"Was there insane blood in her family?"
"She wasn't insane," answered Denzil firmly. "She'd been bad used--
terrible."
"That didn't come out at the inquest, did it?"
"Not likely. She wrote it me. I'm telling you what I've never told
anyone." He shut the door, as though to make a confessional. "She wrote
it me, and I wasn't telling anyone-but no. She'd been away down at
Quebec City, and there a man got hold of her. Almeric Tarboe it was--the
older brother of Luke Tarboe at John Grier's." Suddenly the face of the
little man went mad with emotion. "I--I--" he paused.
Carnac held up his hand. "No-no-no, don't tell me. Tarboe--
I understand, the Unwritten Law. You haven't told me, but I understand.
I remember: he was found in the woods with his gun in his hand-dead.
I read it all by accident long ago; and that was the story, eh!"
"Yes. She was young, full of imagination. She loved me, but he was
clever, and he was high up, and she was low down. He talked her blind,
and then in the woods it was, in the woods where he died, that he--"
Suddenly the little man wrung his fingers like one robbed of reason.
"He was a strongman," he went on, "and she was a girl, weak, but not
wanton . . . and so she died, telling me, loving me--so she died, and
so he died, too, in the woods with his gun in his hand.
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