“Anyhow, the story fizzled out.  Everyone knew, of course, that St. Clare had some of the eccentricities of puritan piety.  The second incident was much more arresting.  In the luckless and unsupported regiment which made that rash attempt at the Black River there was a certain Captain Keith, who was at that time engaged to St. Clare’s daughter, and who afterwards married her.  He was one of those who were captured by Olivier, and, like all the rest except the general, appears to have been bounteously treated and promptly set free.  Some twenty years afterwards this man, then Lieutenant-Colonel Keith, published a sort of autobiography called `A British Officer in Burmah and Brazil.’  In the place where the reader looks eagerly for some account of the mystery of St. Clare’s disaster may be found the following words:  `Everywhere else in this book I have narrated things exactly as they occurred, holding as I do the old-fashioned opinion that the glory of England is old enough to take care of itself.  The exception I shall make is in this matter of the defeat by the Black River; and my reasons, though private, are honourable and compelling.  I will, however, add this in justice to the memories of two distinguished men.  General St. Clare has been accused of incapacity on this occasion; I can at least testify that this action, properly understood, was one of the most brilliant and sagacious of his life.  President Olivier by similar report is charged with savage injustice.  I think it due to the honour of an enemy to say that he acted on this occasion with even more than his characteristic good feeling.  To put the matter popularly, I can assure my countrymen that St. Clare was by no means such a fool nor Olivier such a brute as he looked.  This is all I have to say; nor shall any earthly consideration induce me to add a word to it.’”

A large frozen moon like a lustrous snowball began to show through the tangle of twigs in front of them, and by its light the narrator had been able to refresh his memory of Captain Keith’s text from a scrap of printed paper.  As he folded it up and put it back in his pocket Flambeau threw up his hand with a French gesture.

“Wait a bit, wait a bit,” he cried excitedly.  “I believe I can guess it at the first go.”

He strode on, breathing hard, his black head and bull neck forward, like a man winning a walking race.  The little priest, amused and interested, had some trouble in trotting beside him.  Just before them the trees fell back a little to left and right, and the road swept downwards across a clear, moonlit valley, till it dived again like a rabbit into the wall of another wood.  The entrance to the farther forest looked small and round, like the black hole of a remote railway tunnel.  But it was within some hundred yards, and gaped like a cavern before Flambeau spoke again.

“I’ve got it,” he cried at last, slapping his thigh with his great hand.  “Four minutes’ thinking, and I can tell your whole story myself.”