"If you shout or speak I will kill you!" he said to Maillot, and then dropped him heavily on the ground, where he lay senseless. Laflamme stooped down and felt his heart. "Alive!" he said, then seized the rifle and plunged into the woods. The moon at that moment broke through the clouds, and he saw the Semaphore like a ghost pointing towards Pascal River. He waved his hand towards his old prison, and sped away. But others were thinking of the Semaphore at this moment, others saw it indistinct, yet melancholy, in the moonlight. The Governor and his wife saw it, and Madame Solde said: "Alfred, I shall be glad when I shall see that no more." "You have too much feeling." "I suppose Marie makes me think more of it to-day. She wept this morning over all this misery and punishment." "You think that. Well, perhaps something more--" "What more?" "Laflamme." "No, no, it is impossible!" "Indeed it is as I say. My wife, you are blind. I chanced to see him with her yesterday. I should have prevented him coming to-day, but I knew it was his last day with the portrait, and that all should end here." "We have done wrong in this--the poor child! Besides, she has, I fear, another sorrow coming. It showed itself to me to-day for the first time." Then she whispered to him, and he started and sighed, and said at last: "But it must be saved. By--! it shall be saved!" And at that moment Marie Wyndham was standing in the open window of the library of Pascal House. She had been thinking of her recent visit to the King's Cave, where she had left food, and of the fact that Carbourd was not there. She raised her face towards the moon and sighed. She was thinking of something else. She was not merely sentimental, for she said, as if she had heard the words of the Governor and Madame Solde: "Oh! if it could be saved!" There was a rustle in the shrubbery near her. She turned towards the sound. A man came quickly towards her. "I am Carbourd," he said; "I could not find the way to the Cave. They were after me. They have tracked me. Tell me quick how to go." She swiftly gave him directions, and he darted away. Again there was a rustle in the leaves, and a man stepped forth. Something glistened in his hands--a rifle, though she could not see it plainly. It was levelled at the flying figure of Carbourd. There was a report. Marie started forward with her hands on her temples and a sharp cry. She started forward--into absolute darkness. There was a man's footsteps going swiftly by her. Why was it so dark? She stretched out her hands with a moan. "Oh! mother!--oh! mother! I am blind!" she cried. But her mother was sleeping unresponsive beyond the dark-beyond all dark. It was, perhaps, natural that she should cry to the dead and not to the living.