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Updated: June 24, 2025
I was fighting back, fighting back against everybody. "And this is what I came to say all the time I was guilty guilty: guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!" "I am not sure I understand," said the Bishop slowly, as Jeffrey stopped. "Oh, there's nothing to understand. It is just as I say. I was guilty of that man's death before I saw him at all that morning.
What you know?" he questioned excitedly. "Never mind. I see Miss Cardinal looking at us," she smiled as she arose, "and I think you are in for a lecture." Through all the long day, while she ate and listened to the fun and talked to Father Ponfret about her convent life, she did not let Rafe Gadbeau out of her sight or mind for an instant. She knew that she had alarmed him.
Before she knew it, she was sputtering away in the best French she had and entering into the fun with all her heart. "Which is Rafe Gadbeau?" she suddenly asked Cynthe Cardinal. "I want to know him." "Why for you want to know him?" the girl asked sharply in English. "Oh, nothing," said Ruth carelessly, "only I've heard of him."
It filled not only her own thought and life but it seemed even to take up that great void in her world which Rafe Gadbeau had filled. When she had heard his name mentioned in that sudden questioning of the Bishop, she had almost jumped from her seat to cry out to him that he must know nothing. But that was foolish, she reflected.
It was a delusion, yes. But Rafe Gadbeau believed it! Cynthe believed it! And Cynthe was no fool. Ruth believed it! It was a delusion, yes. But What a delusion! What a magnificent, soul-stirring delusion!
Then he asked suddenly, "What brought your mind to this view of the matter?" "A girl," said Jeffrey, "the girl that saved me; that French girl that loved Rafe Gadbeau. She showed me." Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving her mind with some plain speaking. But he did not feel at all easy. He knew better than to treat the matter lightly.
The high colour of his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before him and across the grey wall in letters of black he could only see the word guilty. What was it all worth? Why work? Why fight? Why dream? Why anything? when at the end and the beginning of all things there stood that wall with the word written across it. Guilty guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And Ruth Lansing !
I was a murderer. I was guilty. I was as guilty as Rafe Gadbeau! As guilty as Ca !" The girl had suddenly sprung forward and thrown her arms around his neck. She caught the word that was on his lips and stopped it with a kiss, a kiss that dared the onlooking world to say what he had been going to say. "You shall not say that!" she panted. "I will not let you say it! Nobody shall say it!
I knew him well, of course. It was Gadbeau, certainly," Ruth answered without looking up. Then a tall young fellow in front of her said: "Then that's two of 'em done for. That was Gadbeau. And Jeff Whiting shot Rogers." "He did not!" Ruth blazed up in the young man's face. "Jeffrey Whiting did not shoot Rogers! Rafe !"
But the airy edge of his boyish confidence in himself was gone. He had become grim and thoughtful and determined. He had settled down to a long, dogged struggle. He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau. How much did he mean? Why should he have said this to her? Would it not have been better to have warned some of the men that were associated with him in his fight? And what was there to be feared?
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