Part 112

"Do you realize, Aileen, that this meeting to-day in the shed is the first in which we three, Father Honore, Mr. Van Ostend, and I, have ever been together under one roof since that night twenty-one years ago when I first saw you?"

"Why, that doesn't seem possible--but it is so, isn't it? Wasn't that strange!"

"Yes, and no," said Champney, looking at his mother. "I thought of our first meeting one another at the Vaudeville, as we three stood there together in the shed looking upwards to The Gore; and Father Honore told me afterward that he was thinking of that same thing. We both wondered if Mr. Van Ostend recalled that evening, and the fact of our first acquaintance, although unknown to one another."

"I wonder--" said Aileen, musingly.

Champney spoke abruptly again; there was a note of uneasiness in his voice:

"I wonder what keeps Honore--I'll just run up the road and see if he's coming. If he isn't, I will go on till I meet the boys. I wish," he added wistfully, "that McCann felt as kindly to me as Billy does to my son; I am beginning to think that old grudge of his against me will never yield, not even to time;--I'll be back in a few minutes."

Aileen watched him out of sight; then she turned to Aurora Googe.

"We are blest in this turn of affairs, aren't we, mother? This meeting is the one thing Champney has been dreading--and yet longing for. I'm glad it's over."

"So am I; and I am inclined to think Father Honore brought it about; if you remember, he said nothing about Mr. Van Ostend's being here when he stopped just now."

"So he didn't!" Aileen spoke in some surprise; then she added with a joyous laugh: "Oh, that dear man is sly--bless him!"--But the tears dimmed her eyes.

"Go straight home with Honore, Billy, as straight as ever you can," said Father Honore to eight-year-old Billy McCann who for the past year had constituted himself protector of five-year-old Honore Googe; "I'll watch you around the power-house."

Little Honore reached up with both arms for the usual parting from the man he adored. The priest caught him up, kissed him heartily, and set him down again with the added injunction to "trot home."

The two little boys ran hand in hand down the road. Father Honore watched them till the power-house shut them from sight; then he waited for their reappearance at the other corner where the road curves downward to the highroad. He never allowed Honore to go alone over the piece of road between the point where he was standing and the power-house, for the reason that it bordered one of the steepest and roughest ledges in The Gore; a careless step would be sure to send so small a child rolling down the rough surface. But beyond the power-house, the ledges fell away very gradually to the lowest slopes where stood, one among many in the quarries, the new monster steel derrick which the men had erected last week. They had been testing it for several days; even now its powerful arm held suspended a block of many tons' weight. This was a part of the test for "graduated strain"--the weight being increased from day to day.

The men, in leaving their work, often took a short cut homeward from the lower slope to the road just below the power-house, by crossing this gentle declivity of the ledge. Evidently Billy McCann with this in mind had twisted the injunction to "go straight home" into a chance to "cut across"; for surely this way would be the "straightest." Besides, there was the added inducement of close proximity to the wonderful new derrick that, since its instalment, had been occupying many of Billy's waking thoughts.

Father Honore, watching for the children's reappearance at the corner of the road just beyond the long low power-house, was suddenly aware, with a curious shock, of the two little boys trotting in a lively manner down the easy grade of the "cross cut" slope, and nearing the derrick and its suspended weight. He frowned at the sight and, calling loudly to them to come back, started straight down over the steep ledge at the side of the road. He heard some one else calling the boys by name, and, a moment later, saw that it was Sister Ste. Croix who was coming up the hill.

The children did not hear, or would not, because of their absorption in getting close to the steel giant towering above them. Sister Ste. Croix called again; then she, too, started down the slope after them.

She noticed some men running from the farther side of the quarry. She saw Father Honore suddenly spring by leaps and bounds down over the rough ledge. What was it? The children were apparently in no danger. She looked up at the derrick--

What was that! A tremor in its giant frame; a swaying of its cabled mast; a sickening downward motion of the weighted steel arm--then--

"Merciful Christ!" she groaned, and for the space of a few seconds covered her eyes....

The priest, catching up the two children one under each arm, ran with superhuman strength to evade the falling derrick--with a last supreme effort he rolled the boys beyond its reach; they were saved, but--

Their savior was pinioned by the steel tip fast to the unyielding granite.

A woman's shriek rent the air--a fearful cry:

"Jean--mon Jean!"

A moment more and Sister Ste. Croix reached the spot--she took his head on her lap.

"Jean--mon Jean," she cried again.

The eyes, dimmed already, opened; he made a supreme effort to speak--

"Margot--p'tite Truite--"...

Thus, after six and forty years of silence, Love spoke once; that Love, greater than State and Church because it is the foundation of both, and without it neither could exist; that Love--co-eval with all life, the Love which defies time, sustains absence, glorifies loss--remains, thank God! a deathless legacy to the toiling Race of the Human, and, because deathless, triumphant in death.