Part 46 (1/2)

'First I will warn you. As you pa.s.s I shall strive to wound you. A touch with this knife is death.'

He stood irresolutely, while a contemptuous smile broke over Marie's white countenance.

'I am waiting for you.'

He gazed from the open door to that terrible window, where the dreaded power of justice perhaps even then lay concealed.

'It will be over in a single moment.'

He tried to nerve himself for the act. With a single motion of his hand he might hurl the slight girl from the door; with one blow of his powerful fist he could paralyse that arm. But she was quick, and fearfully determined. The risk was too great.

'Coward!' she burst forth in a first expression of pa.s.sion. 'I am but a weak woman--how weak you can hardly tell. But even for your liberty you will not attack me, for the gift of your life you dare not pa.s.s me.'

There was silence, until the splas.h.i.+ng of heavy raindrops on the s.h.i.+ngle could be distinctly heard.

'Hark! there are other sounds than the rain and the thunder.'

'I hear footsteps,' said Marie, in a barely intelligible voice.

Menotah barred the doorway with a trembling arm. 'Your chance is gone,'

she said, yet with a peculiar deliberation. 'You know why these men have come. You do not deserve to live, for you have been false to everyone.

They will take you with them, and treat you as they did Riel. They will hang you as they did him.'

She fell back as she spoke against the wall, while the hot breath choked her.

Another thought occurred to him. If he could reach the next room he might obtain his weapons. Armed, he would be not only a brave man, but a formidable foe. But Menotah still guarded the threshold, the deadly instrument in her hand, her eyes following his every movement.

'You cannot escape,' she murmured with low, fearful accent. There was a new expression upon her face which Marie wondered at. 'You are captured by a weak woman. You did not think to set eyes on me again. You thought I should crawl away to some quiet spot, there to sob away my life as the wounded deer. Yet I have followed your footsteps to repay you for the wounds you have inflicted upon me. The time is here now--the hour for vengeance.'

The last words fell from her lips in a frightened whisper. For the first time since that fatal night of desertion, emotion awoke in her colourless face, while a strange moisture started into her eyes.

But where was the plan for vengeance, and why did she not follow it out?

For this meeting she had waited and planned. Now it had arrived. Why did she not make use of opportunity and act quickly? The deadly drug still lay unused in her bosom. Why did she not make use of it? _Because she had then forgotten its very existence._

Again came the sounds On this occasion Lamont fancied he could detect a creaking of the storm door outside.

'They are coming,' said Marie, in a hushed tone.

Menotah looked upon her wildly. She repeated the words as though doubtful of their full significance. Then in a tremulous half whisper, 'Perhaps they are all round the door. He might escape by the window.'

'Escape!' half shouted Marie, excitedly.

Menotah's face had broken and changed, like the sky after a storm. The cruelty had melted and gone. A look of fear crept into her pain-filled and l.u.s.trous eyes. Suddenly, after a short and mighty struggle with herself, she turned and loudly cried at Lamont,--

'The window!'

The guilty man started at the change in that voice. Again he saw Menotah in the full suns.h.i.+ne, flitting along by the high cliff of the Saskatchewan, with bright song and laughter.

'There is still one chance left.'