“I thought you had black eyes,” he said bluntly.  “I’m glad you haven’t.  I don’t like them.  Yours are as brown as—­as—­”

“Please, m’sieu,” she interrupted him, sitting down close beside him.  “Will you eat—­now?”

A spoon was at his mouth, and he was forced to take it in or have its contents spilled over him.  The spoon continued to move quickly between the bowl and his mouth.  He was robbed of speech.  And the girl’s eyes, as surely as he was alive, were beginning to laugh at him.  They were a wonderful brown, with little, golden specks in them, like the freckles he had seen in wood-violets.  Her lips parted.  Between their bewitching redness he saw the gleam of her white teeth.  In a crowd, with her glorious hair covered and her eyes looking straight ahead, one would not have picked her out.  But close, like this, with her eyes smiling at him, she was adorable.

Something of Carrigan’s thoughts must have shown in his face, for suddenly the girl’s lips tightened a little, and the warmth went out of her eyes, leaving them cold and distant.  He finished the soup, and she rose again to her feet.

“Please don’t go,” he said.  “If you do, I think I shall get up and follow.  I am quite sure I am entitled to a little something more than soup.”

“Nepapinas says that you may have a bit of boiled fish for supper,” she assured him.

“You know I don’t mean that.  I want to know why you shot me, and what you think you are going to do with me.”

“I shot you by mistake—­and—­I don’t know just what to do with you,” she said, looking at him tranquilly, but with what he thought was a growing shadow of perplexity in her eyes.  “Bateese says to fasten a big stone to your neck and throw you in the river.  But Bateese doesn’t always mean what he says.  I don’t think he is quite as bloodthirsty—­”

“—­As the young lady who tried to murder me behind the rock,” Carrigan interjected.

“Exactly, m’sieu.  I don’t think he would throw you into the river —­unless I told him to.  And I don’t believe I am going to ask him to do that,” she added, the soft glow flashing back into her eyes for an instant.  “Not after the splendid work Nepapinas has done on your head.  St. Pierre must see that.  And then, if St. Pierre wishes to finish you, why—­” She shrugged her slim shoulders and made a little gesture with her hands.

In that same moment there came over her a change as sudden as the passing of light itself.  It was as if a thing she was hiding had broken beyond her control for an instant and had betrayed her.  The gesture died.  The glow went out of her eyes, and in its place came a light that was almost fear—­or pain.  She came nearer to Carrigan again, and somehow, looking up at her, he thought of the little brush warbler singing at the end of its birch twig to give him courage.  It must have been because of her throat, white and soft, which he saw pulsing like a beating heart before she spoke to him.