it."

"But she might have had money when she came, Bigot," continued Cadet, not doubting but robbery had been the motive for the murder.

"It may be, I never questioned her," replied Bigot; "she never spoke of money; alas! all the money in the world was as dross in her estimation.

Other things than money occupied her pure thoughts."

"Well, it looks like robbers: they have ransacked the drawers and carried off all she had, were it much or little," remarked Cadet, still continuing his search.

"But why kill her? Oh, Cadet, why kill the gentle girl, who would have given every jewel in her possession for the bare asking?"

"Nay, I cannot guess," said Cadet. "It looks like robbers, but the mystery is beyond my wit to explain. What are you doing, Bigot?"

Bigot had knelt down by the side of Caroline; he lifted her hand first to his lips, then towards Cadet, to show him the stalk of a rose from which the flower had been broken, and which she held with a grip so hard that it could not be loosened from her dead fingers.

The two men looked long and earnestly at it, but failed to make a conjecture even why the flower had been plucked from that broken stalk and carried away, for it was not to be seen in the room.

The fragment of a letter lay under a chair. It was a part of that which La Corriveau had torn up and missed to gather up again with the rest.

Cadet picked it up and thrust it into his pocket.

The blood streaks upon her white robe and the visible stabs of a fine poniard riveted their attention. That that was the cause of her death they doubted not, but the mute eloquence of her wounds spoke only to the heat. It gave no explanation to the intellect. The whole tragedy seemed wrapped in inexplicable mystery.

"They have covered their track up well!" remarked Cadet. "Hey! but what have we here?" Bigot started up at the exclamation. The door of the secret passage stood open. La Corriveau had not closed it after her when making her escape. "Here is where the assassins have found entrance and exit! Egad! More people know the secret of your Chateau than you think, Bigot!"

They sprang forward, and each seizing a lamp, the two men rushed into the narrow passage. It was dark and still as the catacombs. No trace of anything to the purpose could they perceive in the vaulted subterranean way to the turret.

They speedily came to the other end; the secret door there stood open also. They ascended the stairs in the tower, but could see no trace of the murderers. "It is useless to search further for them at this time,"

remarked Cadet, "perhaps not safe at any time, but I would give my best horse to lay hands on the assassins at this moment."

Gardeners' tools lay around the room. "Here," exclaimed Cadet, "is what is equally germane to the matter, and we have no time to lose."

He seized a couple of spades and a bar of iron, and bidding Bigot go before him with the lights, they returned to the chamber of death.

"Now for work! This sad business must be done well, and done quickly!"

exclaimed Cadet. "You shall see that I have not forgotten how to dig, Bigot!"

Cadet threw off his coat, and setting to work, pulled up the thick carpet from one side of the chamber. The floor was covered with broad, smooth flags, one of which he attacked with the iron bar, raised the flagstone and turned it over; another easily followed, and very soon a space in the dry brown earth was exposed, large enough to make a grave.

Bigot looked at him in a sort of dream. "I cannot do it, Cadet! I cannot dig her grave!" and he threw down the spade which he had taken feebly in his hand.

"No matter, Bigot! I will do it! Indeed, you would only be in my way.

Sit down while I dig, old friend. Par Dieu! this is nice work for the Commissary General of New France, with the Royal Intendant overseeing him!"

Bigot sat down and looked forlornly on while Cadet with the arms of a Hercules dug and dug, throwing out the earth without stopping for the space of a quarter of an hour, until he had made a grave large and deep enough to contain the body of the hapless girl.

"That will do!" cried he, leaping out of the pit. "Our funeral arrangements must be of the briefest, Bigot! So come help me to shroud this poor girl."

Cadet found a sheet of linen and some fine blankets upon a couch in the secret chamber. He spread them out upon the floor, and motioned to Bigot without speaking. The two men lifted Caroline tenderly and reverently upon the sheet. They gazed at her for a minute in solemn silence, before shrouding her fair face and slender form in their last winding-sheet.

Bigot was overpowered with his feelings, yet strove to master them, as he gulped down the rising in his throat which at times almost strangled him.

Cadet, eager to get his painful task over, took from the slender finger of Caroline a ring, a love-gift of Bigot, and from her neck a golden locket containing his portrait and a lock of his hair. A rosary hung at her waist; this Cadet also detached, as a precious relic to be given to the Intendant by and by. There was one thread of silk woven into the coarse hempen nature of Cadet.

Bigot stooped down and gave her pale lips and eyes, which he had tenderly closed, a last despairing kiss, before veiling her face with the winding-sheet as she lay, white as a snow-drift, and as cold. They wrapped her softly in the blankets, and without a word spoken, lowered the still, lissom body into its rude grave.

The awful silence was only broken by the spasmodic sobs of Bigot as he leaned over the grave to look his last upon the form of the fair girl whom he had betrayed and brought to this untimely end. "Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!" said he, beating his breast. "Oh, Cadet, we are burying her like a dog! I cannot, I cannot do it!"

The Intendant's feelings overcame him again, and he rushed from the chamber, while Cadet, glad of his absence for a few moments, hastily filled up the grave and, replacing with much care the stone slabs over it, swept the debris into the passage and spread the carpet again smoothly over the floor. Every trace of the dreadful deed was obliterated in the chamber of murder.

Cadet, acutely thinking of everything at this supreme moment, would leave no ground of suspicion for Dame Tremblay when she came in the morning to visit the chamber. She should think that her lady had gone away with her master as mysteriously as she had come, and no further inquiry would be made after her. In this Cadet was right.

It was necessary for Cadet and Bigot now to depart by the secret passage to the tower. The deep-toned bell of the chateau struck three.

"We must now be gone, Bigot, and instantly," exclaimed Cadet. "Our night work is done! Let us see what day will bring forth! You must see to it to-morrow, Bigot, that no man or woman alive ever again enter this accursed chamber of death!"

Cadet fastened the secret door of the stair, and gathering up his spades and bar of iron, left the chamber with Bigot, who was passive as a child in his hands. The Intendant turned round and gave one last sorrowful look at the now darkened room as they left it. Cadet and he made their way back to the tower. They sallied out into the open air, which blew fresh and reviving upon their fevered faces after escaping from the stifling atmosphere below.

They proceeded at once towards their horses and mounted them, but Bigot felt deadly faint and halted under a tree while Cadet rode back to the porter's lodge and roused up old Marcele to give him some brandy, if he had any, "as of course he had," said Cadet. Brandy was a gate-porter's inside livery, the lining of his laced coat which he always wore. Cadet assumed a levity which he did not really feel.