“Did she?” Frona whispered.

“Yes,” St. Vincent whispered back, “she did.  But I cannot imagine what prompted her.  She must have been out of her head.”

The warm-faced man in the faded mackinaws then put the witness through a searching examination, which Frona followed closely, but which elicited little new.

“You have the right to cross-examine the witness,” the chairman informed St. Vincent.  “Any questions you want to ask?”

The correspondent shook his head.

“Go on,” Frona urged.

“What’s the use?” he asked, hopelessly.  “I’m fore-doomed.  The verdict was reached before the trial began.”

“One moment, please.”  Frona’s sharp command arrested the retiring witness.  “You do not know of your own knowledge who committed this murder?”

The Scandinavian gazed at her with a bovine expression on his leaden features, as though waiting for her question to percolate to his understanding.

“You did not see who did it?” she asked again.

“Aw, yes.  That feller there,” accusative finger to the fore.  “She say he did.”

There was a general smile at this.

“But you did not see it?”

“I hear some shooting.”

“But you did not see who did the shooting?”

“Aw, no; but she said—­”

“That will do, thank you,” she said sweetly, and the man retired.

The prosecution consulted its notes.  “Pierre La Flitche!” was called out.

A slender, swart-skinned man, lithe of figure and graceful, stepped forward to the open space before the table.  He was darkly handsome, with a quick, eloquent eye which roved frankly everywhere.  It rested for a moment on Frona, open and honest in its admiration, and she smiled and half-nodded, for she liked him at first glance, and it seemed as though they had met of old time.  He smiled pleasantly back, the smooth upper lip curling brightly and showing beautiful teeth, immaculately white.

In answer to the stereotyped preliminaries he stated that his name was that of his father’s, a descendant of the coureurs du bois.  His mother—­with a shrug of the shoulders and flash of teeth—­was a breed.  He was born somewhere in the Barrens, on a hunting trip, he did not know where.  Ah, oui, men called him an old-timer.  He had come into the country in the days of Jack McQuestion, across the Rockies from the Great Slave.

On being told to go ahead with what he knew of the matter in hand, he deliberated a moment, as though casting about for the best departure.

“In the spring it is good to sleep with the open door,” he began, his words sounding clear and flute-like and marked by haunting memories of the accents his forbears put into the tongue.  “And so I sleep last night.  But I sleep like the cat.  The fall of the leaf, the breath of the wind, and my ears whisper to me, whisper, whisper, all the night long.  So, the first shot,” with a quick snap of the fingers, “and I am awake, just like that, and I am at the door.”