In the science of criminal analysis Carrigan always placed himself in the position of the other man.  And he was beginning to see the present situation from the view-point of Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain.  He was satisfied that she had made a desperate mistake and that until the last moment she had believed it was another man behind the rock.  Yet she had shown no inclination to explain away her error.  She had definitely refused to make an explanation.  And it was simply a matter of common sense to concede that there must be a powerful motive for her refusal.  There was but one conclusion for him to arrive at—­the error which St. Pierre’s wife had made in shooting the wrong man was less important to her than keeping the secret of why she had wanted to kill some other man.

David was not unconscious of the breach in his own armor.  He had weakened, just as the Superintendent of “N” Division had weakened that day four years ago when they had almost quarreled over Carmin Fanchet.

“I’ll swear to Heaven she isn’t bad, no matter what her brother has been,” McVane had said.  “I’ll gamble my life on that, Carrigan!”

And because the Chief of Division with sixty years of experience behind him, had believed that, Carmin Fanchet had not been held as an accomplice in her brother’s evildoing, but had gone back into her wilderness uncrucified by the law that had demanded the life of her brother.  He would never forget the last time he had seen Carmin Fanchet’s eyes—­great, black, glorious pools of gratitude as they looked at grizzled old McVane; blazing fires of venomous hatred when they turned on him.  And he had said to McVane,

“The man pays, the woman goes—­justice indeed is blind!”

McVane, not being a stickler on regulations when it came to Carrigan, had made no answer.

The incident came back vividly to David as he waited for the promised coming of Bateese.  He began to appreciate McVane’s point of view, and it was comforting, because he realized that his own logic was assailable.  If McVane had been comparing the two women now, he knew what his argument would be.  There had been no absolute proof of crime against Carmin Fanchet, unless to fight desperately for the life of her brother was a crime.  In the case of Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain there was proof.  She had tried to kill.  Therefore, of the two, Carmin Fanchet would have been the better woman in the eyes of McVane.

In spite of the legal force of the argument which he was bringing against himself, David felt unconvinced.  Carmin Fanchet, had she been in the place of St. Pierre’s wife, would have finished him there in the sand.  She would have realized the menace of letting him live and would probably have commanded Bateese to dump him in the river.  St. Pierre’s wife had gone to the other extreme.  She was not only repentant, but was making restitution, for her mistake, and in making that restitution had crossed far beyond the dead-line of caution.  She had frankly told him who she was; she had brought him into the privacy of what was undeniably her own home; in her desire to undo what she had done she had hopelessly enmeshed herself in the net of the Law—­if that Law saw fit to act.  She had done these things with courage and conviction.  And of such a woman, Carrigan thought, St. Pierre must be very proud.