For her a long twenty-seven years rolled back to the day when she was a young neglected wife, full of life's vitalities, out on a junction of the river and the wild woods, with Barode Barouche's fishing-camp near by.

She shivered now as she thought of it.

It was all so strange, and heart-breaking.

For long years she had paid the price of her mistake.

She knew how eloquent Barode Barouche could be; she knew how his voice had all the ravishment of silver bells to the unsuspecting.