"Yes,--something with the Gastonguay crest on it. The watch was lying snuggled up to it just as if it had gone down there to find it. There was only this one clear place on the top of a flat rock. The rest was choked with rubbish. I guess the ring had been down for some time," and he handed the small article to her. Miss Gastonguay glanced sharply at him. His expression was composed, and by no means curious. He gave the ring to her as if she had a right to it, but he seemed to have no desire to question the strangeness of its discovery. "Did you tell Derrice?" she asked. "No." "How do you suppose it got there?" He shrugged his shoulders. "I guess some thief stole it and on his way to be searched chucked it in there." "It is a man's seal ring," she said, turning the discoloured ornament round and round in her fingers. "Yes, ma'am, I see that." She stared at him from head to foot. He was walking lightly and swiftly beside her in spite of his limp. She struggled with some emotion. "I have seen you all my life,--have always known you well; yet lately you seem to dawn on me with a strange familiarity. Tell me, is there any reason for my suspicion--" He stopped short in his halting walk and blushed with the faint, evanescent blush of composed middle age. Then he said, shortly, "There is, ma'am, you've caught something you might have caught before if you'd had any dealings with me. I guess Derrice has started you in it by bringing us together." "Then some of the blood of this unhappy family does run in your veins." "A little," he said, modestly. "It ain't a pretty subject to talk over with a lady, but you understand the Gastonguays. You know that ever since the priests hauled old Louis's sons and the young De Saint Castins over the coals for lying in bed in the mornings and keeping the Indians waiting about the truck-house and then selling 'em rum in buckets, that they've had a wild streak in 'em. I feel it in me. Sometimes there is a striped devil takes me by the hand and drags me through a dance that I'm but a half-hearted partner in." Miss Gastonguay groaned, but continued her walk with determination. "What is the precise relationship?" "It begins with your grandfather, who, more's the pity, ought to have lived in Mormon days and been a high-class elder. The priests would only allow him one wife and he wanted several. He couldn't get banns for my grandmother and she couldn't get banns for him, for she also had a partner. Anyhow, they had a kind of liking for each other, and my mother ought to have had the same outspoken relation to your grandfather that you have, but she hadn't, and it's just as well." "Man, you confuse me with your relationships. Your mother was the illegitimate daughter of my grandfather?" "Yes, ma'am." "Does any one else know of this?"