The Coolidge examiner., 1931-05-15

was gone. The lOODholed church
was gone. The farmers cottages
| beyond the meadows and fields
were gone All that remained was
the stone gristmill, with the big
wind wheel turning slowly at the
top of it and making a whining
sound that came to him family
through the distance.
Jeems, looking down, saw in
the drifting veil of smoke a shroud
that covered death. For the first
time he forgot his father and
mother. He thought of some one
he had known and loved a long
! time ago. TOinette.
AS he bad stood at the edge of
the Big forest seeking for a figure
that might have been his mothers,
he now quested for one that might
be Toinette's. But the same hope
was not in his breast, nor the
same fear. Certainty had taken
their place. Toinette was dead,
despoiled of her beauty and her
life as his mother had been A
fury triumphed over him that was
as poSseSSive in its effect as the
color which blazed about him in
the crimson bush. 1t had been
growing in him since the moment
he knelt at his fathers side; it
had strained at the bounds of his
grief when he found his mother; il
had filed him with madness, still
Uniformed in his brain, when he
covered their faces In the early
dawn Now he knew why he
gripped the English hatchet so
tightly. He wanted to kill. His
eyes turned from the smoke-filled
valley of the Richelieu to the
south where Champlain lay gleam-
ing in the sun miles away, and
the hand which held the hatchet
trembled in it's newborn yearning
for the life blood of people
whom he hated from this day and
hour.
He was vaguely conscious of
the whine of the mill wheel as he
went down into the valley. He did
not feel fear or the necessity for
cOncealing his movement, for death
would not trouble itself to return
TO a desOlatiOn so complete. But
the wheel. as he drew nearer,
touched the stiffness with a note
which seemed to ride with strange
inSistence over the solitude, as if
calling to some one 1t became
less thing of iron and wood
that was crying in its hunger for
oil, and more voice which de-
manded his attention. 1t seemed
to him that suddenly he caught
what it was saying: "the English
beast-the little English BEAST
repeating those words until they
became a rhythm without break
in their monotony except when a
capful of wind set the wheel go
ing faster. Ii was as if a thought
in his brain had been stolen from
him. And what it expressed was
true. He was the English beast,
coming as Madame Tonteur had
predicted. Toinette had been right.
Fiends with white skins, who
were of his blood, had sent their
hatchet killers to prove it. And
Ike a lone ghost he was left TO
see ii all. The mill wheel knew
and, even in moments of quiet,
seemed 70 possess the power to
tell him so.
With stubborn fortitude he faced
the gehenna through which he
know A hA
could turn south to find his venge-
ance with Dieskau Toinette be-
lOnged TO him now as much as his
mother, and it was for her he be-
gan to search.
In ditch which had run almost
under the caves of the loophOled
church, he stumbled on a body. 1t
had fallen among tall grass and
weeds and had remained hidden
there. 1t wore Mohawk war
tuft, and in one of its stiffened
hands was another English hatchet
like the one Jeems had. scalp
was at the warriors belt, and for
a moment Jeems turned sick. 1t
was young girls scalp. days old
AS he advanced, he could see
there had been an alarm and a
little fighting. There was old Jean
de LauzOn, the cure, doubled up
like a jackknife, half dressed and
with a battered old filntlock under
him. He had fired the gun and
was running for the fortressed
church when bullet had caught
him between his thin shoulder
blades. Jeems stood over him long
enough to make notes of these
things. He saw several more dark
blOtches on the ground quite near
to where the thick Oaken door to
the church had been. There were
Juchereau and Louis Hebert, both
from them were their wives. Rau-
dot was d fifth. He had been a
slow-witted lad, and now he looked
like a clown who had died with
grin on his face. These people
had lived nearest to the church.
The others had been too far away
to answer the alarm quickly, but
the result had been the same.
Some had come TO meet their
death. Others had waited for it.
Between this group and the
smoldering pile that had been the
manor. lone figure lay on the
ground. Jeems went to it slowly.
The sprawled-Out form was Ton
teur. Unlike the others, the baron
was fully dressed. He undOubted-
ly had been armed when he rushed