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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Right of Way, by G. Parker, Entire
+#76 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: The Right of Way, Complete
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6249]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 24, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIGHT OF WAY, PARKER, ENTIRE ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT OF WAY
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+Volume 1.
+I.        THE WAY TO THE VERDICT
+II.       WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL
+III.      AFTER FIVE YEARS
+IV.       CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY
+V.        THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE
+VI.       THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB
+VII.      "PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE!"
+VIII.     THE COST OF THE ORNAMENT
+
+Volume 2.
+IX.       OLD DEBTS FOR NEW
+X.        THE WAY IN AND THE WAY OUT
+XI.       THE RAISING OF THE CURTAIN
+XII.      THE COMING OF ROSALIE
+XIII.     HOW CHARLEY WENT ADVENTURING, AND WHAT HE FOUND
+XIV.      ROSALIE, CHARLEY, AND THE MAN THE WIDOW PLOMONDON JILTED
+XV.       THE MARK IN THE PAPER
+XVI.      MADAME DAUPHIN HAS A MISSION
+XVII.     THE TAILOR MAKES A MIDNIGHT FORAY
+XVIII.    THE STEALING OF THE CROSS
+
+Volume 3.
+XIX.      THE SIGN FROM HEAVEN
+XX.       THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR
+XXI.      THE CURE HAS AN INSPIRATION
+XXII.     THE WOMAN WHO SAW
+XXIII.    THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT TELL
+XXIV.     THE SEIGNEUR TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME
+XXV.      THE COLONEL TELLS HIS STORY
+XXVI.     A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST
+XXVII.    OUT ON THE OLD TRAIL
+XXVIII.   THE SEIGNEUR GIVES A WARNING
+
+Volume 4.
+XXIX.     THE WILD RIDE
+XXX.      ROSALIE WARNS CHARLEY
+XXXI.     CHARLEY STANDS AT BAY
+XXXII.    JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY
+XXXIII.   THE EDGE OF LIFE
+XXXIV.    IN AMBUSH
+XXXV.     THE COMING OF MAXIMILIAN COUR AND ANOTHER
+XXXVI.    BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY
+XXXVII.   THE CHALLENGE OF PAULETTE DUBOIS
+XXXVIII.  THE CURE AND THE SEIGNEUR VISIT THE TAILOR
+XXXIX.    THE SCARLET WOMAN
+XL.       AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING
+
+Volume 5.
+XLI.      IT WAS MICHAELMAS DAY
+XLII.     A TRIAL AND A VERDICT
+XLIII.    JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY
+XLIV.     "WHO WAS KATHLEEN?"
+XLV.      SIX MONTHS GO BY
+XLVI.     THE FORGOTTEN MAN
+XLVII.    ONE WAS TAKEN AND THE OTHER LEFT
+XLVIII.   "WHERE THE TREE OF LIFE IS BLOOMING--"
+XLIX.     THE OPEN GATE
+
+Volume 6.
+L.        THE PASSION PLAY AT CHAUDIERE
+LI.       FACE TO FACE
+LII.      THE COMING OF BILLY
+LIII.     THE SEIGNEUR AND THE CURE HAVE A SUSPICION
+LIV.      M. ROSSIGNOL SLIPS THE LEASH
+LV.       ROSALIE PLAYS A PART
+LVI.      MRS. FLYNN SPEAKS
+LVII.     A BURNING FIERY FURNACE
+LVIII.    WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL
+LIX.      IN WHICH CHARLEY MEETS A STRANGER
+LX.       THE HAND AT THE DOOR
+LXI.      THE CURE SPEAKS
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+In a book called 'The House of Harper', published in this year, 1912,
+there are two letters of mine, concerning 'The Right of Way', written to
+Henry M. Alden, editor of Harper's Magazine.  To my mind those letters
+should never have been published.  They were purely personal.  They were
+intended for one man's eyes only, and he was not merely an editor but a
+beloved and admired personal friend.  Only to him and to W. E. Henley, as
+editors, could I ever have emptied out my heart and brain; and, as may be
+seen by these two letters, one written from London and the other from a
+place near Southampton, I uncovered all my feelings, my hopes and my
+ambitions concerning The Right of Way.  Had I been asked permission to
+publish them I should not have granted it.  I may wear my heart upon my
+sleeve for my friend, but not for the universe.
+
+The most scathing thing ever said in literature was said by Robert
+Buchanan on Dante Gabriel Rossetti's verses--"He has wheeled his nuptial
+bed into the street."  Looking at these letters I have a great shrinking,
+for they were meant only for the eyes of an aged man for whom I cared
+enough to let him see behind the curtain.  But since they have been
+printed, and without a "by your leave," I will use one or two passages
+in them to show in what mood, under what pressure of impulse, under what
+mental and, maybe, spiritual hypnotism it was written.  I first planned
+it as a story of twenty-five thousand words, even as 'Valmond' was
+planned as a story of five thousand words, and 'A Ladder of Swords' as a
+story of twenty thousand words; but I had not written three chapters
+before I saw what the destiny of the tale was to be.  I had gone to
+Quebec to start the thing in the atmosphere where Charley Steele
+belonged, and there it was borne in upon me that it must be a three-
+decker novel, not a novelette.  I telegraphed to Harper & Brothers to ask
+them whether it would suit them just as well if I made it into a long
+novel.  They telegraphed their assent at once; so I went on.  At that
+time Mr. F. N. Doubleday was a sort of director of Harper's firm.  To him
+I had told the tale in a railway train, and he had carried me off at once
+to Henry M. Alden, to whom I also told it, with the result that Harper's
+Magazine was wide open to it, and there in Quebec, soon after my
+interview with Mr. Alden and Mr. Doubleday, the book was begun.
+
+The first of the letters published in The House of Harper, however, was
+apparently written immediately after my return to London when the novel
+was well on its way.  Evidently the first paragraph of the letter was an
+apology for having suddenly announced the development of the book from a
+long short story to a long novel; for I used these words:
+
+"Yet if you really take an interest in the working of the human mind in
+its relation to the vicissitudes of life, you will appreciate what I am
+going to tell you, and will recognise that there is only stability in
+evolution which the vulgar call chance.  .  .  .  Now, sir, perpend.
+Charley Steele is going to be a novel of one hundred thousand words or
+one hundred and twenty thousand--a real bang-up heartful of a novel."
+
+Then there follows the confidence of a friend to a friend.  As I look
+at the words I am not sorry that I wrote them.  They were a part of me.
+They were the inveterate truth, but I would not willingly have uncovered
+my inner self to any except the man to whom the words were written.  But
+here is what I wrote:
+
+"I am a bit of a fool over this book.  It catches me at every tender
+corner of my nature.  It has aroused all the old ardent dreams of youth
+and springtime puissance.  I cannot lay it down, and I cannot shorten it,
+for story, character, soul and reflection, imagination, observation are
+dragging me along after them.  .  .  .  This novel will make me or break
+me--prove me human and an artist, or an affected literary bore.  If you
+want it you must take the risk.  But, my dear Alden, you will be
+investing in a man's heart--which may be a fortune or a folly.  Why,
+I ought to have seen--and far back in my brain I did see--that the
+character of Charley Steele was a type, an idiosyncrasy of modern life, a
+resultant of forces all round us, and that he would demand space in which
+to live and tell his story to the world.  .  .  .  And behold with what
+joy I follow him, not only lovingly but sternly and severely, noting him
+down as he really is, condoning naught, forgiving naught, but above all
+else, understanding him--his wilful mystification of the world, his
+shameless disdain of it, but the old law of interrogation, of sad yet
+eager inquiry and wonder and 'non possumus' with him to the end."
+
+This letter was evidently written in December, 1899, and the other went
+to Mr. Alden on the 7th August, 1900; therefore, eight or nine months
+later.  The work had gone well.  Week after week, month after month it
+had unfolded itself with an almost unpardonable ease.  Evidently, the
+very ease with which the book was written troubled me, because I find
+that in this letter of the 7th August, 1900, to Mr. Alden, I used these
+words:
+
+"A kind of terror has seized me, and instead of sending a dozen more
+chapters to you as I proposed to do, I am setting to to break this love
+story anew under the stones of my most exacting criticism and troubled
+regard.  I go to bury myself at a solitary little seaside place" (it was
+Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire), "there to live alone with Rosalie and
+Charley, and if I do not know them hereafter, never ask me to write for
+'Harper's' again.  .  .  .  This book has been written out of something
+vital in me--I do not mean the religious part of it, I mean the humanity
+that becomes one's own and part of one's self, by observation,
+experience, and understanding got from dead years."
+
+Anyhow that shows the spirit in which the book was written, and there
+must have been something in it that rang true, because not only did it
+have an enormous sale and therefore a multitude of readers, but I
+received hundreds of letters from people who in one way or another were
+deeply interested in the story.
+
+The majority of them were inquisitive letters.  A great many of them said
+that the writer had shared in controversy as to what the relations of
+Charley and Rosalie were, and asked me to set for ever queries and
+controversies at rest by declaring either that the relations of these two
+were what, in the way of life's stern conventions, they ought not to be,
+or that Rosalie passed unscathed through the fire.  I had foreseen all
+this, though I could not have foreseen the passionately intense interest
+which my readers would take in the life-story of these unhappy yet happy
+people.  I had, however, only one reply.  It was that all I had meant to
+say concerning Charley and Rosalie had been said in the book, to the last
+word.  All I had meant not to say would not be said after the book was
+written.  I asked them to take exactly the same view of Charley and
+Rosalie as they would in real life regarding two human beings with whom
+they were acquainted, and concerning whom, to their minds, there was
+sufficient evidence, or not sufficient evidence, to come to a conclusion
+as to what their relations were.  I added that, as in real life we used
+our judgment upon such things with a reasonable amount of accuracy,
+I asked them to apply that judgment to Charley Steele and Rosalie
+Evanturel.  They and their story were there for eyes to see and read,
+and when I had ended my manuscript in the year 1900 I had said the last
+word I ever meant to say as to their history.  The controversy therefore
+continues, for the book still makes its appeal to an ever increasing
+congregation of new readers.
+
+But another kind of letter came to me--the letter of some man who had
+just such a struggle as Charley Steele, or whose father or brother or
+friend had had such a struggle.  Letters came from clergymen who had
+preached concerning the book; from men who told me in brief their own
+life problems and tragedies.  These letters I prize; most of them had
+the real thing in them, the human truth.
+
+That the book drew wide attention to the Dominion of Canada, particularly
+to French Canada, and crystallised something of the life of that dear
+Province, was a deep pleasure to me; and I was glad that I had been able
+to culminate my efforts to portray the life of the French-Canadian as I
+saw it, by a book which arrested the attention of so comprehensive a
+public.
+
+I have seen many statements as to the original of Charley Steele, but I
+have never seen a story which was true.  Many people have told me that
+they had seen the original of Charley Steele in an American lawyer.
+They knew he was the original, because he himself had said so.  The
+gentleman was mistaken; I have never seen him.  As with the purple cow,
+I never hope to see him.  Whoever he is or whatever he is, the original
+Charley was an abler and a more striking man.  I knew him as a boy, and
+he died while I was yet a boy, taking with him, save in the memory of a
+few, a rare and wonderful, if not wholly lovable personality.  For over
+twenty years I had carried him in my mind, wondering whether, and when,
+I should-make use of him.  Again and again I was tempted, but was never
+convinced that his time had come; yet through all the years he was
+gaining strength, securing possession of my mind, and gathering to him,
+magnet-like, the thousand observations which my experience sent in his
+direction.  In my mind his life-story ended with his death at the Cote
+Dorion.  For years and years I saw his ending there.  Yet it all seemed
+to me so futile, despite the wonder of his personality, that I could make
+nothing of him, and though always fascinated by his character I was held
+back from exploiting it, because of the hopelessness of it all.  It led
+nowhere.  It was the 'quid refert' of the philosopher, and I could not
+bring myself to get any further than an interrogation mark at the end of
+a life which was all scepticism, mind and matter, and nothing more.
+
+There came a day, however, when that all ended, when the doors were flung
+wide to a new conception of the man, and of what he might have become.
+I was going to America, and I paid an angry and reluctant visit to my
+London tailor thirty-six hours before I was to start.  A suit of clothes
+had been sent home which, after an effective trying-on, was a
+monstrosity.  I went straight to my tailor, put on the clothes and bade
+him look at them.  He was a great tailor-he saw exactly what I saw, and
+what I saw was bad; and when a tailor will do that, you may be quite sure
+he is a good and a great man.  He said the clothes were as bad as they
+could be, but he added: "You shall have them before you sail, and they
+shall be exactly as you want them.  I'll have the foreman down."  He rang
+a bell.  Presently the door swung open and in stepped a man with an
+eyeglass in his eye.  There, with a look at once reflective and
+penetrating, with a figure at once slovenly and alert, was a caricature
+of Charley Steele as I had known him, and of all his characteristics.
+There was such a resemblance as an ugly child in a family may have to his
+handsome brother.  It was Charley Steele with a twist--gone to seed.
+Looking at him in blank amazement, I burst out: "Good heavens, so you
+didn't die, Charley Steele!  You became a tailor!"
+
+All at once the whole new landscape of my story as it eventually became,
+spread out before me.  I was justified in waiting all the years.  My
+discontent with the futile end of the tale as I originally knew it and
+saw it was justified.  Charley Steele, brilliant, enigmatic and
+epigrammatic, did not die at the Cote Dorion, but lived in that far
+valley by Dalgrothe Mountain, and became a tailor!  So far as I am
+concerned he became much more.  He was the beginning of a new epoch in
+my literary life.  I had got into subtler methods, reached more intimate
+understandings, had come to a place where analysis of character had
+shaken itself free--but certainly not quite free--from a natural yet
+rather dangerous eloquence.
+
+As a play The Right of Way, skilfully and sympathetically dramatised by
+Mr. Eugene Presbery, has had a career extending over several years, and
+still continues to make its appearance.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+It should not be assumed that the "Chaudiere" of this story is the real
+Chaudiere of Quebec province.  The name is characteristic, and for this
+reason alone I have used it.
+
+I must also apologise to my readers for appearing to disregard a
+statement made in 'The Lane that Had no Turning', that that tale was the
+last I should write about French Canada.  In explanation I would say that
+'The Lane that Had no Turning' was written after the present book was
+finished.
+
+G. F.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT OF WAY
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 1.
+
+
+I.        THE WAY TO THE VERDICT
+II.       WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL
+III.      AFTER FIVE YEARS
+IV.       CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY
+V.        THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE
+VI.       THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB
+VII.      "PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE!"
+VIII.     THE COST OF THE ORNAMENT
+
+
+
+     "They had lived and loved, and walked and worked in their own way,
+     and the world went by them.  Between them and it a great gulf was
+     fixed: and they met its every catastrophe with the Quid Refert? of
+     the philosophers."
+
+              "I want to talk with some old lover's ghost,
+               Who lived before the god of love was born."
+
+     "There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and
+     none of them is without signification."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE WAY TO THE VERDICT
+
+"Not guilty, your Honour!"
+
+A hundred atmospheres had seemed pressing down on the fretted people in
+the crowded court-room.  As the discordant treble of the huge foreman of
+the jury squeaked over the mass of gaping humanity, which had twitched at
+skirts, drawn purposeless hands across prickling faces, and kept nervous
+legs at a gallop, the smothering weights of elastic air lifted suddenly,
+a great suspiration of relief swept through the place like a breeze, and
+in a far corner of the gallery a woman laughed outright.
+
+The judge looked up reprovingly at the gallery; the clerk of the court
+angrily called "Silence!" towards the offending corner, and seven or
+eight hundred eyes raced between three centres of interest--the judge,
+the prisoner, and the prisoner's counsel.  Perhaps more people looked at
+the prisoner's counsel than at the prisoner, certainly far more than
+looked at the judge.
+
+Never was a verdict more unexpected.  If a poll had been taken of the
+judgment of the population twenty-four hours before, a great majority
+would have been found believing that there was no escape for the
+prisoner, who was accused of murdering a wealthy timber merchant.  The
+minority would have based their belief that the prisoner had a chance of
+escape, not on his possible innocence, not on insufficient evidence, but
+on a curious faith in the prisoner's lawyer.  This minority would not
+have been composed of the friends of the lawyer alone, but of outside
+spectators, who, because Charley Steele had never lost a criminal case,
+attached to him a certain incapacity for bad luck; and of very young men,
+who looked upon him as the perfect pattern of the person good to see and
+hard to understand.
+
+During the first two days of the trial the case had gone wholly against
+the prisoner, who had given his name as Joseph Nadeau.  Witnesses had
+heard him quarrelling with the murdered man, and the next day the body of
+the victim had been found by the roadside.  The prisoner was a stranger
+in the lumber-camp where the deed was done, and while there had been
+morose and lived apart; no one knew him; and he refused to tell even his
+lawyer whence he came, or what his origin, or to bring witnesses from his
+home to speak for his character.
+
+One by one the points had been made against him--with no perceptible
+effect upon Charley Steele, who seemed the one cool, undisturbed person
+in the courtroom.
+
+Indifferent as he seemed, seldom speaking to the prisoner, often looking
+out of the windows to the cool green trees far over on the hill, absorbed
+and unbusinesslike, yet judge and jury came to see, before the second day
+was done, that he had let no essential thing pass, that the questions
+he asked had either a pregnant aptness, opened up new avenues of
+deliberation, or were touched with mystery--seemed to have a longer
+reach than the moment or the hour.
+
+Before the end of this second day, however, more attention was upon him
+than upon the prisoner, and nine-tenths of the people in the court-room
+could have told how many fine linen handkerchiefs he used during the
+afternoon, how many times he adjusted his monocle to look at the judge
+meditatively.  Probably no man, for eight hours a day, ever exasperated
+and tried a judge, jury, and public, as did this man of twenty-nine years
+of age, who had been known at college as Beauty Steele, and who was still
+so spoken of familiarly; or was called as familiarly, Charley Steele, by
+people who never had attempted to be familiar with him.
+
+The second day of the trial had ended gloomily for the prisoner.  The
+coil of evidence had drawn so close that extrication seemed impossible.
+That the evidence was circumstantial, that no sign of the crime was upon
+the prisoner, that he was found sleeping quietly in his bed when he was
+arrested, that he had not been seen to commit the deed, did not weigh in
+the minds of the general public.  The man's guilt was freely believed;
+not even the few who clung to the opinion that Charley Steele would yet
+get him off thought that he was innocent.  There seemed no flaw in the
+evidence, once granted its circumstantiality.
+
+During the last two hours of the sitting the prisoner had looked at his
+counsel in despair, for he seemed perfunctorily conducting the case: was
+occupied in sketching upon the blotting-pad before him, looking out of
+the window, or turning his head occasionally towards a corner where sat a
+half-dozen well-dressed ladies, and more particularly towards one lady
+who watched him in a puzzled way--more than once with a look of
+disappointment.  Only at the very close of the sitting did he appear to
+rouse himself.  Then, for a brief ten minutes, he cross-examined a friend
+of the murdered merchant in a fashion which startled the court-room, for
+he suddenly brought out the fact that the dead man had once struck a
+woman in the face in the open street.  This fact, sharply stated by the
+prisoner's counsel, with no explanation and no comment, seemed uselessly
+intrusive and malicious.  His ironical smile merely irritated all
+concerned.  The thin, clean-shaven face of the prisoner grew more pinched
+and downcast, and he turned almost pleadingly towards the judge.  The
+judge pulled his long side-whiskers nervously, and looked over his
+glasses in severe annoyance, then hastily adjourned the sitting and left
+the bench, while the prisoner saw with dismay his lawyer leave the court-
+room with not even a glance towards him.
+
+On the morning of the third day Charley Steele's face, for the first
+time, wore an expression which, by a stretch of imagination, might be
+called anxious.  He also took out his monocle frequently, rubbed it with
+his handkerchief, and screwed it in again, staring straight before him
+much of the time.  But twice he spoke to the prisoner in a low voice, and
+was hurriedly answered in French as crude as his own was perfect.  When
+he spoke, which was at rare intervals, his voice was without feeling,
+concise, insistent, unappealing.  It was as though the business before
+him was wholly alien to him, as though he were held there against his
+will, but would go on with his task bitterly to the bitter end.
+
+The court adjourned for an hour at noon.  During this time Charley
+refused to see any one, but sat alone in his office with a few biscuits
+and an ominous bottle before him, till the time came for him to go back
+to the court-house.  Arrived there he entered by a side door, and was not
+seen until the court opened once more.
+
+For two hours and a half the crown attorney mercilessly made out his case
+against the prisoner.  When he sat down, people glanced meaningly at each
+other, as though the last word had been said, then looked at the
+prisoner, as at one already condemned.
+
+Yet Charley Steele was to reply.  He was not now the same man that had
+conducted the case during the past two days and a half.  Some great
+change had passed over him.  There was no longer abstraction,
+indifference, or apparent boredom, or disdain, or distant stare.
+He was human, intimate and eager, yet concentrated and impelling:
+he was quietly, unnoticeably drunk.
+
+He assured the prisoner with a glance of the eye, with a word scarce
+above a whisper, as he slowly rose to make his speech for the defence.
+
+His first words caused a new feeling in the courtroom.  He was a new
+presence; the personality had a changed significance.  At first the
+public, the jury, and the judge were curiously attracted, surprised into
+a fresh interest.  The voice had an insinuating quality, but it also had
+a measured force, a subterranean insistence, a winning tactfulness.
+Withal, a logical simplicity governed his argument.  The flaneur, the
+poseur--if such he was--no longer appeared.  He came close to the
+jurymen, leaned his hands upon the back of a chair--as it were, shut out
+the public, even the judge, from his circle of interest--and talked in a
+conversational tone.  An air of confidence passed from him to the amazed
+yet easily captivated jury; the distance between them, so gaping during
+the last two days, closed suddenly up.  The tension of the past
+estrangement, relaxing all at once, surprised the jury into an almost
+eager friendliness, as on a long voyage a sensitive traveller finds in
+some exciting accident a natural introduction to an exclusive fellow-
+passenger, whom he discovers as human as he had thought him offensively
+distant.
+
+Charley began by congratulating the crown attorney on his statement of
+the case.  He called it masterly; he said that in its presentations it
+was irrefutable; as a precis of evidence purely circumstantial it was--
+useful and interesting.  But, speech-making aside, and ability--and
+rhetoric--aside, and even personal conviction aside, the case should
+stand or fall by its total, not its comparative, soundness.  Since the
+evidence was purely circumstantial, there must be no flaw in its cable of
+assumption, it must be logically inviolate within itself.  Starting with
+assumption only, there must be no straying possibilities, no loose ends
+of certainty, no invading alternatives.  Was this so in the case of the
+man before them?  They were faced by a curious situation.  So far as the
+trial was concerned, the prisoner himself was the only person who could
+tell them who he was, what was his past, and, if he committed the crime,
+what was--the motive of it: out of what spirit--of revenge, or hatred--
+the dead man had been sent to his account.  Probably in the whole history
+of crime there never was a more peculiar case.  Even himself the
+prisoner's counsel was dealing with one whose life was hid from him
+previous to the day the murdered man was discovered by the roadside.
+The prisoner had not sought to prove an alibi; he had done no more than
+formally plead not guilty.  There was no material for defence save that
+offered by the prosecution.  He had undertaken the defence of the
+prisoner because it was his duty as a lawyer to see that the law
+justified itself; that it satisfied every demand of proof to the last
+atom of certainty; that it met the final possibility of doubt with
+evidence perfect and inviolate if circumstantial, and uncontradictory if
+eye-witness, if tell-tale incident, were to furnish basis of proof.
+
+Judge, jury, and public riveted their eyes upon Charley Steele.
+He had now drawn a little farther away from the jury-box; his eye took
+in the judge as well; once or twice he turned, as if appealingly and
+confidently, to the people in the room.  It was terribly hot, the air
+was sickeningly close, every one seemed oppressed--every one save a lady
+sitting not a score of feet from where the counsel for the prisoner
+stood.  This lady's face was not one that could flush easily; it belonged
+to a temperament as even as her person was symmetrically beautiful.  As
+Charley talked, her eyes were fixed steadily, wonderingly upon him.
+There was a question in her gaze, which never in the course of the speech
+was quite absorbed by the admiration--the intense admiration--she was
+feeling for him.  Once as he turned with a concentrated earnestness in
+her direction his eyes met hers.  The message he flashed her was sub-
+conscious, for his mind never wavered an instant from the cause in hand,
+but it said to her:
+
+"When this is over, Kathleen, I will come to you."  For another quarter
+of an hour he exposed the fallacy of purely circumstantial evidence; he
+raised in the minds of his hearers the painful responsibility of the law,
+the awful tyranny of miscarriage of justice; he condemned prejudice
+against a prisoner because that prisoner demanded that the law should
+prove him guilty instead of his proving himself innocent.  If a man chose
+to stand to that, to sternly assume this perilous position, the law had
+no right to take advantage of it.  He turned towards the prisoner and
+traced his possible history: as the sensitive, intelligent son of godly
+Catholic parents from some remote parish in French Canada.  He drew an
+imaginary picture of the home from which he might have come, and of the
+parents and brothers and sisters who would have lived weeks of torture
+knowing that their son and brother was being tried for his life.  It
+might at first glance seem quixotic, eccentric, but was it unnatural that
+the prisoner should choose silence as to his origin and home, rather than
+have his family and friends face the undoubted peril lying before him?
+Besides, though his past life might have been wholly blameless, it would
+not be evidence in his favour.  It might, indeed, if it had not been
+blameless, provide some element of unjust suspicion against him, furnish
+some fancied motive.  The prisoner had chosen his path, and events had so
+far justified him.  It must be clear to the minds of judge and jury that
+there were fatally weak places in the circumstantial evidence offered for
+the conviction of this man.
+
+There was the fact that no sign of the crime, no drop of blood, no
+weapon, was found about him or near him, and that he was peacefully
+sleeping at the moment the constable arrested him.
+
+There was also the fact that no motive for the crime had been shown.
+It was not enough that he and the dead man had been heard quarrelling.
+Was there any certainty that it was a quarrel, since no word or sentence
+of the conversation had been brought into court?  Men with quick tempers
+might quarrel over trivial things, but exasperation did not always end in
+bodily injury and the taking of life; imprecations were not so uncommon
+that they could be taken as evidence of wilful murder.  The prisoner
+refused to say what that troubled conversation was about, but who could
+question his right to take the risk of his silence being misunderstood?
+
+The judge was alternately taking notes and looking fixedly at the
+prisoner; the jury were in various attitudes of strained attention; the
+public sat open mouthed; and up in the gallery a woman with white face
+and clinched hands listened moveless and staring.  Charley Steele was
+holding captive the emotions and the judgments of his hearers.  All
+antipathy had gone; there was a strange eager intimacy between the
+jurymen and himself.  People no longer looked with distant dislike at the
+prisoner, but began to see innocence in his grim silence, disdain only in
+his surly defiance.
+
+But Charley Steele had preserved his great stroke for the psychological
+moment.  He suddenly launched upon them the fact, brought out in
+evidence, that the dead man had struck a woman in the face a year ago;
+also that he had kept a factory girl in affluence for two years.  Here
+was motive for murder--if motive were to govern them--far greater than
+might be suggested by excited conversation which listeners who could not
+hear a word construed into a quarrel--listeners who bore the prisoner at
+the bar ill-will because he shunned them while in the lumber-camp.  If
+the prisoner was to be hanged for motive untraceable, why should not
+these two women be hanged for motive traceable!
+
+Here was his chance.  He appeared to impeach subtly every intelligence in
+the room for having had any preconviction about the prisoner's guilt.  He
+compelled the jury to feel that they, with him, had made the discovery of
+the unsound character of the evidence.  The man might be guilty, but
+their personal guilt, the guilt of the law, would be far greater if they
+condemned the man on violable evidence.  With a last simple appeal, his
+hands resting on the railing before the seat where the jury sat, his
+voice low and conversational again, his eyes running down the line of
+faces of the men who had his client's life in their hands, he said:
+
+"It is not a life only that is at stake, it is not revenge for a life
+snatched from the busy world by a brutal hand that we should heed to-day,
+but the awful responsibility of that thing we call the State, which,
+having the power of life and death without gainsay or hindrance, should
+prove to the last inch of necessity its right to take a human life.  And
+the right and the reason should bring conviction to every honest human
+mind.  That is all I have to say."
+
+The crown attorney made a perfunctory reply.  The judge's charge was
+brief, and, if anything, a little in favour of the prisoner--very little,
+a casuist's little; and the jury filed out of the room.  They were gone
+but ten minutes.  When they returned, the verdict was given: "Not guilty,
+your Honour!"
+
+Then it was that a woman laughed in the gallery.  Then a whispering voice
+said across the railing which separated the public from the lawyers:
+"Charley!  Charley!"
+
+Though Charley turned and looked at the lady who spoke, he made no
+response.
+
+A few minutes later, outside the court, as he walked quickly away, again
+inscrutable and debonair, the prisoner, Joseph Nadeau, touched him on the
+arm and said:
+
+"M'sieu', M'sieu', you have saved my life--I thank you, M'sieu'!"
+
+Charley Steele drew his arm away with disgust.  "Get out of my sight!
+You're as guilty as hell!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHAT CAME OF THE TRIAL
+
+"When this is over, Kathleen, I will come to you."  So Charley Steele's
+eyes had said to a lady in the court room on that last day of the great
+trial.  The lady had left the court-room dazed and exalted.  She, with
+hundreds of others, had had a revelation of Charley Steele; had had also
+the great emotional experience of seeing a crowd make the 'volte face'
+with their convictions; looking at a prisoner one moment with eyes of
+loathing and anticipating his gruesome end, the next moment seeing him
+as the possible martyr to the machinery of the law.  She whose heart was
+used to beat so evenly had felt it leap and swell with excitement,
+awaiting the moment when the jury filed back into the court-room.  Then
+it stood still, as a wave might hang for an instant at its crest ere it
+swept down to beat upon the shore.
+
+With her as with most present, the deepest feeling in the agitated
+suspense was not so much that the prisoner should go free, as that the
+prisoner's counsel should win his case.  It was as if Charley Steele were
+on trial instead of the prisoner.  He was the imminent figure; it was his
+fate that was in the balance--such was the antic irony of suggestion.
+And the truth was, that the fates of both prisoner and counsel had been
+weighed in the balance that sweltering August day.
+
+The prisoner was forgotten almost as soon as he had left the court-room
+a free man, but wherever men and women met in Montreal that day, one name
+was on the lips of all-Charley Steele!  In his speech he had done two
+things: he had thrown down every barrier of reserve--or so it seemed--
+and had become human and intimate.  "I could not have believed it of
+him," was the remark on every lip.  Of his ability there never had been
+a moment's doubt, but it had ever been an uncomfortable ability, it had
+tortured foes and made friends anxious.  No one had ever seen him show
+feeling.  If it was a mask, he had worn it with a curious consistency: it
+had been with him as a child, at school, at college, and he had brought
+it back again to the town where he was born.  It had effectually
+prevented his being popular, but it had made him--with his foppishness
+and his originality--an object of perpetual interest.  Few men had
+ventured to cross swords with him.  He left his fellow-citizens very much
+alone.  He was uniformly if distantly courteous, and he was respected in
+his own profession for his uncommon powers and for an utter indifference
+as to whether he had cases in court or not.
+
+Coming from the judge's chambers after the trial he went to his office,
+receiving as he passed congratulations more effusively offered than, as
+people presently found, his manner warranted.
+
+For he was again the formal, masked Charley Steele, looking calmly
+through the interrogative eye-glass.  By the time he reached his office,
+greetings became more subdued.  His prestige had increased immensely in
+a few short hours, but he had no more friends than before.  Old relations
+were soon re-established.  The town was proud of his ability as it had
+always been, irritated by his manner as it had always been, more
+prophetic of his future than it had ever been, and unconsciously grateful
+for the fact that he had given them a sensation which would outlast the
+summer.
+
+All these things concerned him little.  Once the business of the court-
+room was over, a thought which had quietly lain in waiting behind the
+strenuous occupations of his brain leaped forward to exclude all others.
+
+As he entered his office he was thinking of that girl's face in the
+court-room, with its flush of added beauty which he and his speech had
+brought there.  "What a perfect loveliness!" he said to himself as he
+bathed his face and hands, and prepared to go into the street again.
+"She needed just such a flush to make her supreme Kathleen!"  He stood,
+looking out into the square, out into the green of the trees where the
+birds twittered.  "Faultless--faultless in form and feature.  She was so
+as a child, she is so as a woman."  He lighted a cigarette, and blew away
+little clouds of smoke.  "I will do it.  I will marry her.  She will have
+me: I saw it in her eye.  Fairing doesn't matter.  Her uncle will never
+consent to that, and she doesn't care enough for him.  She cares, but she
+doesn't care enough.  .  .  .  I will do it."
+
+He turned towards a cupboard into which he had put a certain bottle
+before he went to the court-room two hours before.  He put the key in the
+lock, then stopped.  "No, I think not!" he said.  "What I say to her
+shall not be said forensically.  What a discovery I've made!  I was dull,
+blank, all iron and ice; the judge, the jury, the public, even Kathleen,
+against me; and then that bottle in there--and I saw things like crystal!
+I had a glow in my brain, I had a tingle in my fingers; and I had
+success, and"--his face clouded--"He was as guilty as hell!" he added,
+almost bitterly, as he put the key of the cupboard into his pocket again.
+
+There was a knock at the door, and a youth of about nineteen entered.
+
+"Hello!" he said.  "I say, sir, but that speech of yours struck us all
+where we couldn't say no.  Even Kathleen got in a glow over it.  Perhaps
+Captain Fairing didn't, for he's just left her in a huff, and she's
+looking--you remember those lines in the school-book:
+
+                  "'A red spot burned upon her cheek,
+                    Streamed her rich tresses down--'"
+
+He laughed gaily.  "I've come to ask you up to tea," he added.  "The
+Unclekins is there.  When I told him that Kathleen had sent Fairing away
+with a flea in his ear, he nearly fell off his chair.  He lent me twenty
+dollars on the spot.  Are you coming our way?" he continued, suddenly
+trying to imitate Charley's manner.  Charley nodded, and they left the
+office together and moved away under a long avenue of maples to where, in
+the shade of a high hill, was the house of the uncle of Kathleen Wantage,
+with whom she and her brother Billy lived.  They walked in silence for
+some time, and at last Billy said, 'a propos' of nothing:
+
+"Fairing hasn't a red cent."
+
+"You have a perambulating mind, Billy," said Charley, and bowed to a
+young clergyman approaching them from the opposite direction.
+
+"What does that mean?" remarked Billy, and said "Hello!" to the young
+clergyman, and did not wait for Charley's answer.
+
+The Rev. John Brown was by no means a conventional parson.  He was
+smoking a cigarette, and two dogs followed at his heels.  He was
+certainly not a fogy.  He had more than a little admiration for Charley
+Steele, but he found it difficult to preach when Charley was in the
+congregation.  He was always aware of a subterranean and half-pitying
+criticism going on in the barrister's mind.  John Brown knew that he
+could never match his intelligence against Charley's, in spite of the
+theological course at Durham, so he undertook to scotch the snake by
+kindness.  He thought that he might be able to do this, because Charley,
+who was known to be frankly agnostical, came to his church more or less
+regularly.
+
+The Rev. John Brown was not indifferent to what men thought of him.  He
+had a reputation for being "independent," but his chief independence
+consisted in dressing a little like a layman, posing as the athletic
+parson of the new school, consorting with ministers of the dissenting
+denominations when it was sufficiently effective, and being a "good
+fellow" with men easily bored by church and churchmen.  He preached
+theatrical sermons to societies and benevolent associations.  He wanted
+to be thought well of on all hands, and he was shrewd enough to know that
+if he trimmed between ritualism on one hand and evangelicism on the
+other, he was on a safe road.  He might perforate old dogmatical
+prejudices with a good deal of freedom so long as he did not begin
+bringing "millinery" into the service of the church.  He invested his own
+personal habits with the millinery.  He looked a picturesque figure with
+his blond moustache, a little silk-lined brown cloak thrown carelessly
+over his shoulder, a gold-headed cane, and a brisk jacket half
+ecclesiastical, half military.
+
+He had interested Charley Steele, also he had amused him, and
+sometimes he had surprised him into a sort of admiration; for Brown had
+a temperament capable of little inspirations--such a literary inspiration
+as might come to a second-rate actor--and Charley never belittled any
+man's ability, but seized upon every sign of knowledge with the
+appreciation of the epicure.
+
+John Brown raised his hat to Charley, then held out a hand.  "Masterly-
+masterly!" he said.  "Permit my congratulations.  It was the one thing
+to do.  You couldn't have saved him by making him an object of pity, by
+appealing to our sympathies."
+
+"What do you take to be the secret, then?" asked Charley, with a look
+half abstracted, half quizzical.  "Terror--sheer terror.  You startled
+the conscience.  You made defects in the circumstantial evidence, the
+imminent problems of our own salvation.  You put us all on trial.  We
+were under the lash of fear.  If we parsons could only do that from the
+pulpit!"
+
+"We will discuss that on our shooting-trip next week.  Duck-shooting
+gives plenty of time for theological asides.  You are coming, eh?"
+
+John Brown scarcely noticed the sarcasm, he was so delighted at the
+suggestion that he was to be included in the annual duck-shoot of the
+Seven, as the little yearly party of Charley and his friends to Lake
+Aubergine was called.  He had angled for this invitation for two years.
+
+"I must not keep you," Charley said, and dismissed him with a bow.  "The
+sheep will stray, and the shepherd must use his crook."
+
+Brown smiled at the badinage, and went on his way rejoicing in the fact
+that he was to share the amusements of the Seven at Lake Aubergine--the
+Lake of the Mad Apple.  To get hold of these seven men of repute and
+position, to be admitted into this good presence!--He had a pious
+exaltation, but whether it was because he might gather into the fold
+erratic and agnostical sheep like Charley Steele, or because it pleased
+his social ambitions, he had occasion to answer in the future.  He gaily
+prepared to go to the Lake of the Mad Apple, where he was fated to eat
+of the tree of knowledge.
+
+Charley Steele and Billy Wantage walked on slowly to the house under the
+hill.
+
+"He's the right sort," said Billy.  "He's a sport.  I can stand that
+kind.  Did you ever hear him sing?  No?  Well, he can sing a comic song
+fit to make you die.  I can sing a bit myself, but to hear him sing 'The
+Man Who Couldn't Get Warm' is a show in itself.  He can play the banjo
+too, and the guitar--but he's best on the banjo.  It's worth a dollar to
+listen to his Epha-haam--that's Ephraim, you know--Ephahaam Come Home,'
+and 'I Found Y' in de Honeysuckle Paitch.'"
+
+"He preaches, too!" said Charley drily.
+
+They had reached the door of the house under the hill, and Billy had no
+time for further remark.  He ran into the drawing-room, announcing
+Charley with the words: "I say, Kathleen, I've brought the man that made
+the judge sit up."
+
+Billy suddenly stopped, however, for there sat the judge who had tried
+the case, calmly munching a piece of toast.  The judge did not allow
+himself the luxury of embarrassment, but bowed to Charley with a smile,
+which he presently turned on Kathleen, who came as near being
+disconcerted as she had ever been in her life.
+
+Kathleen had passed through a good deal to look so unflurried.  She had
+been on trial in the court-room as well as the prisoner.  Important
+things had been at stake with her.  She and Charley Steele had known each
+other since they were children.  To her, even in childhood, he had been
+a dominant figure.  He had judicially and admiringly told her she was
+beautiful--when he was twelve and she five.  But he had said it without
+any of those glances which usually accompanied the same sentiments in the
+mouths of other lads.  He had never made boy-love to her, and she had
+thrilled at the praise of less splendid people than Charley Steele.  He
+had always piqued her, he was so superior to the ordinary enchantments
+of youth, beauty, and fine linen.
+
+As he came and went, growing older and more characteristic, more and more
+"Beauty Steele," accompanied by legends of wild deeds and days at
+college, by tales of his fopperies and the fashions he had set, she
+herself had grown, as he had termed it, more "decorative."  He had told
+her so, not in the least patronisingly, but as a simple fact in which no
+sentiment lurked.  He thought her the most beautiful thing he had ever
+seen, but he had never regarded her save as a creation for the perfect
+pleasure of the eye; he thought her the concrete glory of sensuous
+purity, no more capable of sentiment than himself.  He had said again and
+again, as he grew older and left college and began the business of life
+after two years in Europe, that sentiment would spoil her, would scatter
+the charm of her perfect beauty; it would vitalise her too much, and her
+nature would lose its proportion; she would be decentralised!  She had
+been piqued at his indifference to sentiment; she could not easily be
+content without worship, though she felt none.  This pique had grown
+until Captain Tom Fairing crossed her path.
+
+Fairing was the antithesis of Charley Steele.  Handsome, poor,
+enthusiastic, and none too able, he was simple and straightforward, and
+might be depended on till the end of the chapter.  And the end of it was,
+that in so far as she had ever felt real sentiment for anybody, she felt
+it for Tom Fairing of the Royal Fusileers.  It was not love she felt in
+the old, in the big, in the noble sense, but it had behind it selection
+and instinct and natural gravitation.
+
+Fairing declared his love.  She would give him no answer.  For as soon
+as she was presented with the issue, the destiny, she began to look round
+her anxiously.  The first person to fill the perspective was Charley
+Steele.  As her mind dwelt on him, her uncle gave forth his judgment,
+that she should never have a penny if she married Tom Fairing.  This only
+irritated her, it did not influence her.  But there was Charley.  He was
+a figure, was already noted in his profession because of a few masterly
+successes in criminal cases, and if he was not popular, he was
+distinguished, and the world would talk about him to the end.  He was
+handsome, and he was well-to-do-he had a big unoccupied house on the hill
+among the maples.  How many people had said, What a couple they would
+make-Charley Steele and Kathleen Wantage!
+
+So, as Fairing presented an issue to her, she concentrated her thoughts
+as she had never done before on the man whom the world set apart for her,
+in a way the world has.
+
+As she looked and looked, Charley began to look also.  He had not been
+enamoured of the sordid things of the world; he had been merely curious.
+He thought vice was ugly; he had imagination and a sense of form.
+Kathleen was beautiful.  Sentiment had, so he thought, never seriously
+disturbed her; he did not think it ever would.  It had not affected him.
+He did not understand it.  He had been born non-intime.  He had had
+acquaintances, but never friendships, and never loves or love.  But he
+had a fine sense of the fitting and the proportionate, and he worshipped
+beauty in so far as he could worship anything.  The homage was cerebral,
+intellectual, temperamental, not of the heart.  As he looked out upon the
+world half pityingly, half ironically, he was struck with wonder at the
+disproportion which was engendered by "having heart," as it was called.
+He did not find it necessary.
+
+Now that he had begun to think of marriage, who so suitable as Kathleen?
+He knew of Fairing's adoration, but he took it as a matter of course that
+she had nothing to give of the same sort in return.  Her beauty was still
+serene and unimpaired.  He would not spoil it by the tortures of emotion.
+He would try to make Kathleen's heart beat in harmony with his own; it
+should not thunder out of time.  He had made up his mind that he would
+marry her.
+
+For Kathleen, with the great trial, the beginning of the end had come.
+Charley's power over her was subtle, finely sensuous, and, in deciding,
+there were no mere heart-impulses working for Charley.  Instinct and
+impulse were working in another direction.  She had not committed her
+mind to either man, though her heart, to a point, was committed to
+Fairing.
+
+On the day of the trial, however, she fell wholly under that influence
+which had swayed judge, jury, and public.  To her the verdict of the jury
+was not in favour of the prisoner at the bar--she did not think of him.
+It was in favour of Charley Steele.
+
+And so, indifferent as to who heard, over the heads of the people in
+front of her, to the accused's counsel inside the railings, she had
+called, softly: "Charley!  Charley!"
+
+Now, in the house under the hill, they were face to face, and the end was
+at hand: the end of something and the beginning of something.
+
+There was a few moments of casual conversation, in which Billy talked as
+much as anybody, and then Kathleen said:
+
+"What do you suppose was the man's motive for committing the murder?"
+
+Charley looked at Kathleen steadily, curiously, through his monocle.
+It was a singular compliment she paid him.  Her remark took no heed of
+the verdict of the jury.  He turned inquiringly towards the judge, who,
+though slightly shocked by the question, recovered himself quickly.
+
+"What do you think it was, sir?" Charley asked quietly.
+
+"A woman--and revenge, perhaps," answered the judge, with a matter-of-
+course air.
+
+A few moments afterwards the judge was carried off by Kathleen's uncle
+to see some rare old books; Billy, his work being done, vanished; and
+Kathleen and Charley were left alone.
+
+"You did not answer me in the court-room," Kathleen said.  "I called to
+you."
+
+"I wanted to hear you say them here," he rejoined.  "Say what?" she
+asked, a little puzzled by the tone of his voice.
+
+"Your congratulations," he answered.
+
+She held out a hand to him.  "I offer them now.  It was wonderful.  You
+were inspired.  I did not think you could ever let yourself go."
+
+He held her hand firmly.  "I promise not to do it again," he said
+whimsically.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Have I not your congratulations?"  His hand drew her slightly towards
+him; she rose to her feet.
+
+"That is no reason," she answered, confused, yet feeling that there was a
+double meaning in his words.
+
+"I could not allow you to be so vain," he said.  "We must be
+companionable.  Henceforth I shall congratulate myself--Kathleen."
+
+There was no mistaking now.  "Oh, what is it you are going to say to me?"
+she asked, yet not disengaging her hand.
+
+"I said it all in the court-room," he rejoined; "and you heard."
+
+"You want me to marry you--Charley?" she asked frankly.
+
+"If you think there is no just impediment," he answered, with a smile.
+
+She drew her hand away, and for a moment there was a struggle in her
+mind--or heart.  He knew of what she was thinking, and he did not
+consider it of serious consequence.  Romance was a trivial thing, and
+women were prone to become absorbed in trivialities.  When the woman had
+no brains, she might break her life upon a trifle.  But Kathleen had an
+even mind, a serene temperament.  Her nerves were daily cooled in a bath
+of nature's perfect health.  She had never had an hour's illness in her
+life.
+
+"There is no just or unjust impediment, Kathleen," he added presently,
+and took her hand again.
+
+She looked him in the eyes clearly.  "You really think so?" she asked.
+
+"I know so," he answered.  "We shall be two perfect panels in one picture
+of life."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AFTER FIVE YEARS
+
+"You have forgotten me?"
+
+Charley Steele's glance was serenely non-committal as he answered drily:
+
+"I cannot remember doing so."
+
+The other man's eyelids drew down with a look of anger, then the humour
+of the impertinence worked upon him, and he gave a nervous little laugh
+and said: "I am John Brown."
+
+"Then I'm sure my memory is not at fault," remarked Charley, with an
+outstretched hand.  "My dear Brown!  Still preaching little sermons?"
+
+"Do I look it?"  There was a curious glitter in John Brown's eyes.  "I'm
+not preaching little sermons, and you know it well enough."  He laughed,
+but it was a hard sort of mirth.  "Perhaps you forgot to remember that,
+though," he sneeringly added.  "It was the work of your hands."
+
+"That's why I should remember to forget it--I am the child of modesty."
+Charley touched the corners of his mouth with his tongue, as though his
+lips were dry, and his eyes wandered to a saloon a little farther down
+the street.
+
+"Modesty is your curse," rejoined Brown mockingly.
+
+"Once when you preached at me you said that beauty was my curse."
+Charley laughed a curt, distant little laugh which was no more the
+spontaneous humour lying for ever behind his thoughts than his eye-glass
+was the real sight of his eyes, though since childhood this laugh and his
+eye-glass were as natural to all expression of himself as John Brown's
+outward and showy frankness did not come from the real John Brown.
+
+John Brown looked him up and down quickly, then fastened his eyes on the
+ruddy cheeks of his old friend.  "Do they call you Beauty now as they
+used to?" he asked, rather insolently.
+
+"No.  They only say, 'There goes Charley Steele!'"  The tongue again
+touched the corners of the mouth, and the eyes wandered to the doorway
+down the street, over which was written in French: "Jean Jolicoeur,
+Licensed to sell wine, beer, and other spirituous and fermented liquors."
+
+Just then an archdeacon of the cathedral passed them, bowed gravely to
+Charley, glanced at John Brown, turned colour slightly, and then with a
+cold stare passed on too quickly for dignity.
+
+"I'm thinking of Bunyan," said the aforetime friend of Charley Steele.
+"I'll paraphrase him and say: 'There, but for beauty and a monocle, walks
+John Brown.'"
+
+Under the bitter sarcasm of the man, who, five years ago, had gone down
+at last beneath his agnostic raillery, Charley's blue eye did not waver,
+not a nerve stirred in his face, as he replied: "Who knows!"
+
+"That was what you always said--who knows!  That did for John Brown."
+
+Charley seemed not to hear the remark.  "What are you doing now?" he
+asked, looking steadily at the face whence had gone all the warmth of
+manhood, all that courage of life which keeps men young.  The lean
+parchment visage had the hunted look of the incorrigible failure,
+had written on it self-indulgence, cunning, and uncertainty.
+
+"Nothing much," John Brown replied.
+
+"What last?"
+
+"Floated an arsenic-mine on Lake Superior."
+
+"Failed?"
+
+"More or less.  There are hopes yet.  I've kept the wolf from the door."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Don't know--nothing, perhaps; I've not the courage I had."
+
+"I'd have thought you might find arsenic a good thing," said Charley,
+holding out a silver cigarette-case, his eyes turning slowly from the
+startled, gloomy face of the man before him, to the cool darkness beyond
+the open doorway of that saloon on the other side of the street.
+
+John Brown shivered--there was something so cold-blooded in the
+suggestion that he might have found arsenic a good thing.  The metallic
+glare of Charley's eye-glass seemed to give an added cruelty to the
+words.  Charley's monocle was the token of what was behind his blue eye-
+one ceaseless interrogation.  It was that everlasting questioning, the
+ceaseless who knows! which had in the end unsettled John Brown's mind,
+and driven him at last from the church and the possible gaiters of a dean
+into the rough business of life, where he had been a failure.  Yet as
+Brown looked at Charley the old fascination came on him with a rush.
+His hand suddenly caught Charley's as he took a cigarette, and he said:
+"Perhaps I'll find arsenic a good thing yet."
+
+For reply Charley laid a hand on his arm-turned him towards the shade of
+the houses opposite.  Without a word they crossed the street, entered the
+saloon, and passed to a little back room, Charley giving an unsympathetic
+stare to some men at the bar who seemed inclined to speak to him.
+
+As the two passed into the small back room with the frosted door, one of
+the strangers said to the other: "What does he come here for, if he's too
+proud to speak!  What's a saloon for!  I'd like to smash that eye-glass
+for him!"
+
+"He's going down-hill fast," said the other.  "He drinks steady--steady."
+
+"Tiens--tiens!" interposed Jean Jolicoeur, the landlord.  "It is not
+harm to him.  He drink all day, an' he walk a crack like a bee-line."
+
+"He's got the handsomest wife in this city.  If I was him, I'd think more
+of myself," answered the Englishman.
+
+"How you think more--hein?  You not come down more to my saloon?"
+
+"No, I wouldn't come to your saloon, and I wouldn't go to Theophile
+Charlemagne's shebang at the Cote Dorion."
+
+"You not like Charlemagne's hotel?" said a huge black-bearded pilot,
+standing beside the landlord.  "Oh, I like Charlemagne's hotel, and I
+like to talk to Suzon Charlemagne, but I'm not married, Rouge Gosselin--"
+
+"If he go to Charlemagne's hotel, and talk some more too mooch to dat
+Suzon Charlemagne, he will lose dat glass out of his eye," interrupted
+Rouge Gosselin.
+
+"Who say he been at dat place?" said Jean Jolicoeur.  "He bin dere four
+times las' month, and dat Suzon Charlemagne talk'bout him ever since.
+When dat Narcisse Bovin and Jacques Gravel come down de river, he better
+keep away from dat Cote Dorion," sputtered Rouge Gosselin.  "Dat's a long
+story short, all de same for you--bagosh!"
+
+Rouge Gosselin flung off his glass of white whiskey, and threw after it a
+glass of cold water.
+
+"Tiens!  you know not M'sieu' Charley Steele," said Jean Jolicoeur, and
+turned on his heel, nodding his head sagely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CHARLEY MAKES A DISCOVERY
+
+A hot day a month later Charley Steele sat in his office staring before
+him into space, and negligently smoking a cigarette.  Outside there was a
+slow clacking of wheels, and a newsboy was crying "La Patrie!  La Patrie!
+All about the War in France!  All about the massacree!"  Bells--wedding-
+bells--were ringing also, and the jubilant sounds, like the call of the
+newsboy, were out of accord with the slumberous feeling of the afternoon.
+Charley Steele turned his head slowly towards the window.  The branches
+of a maple-tree half crossed it, and the leaves moved softly in the
+shadow they made.  His eye went past the tree and swam into the tremulous
+white heat of the square, and beyond to where in the church-tower the
+bells were ringing-to the church doors, from which gaily dressed folk
+were issuing to the carriages, or thronged the pavement, waiting for the
+bride and groom to come forth into a new-created world--for them.
+
+Charley looked through his monocle at the crowd reflectively, his head
+held a little to one side in a questioning sort of way, on his lips the
+ghost of a smile--not a reassuring smile.  Presently he leaned forward
+slightly and the monocle dropped from his eye.  He fumbled for it, raised
+it, blew on it, rubbed it with his handkerchief, and screwed it carefully
+into his eye again, his rather bushy brow gathering over it strongly, his
+look sharpened to more active thought.  He stared straight across the
+square at a figure in heliotrope, whose face was turned to a man in
+scarlet uniform taller than herself two glowing figures towards whom many
+other eyes than his own were directed, some curiously, some disdain
+fully, some sadly.  But Charley did not see the faces of those who looked
+on; he only saw two people--one in heliotrope, one in scarlet.
+
+Presently his white firm hand went up and ran through his hair nervously,
+his comely figure settled down in the chair, his tongue touched the
+corners of his red lips, and his eyes withdrew from the woman in
+heliotrope and the man in scarlet, and loitered among the leaves of the
+tree at the window.  The softness of the green, the cool health of the
+foliage, changed the look of his eye from something cold and curious to
+something companionable, and scarcely above a whisper two words came from
+his lips:
+
+"Kathleen!  Kathleen!"
+
+By the mere sound of the voice it would have been hard to tell what the
+words meant, for it had an inquiring cadence and yet a kind of distant
+doubt, a vague anxiety.  The face conveyed nothing--it was smooth, fresh,
+and immobile.  The only point where the mind and meaning of the man
+worked according to the law of his life was at the eye, where the monocle
+was caught now as in a vise.  Behind this glass there was a troubled
+depth which belied the self-indulgent mouth, the egotism speaking loudly
+in the red tie, the jewelled finger, the ostentatiously simple yet
+sumptuous clothes.
+
+At last he drew in a sharp, sibilant breath, clicked his tongue--a sound
+of devil-may-care and hopelessness at once--and turned to a little
+cupboard behind him.  The chair squeaked on the floor as he turned, and
+he frowned, shivered a little, and kicked it irritably with his heel.
+
+From the cupboard he took a bottle of liqueur, and, pouring out a small
+glassful, drank it off eagerly.  As he put the bottle away, he said
+again, in an abstracted fashion, "Kathleen!"
+
+Then, seating himself at the table, as if with an effort towards energy,
+he rang a bell.  A clerk entered.  "Ask Mr. Wantage to come for a
+moment," he said.  "Mr. Wantage has gone to the church--to the wedding,"
+was the reply.
+
+"Oh, very well.  He will be in again this afternoon?"
+
+"Sure to, sir."
+
+"Just so.  That will do."
+
+The clerk retired, and Charley, rising, unlocked a drawer, and taking out
+some books and papers, laid them on the table.  Intently, carefully, he
+began to examine them, referring at the same time to a letter which had
+lain open at his hand while he had been sitting there.  For a quarter of
+an hour he studied the books and papers, then, all at once, his fingers
+fastened on a point and stayed.  Again he read the letter lying beside
+him.  A flush crimsoned his face to his hair--a singular flush of shame,
+of embarrassment, of guilt--a guilt not his own.  His breath caught in
+his throat.
+
+"Billy!" he gasped.  "Billy, by God!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE WOMAN IN HELIOTROPE
+
+The flush was still on Charley's face when the door opened slowly, and a
+lady dressed in heliotrope silk entered, and came forward.  Without a
+word Charley rose, and, taking a step towards her, offered a chair; at
+the same time noticing her heightened colour, and a certain rigid
+carriage not in keeping with her lithe and graceful figure.  There was no
+mistaking the quiver of her upper lip--a short lip which did not hide a
+wonderfully pretty set of teeth.
+
+With a wave of the hand she declined the seat.  Glancing at the books and
+papers lying on the table, she flashed an inquiry at his flushed face,
+and, misreading the cause, with slow, quiet point, in which bitterness or
+contempt showed, she said meaningly:
+
+"What a slave you are!"
+
+"Behold the white man work!" he said good-naturedly, the flush passing
+slowly from his face.  With apparent negligence he pushed the letter and
+the books and papers a little to one side, but really to place them
+beyond the range of her angry eyes.  She shrugged her shoulders at his
+action.
+
+"For 'the fatherless children and widows, and all that are desolate and
+oppressed?'" she said, not concealing her malice, for at the wedding she
+had just left all her married life had rushed before her in a swift
+panorama, and the man in scarlet had fixed the shooting pictures in her
+mind.
+
+Again a flush swept up Charley's face and seemed to blur his sight.  His
+monocle dropped the length of its silken tether, and he caught it and
+slowly adjusted it again as he replied evenly:
+
+"You always hit the nail on the head, Kathleen."  There was a kind of
+appeal in his voice, a sort of deprecation in his eye, as though he would
+be friends with her, as though, indeed, there was in his mind some secret
+pity for her.
+
+Her look at his face was critical and cold.  It was plain that she was
+not prepared for any extra friendliness on his part--there seemed no
+reason why he should add to his usual courtesy a note of sympathy to the
+sound of her name on his lips.  He had not fastened the door of the
+cupboard from which he had taken the liqueur, and it had swung open a
+little, disclosing the bottle and the glass.  She saw.  Her face took on
+a look of quiet hardness.
+
+"Why did you not come to the wedding?  She was your cousin.  People asked
+where you were.  You knew I was going."
+
+"Did you need me?" he asked quietly, and his eyes involuntarily swept
+to the place where he had seen the heliotrope and scarlet make a glow of
+colour on the other side of the square.  "You were not alone."
+
+She misunderstood him.  Her mind had been overwrought, and she caught
+insinuation in his voice.  "You mean Tom Fairing!"  Her eyes blazed.
+"You are quite right--I did not need you.  Tom Fairing is a man that
+all the world trusts save you."
+
+"Kathleen!"  The words were almost a cry.  "For God's sake!  I have never
+thought of 'trusting' men where you are concerned.  I believe in no man"
+--his voice had a sharp bitterness, though his face was smooth and
+unemotional--"but I trust you, and believe in you.  Yes, upon my soul and
+honour, Kathleen."
+
+As he spoke she turned quickly and stepped towards the window, an
+involuntary movement of agitation.  He had touched a chord.  But even as
+she reached the window and glanced down to the hot, dusty street, she
+heard a loud voice below, a reckless, ribald sort of voice, calling to
+some one to, "Come and have a drink."
+
+"Billy!" she said involuntarily, and looked down, then shrank back
+quickly.  She turned swiftly on her husband.  "Your soul and honour,
+Charley!" she said slowly.  "Look at what you've made of Billy!  Look at
+the company he keeps--John Brown, who hasn't even decency enough to keep
+away from the place he disgraced.  Billy is always with him.  You ruined
+John Brown, with your dissipation and your sneers at religion and your-
+'I-wonder-nows!'  Of what use have you been, Charley?  Of what use to
+anyone in the world?  You think of nothing but eating, and drinking, and
+playing the fop."
+
+He glanced down involuntarily, and carefully flicked some cigarette-ash
+from his waistcoat.  The action arrested her speech for a moment, and
+then, with a little shudder, she continued: "The best they can say of you
+is, 'There goes Charley Steele!'"
+
+"And the worst?" he asked.  He was almost smiling now, for he admired
+her anger, her scorn.  He knew it was deserved, and he had no idea of
+making any defence.  He had said all in that instant's cry, "Kathleen!"
+--that one awakening feeling of his life so far.  She had congealed the
+word on his lips by her scorn, and now he was his old debonair,
+dissipated self, with the impertinent monocle in his eye and a jest upon
+his tongue.
+
+"Do you want to know the worst they say?" she asked, growing pale to the
+lips.  "Go and stand behind the door of Jolicoeur's saloon.  Go to any
+street corner, and listen.  Do you think I don't know what they say?  Do
+you think the world doesn't talk about the company you keep?  Haven't I
+seen you going into Jolicoeur's saloon when I was walking on the other
+side of the street?  Do you think that all the world, and I among the
+rest, are blind?  Oh, you fop, you fool, you have ruined my brother, you
+have ruined my life, and I hate and despise you for a cold-blooded,
+selfish coward!"
+
+He made a deprecating gesture and stared--a look of most curious inquiry.
+They had been married for five years, and during that time they had never
+been anything but persistently courteous to each other.  He had never on
+any occasion seen her face change colour, or her manner show chagrin or
+emotion.  Stately and cold and polite, she had fairly met his ceaseless
+foppery and preciseness of manner.  But people had said of her, "Poor
+Kathleen Steele!" for her spotless name stood sharply off from his
+negligence and dissipation.  They called her "Poor Kathleen Steele!" in
+sympathy, though they knew that she had not resisted marriage with the
+well-to-do Charley Steele, while loving a poor captain in the Royal
+Fusileers.  She preserved social sympathy by a perfect outward decorum,
+though the man of the scarlet coat remained in the town and haunted the
+places where she appeared, and though the eyes of the censorious world
+were watching expectantly.  No voice was raised against her.  Her cold
+beauty held the admiration of all women, for she was not eager for men's
+company, and she kept her poise even with the man in scarlet near her,
+glacially complacent, beautifully still, disconcertingly emotionless.
+They did not know that the poise with her was to an extent as much a pose
+as Charley's manner was to him.
+
+"I hate you and despise you for a cold-blooded, selfish coward!"  So that
+was the way Kathleen felt!  Charley's tongue touched his lips quickly,
+for they were arid, and he slowly said:
+
+"I assure you I have not tried to influence Billy.  I have no remembrance
+of his imitating me in anything.  Won't you sit down?  It is very
+fatiguing, this heat."
+
+Charley was entirely himself again.  His words concerning Billy Wantage
+might have been either an impeachment of Billy's character and, by
+deduction, praise of his own, or it may have been the insufferable egoism
+of the fop, well used to imitators.  The veil between the two, which for
+one sacred moment had seemed about to lift, was fallen now, leaded and
+weighted at the bottom.
+
+"I suppose you would say the same about John Brown!  It is disconcerting
+at least to think that we used to sit and listen to Mr. Brown as he waved
+his arms gracefully in his surplice and preached sentimental sermons.
+I suppose you will say, what we have heard you say before, that you only
+asked questions.  Was that how you ruined the Rev. John Brown--
+and Billy?"
+
+Charley was very thirsty, and because of that perhaps, his voice had an
+unusually dry tone as he replied: "I asked questions of John Brown; I
+answer them to Billy.  It is I that am ruined!"
+
+There was that in his voice she did not understand, for though long used
+to his paradoxical phrases and his everlasting pose--as it seemed to her
+and all the world--there now rang through his words a note she had never
+heard before.  For a fleeting instant she was inclined to catch at some
+hidden meaning, but her grasp of things was uncertain.  She had been
+thrown off her balance, or poise, as Charley had, for an unwonted second,
+been thrown off his pose, and her thought could not pierce beneath the
+surface.
+
+"I suppose you will be flippant at Judgment Day," she said with a bitter
+laugh, for it seemed to her a monstrous thing that they should be such an
+infinite distance apart.
+
+"Why should one be serious then?  There will be no question of an alibi,
+or evidence for the defence--no cross-examination.  A cut-and-dried
+verdict!"
+
+She ignored his words.  "Shall you be at home to dinner?" she rejoined
+coldly, and her eyes wandered out of the window again to that spot across
+the square where heliotrope and scarlet had met.
+
+"I fancy not," he answered, his eyes turned away also--towards the
+cupboard containing the liqueur.  "Better ask Billy; and keep him in,
+and talk to him--I really would like you to talk to him.  He admires you
+so much.  I wish--in fact I hope you will ask Billy to come and live with
+us," he added half abstractedly.  He was trying to see his way through a
+sudden confusion of ideas.  Confusion was rare to him, and his senses,
+feeling the fog, embarrassed by a sudden air of mystery and a cloud of
+futurity, were creeping to a mind-path of understanding.
+
+"Don't be absurd," she said coldly.  "You know I won't ask him, and you
+don't want him."
+
+"I have always said that decision is the greatest of all qualities--even
+when the decision is bad.  It saves so much worry, and tends to health."
+Suddenly he turned to the desk and opened a tin box.  "Here is further
+practice for your admirable gift."  He opened a paper.  "I want you to
+sign off for this building--leaving it to my absolute disposal."  He
+spread the paper out before her.
+
+She turned pale and her lips tightened.  She looked at him squarely in
+the eyes.  "My wedding-gift!" she said.  Then she shrugged her
+shoulders.  A moment she hesitated, and in that moment seemed to congeal.
+"You need it?" she asked distantly.
+
+He inclined his head, his eye never leaving hers.  With a swift angry
+motion she caught the glove from her left hand, and, doubling it back,
+dragged it off.  A smooth round ring came off with it and rolled upon the
+floor.
+
+Stooping, he picked up the ring, and handed it back to her, saying:
+"Permit me."  It was her wedding-ring.  She took it with a curious
+contracted look and put it on the finger again, then pulled off the other
+glove quietly.  "Of course one uses the pen with the right hand," she
+said calmly.
+
+"Involuntary act of memory," he rejoined slowly, as she took the pen in
+her hand.  "You had spoken of a wedding, this was a wedding-gift, and--
+that's right, sign there!"
+
+There was a brief pause, in which she appeared to hesitate, and then she
+wrote her name in a large firm hand, and, throwing down the pen, caught
+up her gloves, and began to pull them on viciously.
+
+"Thanks.  It is very kind of you," he said.  He put the document in the
+tin box, and took out another, as without a word, but with a grave face
+in which scorn and trouble were mingled, she now turned towards the door.
+
+"Can you spare a minute longer?" he said, and advanced towards her,
+holding the new document in his hand.  "Fair exchange is no robbery.
+Please take this.  No, not with the right hand; the left is better luck
+--the better the hand, the better the deed," he added with a whimsical
+squint and a low laugh, and he placed the paper in her left hand.  "Item
+No. 2 to take the place of item No. 1."
+
+She scrutinised the paper.  Wonder filled her face.  "Why, this is a deed
+of the homestead property--worth three times as much!" she said.
+"Why--why do you do this?"
+
+"Remember that questions ruin people sometimes," he answered, and stepped
+to the door and turned the handle, as though to show her out.  She was
+agitated and embarrassed now.  She felt she had been unjust, and yet she
+felt that she could not say what ought to be said, if all the rules were
+right.
+
+"Thank you," she said simply.  "Did you think of this when--when you
+handed me back the ring?"
+
+"I never had an inspiration in my life.  I was born with a plan of
+campaign."
+
+"I suppose I ought to--kiss you!" she said in some little confusion.
+
+"It might be too expensive," he answered, with a curious laugh.  Then he
+added lightly: "This was a fair exchange"--he touched the papers--"but I
+should like you to bear witness, madam, that I am no robber!"  He opened
+the door.  Again there was that curious penetrating note in his voice,
+and that veiled look.  She half hesitated, but in the pause there was a
+loud voice below and a quick foot on the stairs.
+
+"It's Billy!" she said sharply, and passed out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE WIND AND THE SHORN LAMB
+
+A half-hour later Charley Steele sat in his office alone with Billy
+Wantage, his brother-in-law, a tall, shapely fellow of twenty-four.
+Billy had been drinking, his face was flushed, and his whole manner was
+indolently careless and irresponsible.  In spite of this, however, his
+grey eyes were nervously fixed on Charley, and his voice was shaky as he
+said, in reply to a question as to his finances: "That's my own business,
+Charley."
+
+Charley took a long swallow from the tumbler of whiskey and soda beside
+him, and, as he drew some papers towards him, answered quietly: "I must
+make it mine, Billy, without a doubt."
+
+The tall youth shifted in his chair and essayed to laugh.
+
+"You've never been particular about your own business.  Pshaw, what's the
+use of preaching to me!"
+
+Charley pushed his chair back, and his look had just a touch of surprise,
+a hint of embarrassment.  This youth, then, thought him something of a
+fool: read him by virtue of his ornamentations, his outer idiosyncrasy!
+This boy, whose iniquity was under his finger on that table, despised him
+for his follies, and believed in him less than his wife--two people who
+had lived closer to him than any others in the world.  Before he answered
+he lifted the glass beside him and drank to the last drop, then slowly
+set it down and said, with a dangerous smile:
+
+"I have always been particular about other people's finances, and the
+statement that you haven't isn't preaching, it's an indictment--so it is,
+Billy."
+
+"An indictment!"  Billy bit his finger-nails now, and his voice shook.
+
+"That's what the jury would say, and the judge would do the preaching.
+You have stolen twenty-five thousand dollars of trust-moneys!"
+
+For a moment there was absolute silence in the room.  From outside in the
+square came the Marche-t'en! of a driver, and the loud cackling laugh of
+some loafer at the corner.  Charley's look imprisoned his brother-in-law,
+and Billy's eyes were fixed in a helpless stare on Charley's finger,
+which held like a nail the record of his infamy.
+
+Billy drew himself back with a jerk of recovery, and said with bravado,
+but with fear in look and motion: "Don't stare like that.  The thing's
+done, and you can't undo it, and that's all there is about it."  Charley
+had been staring at the youth-staring and not seeing him really, but
+seeing his wife and watching her lips say again: "You are ruining Billy!"
+He was not sober, but his mind was alert, his eccentric soul was getting
+kaleidoscopic glances at strange facts of life as they rushed past his
+mind into a painful red obscurity.
+
+"Oh yes, it can be undone, and it's not all there is about it!" he
+answered quietly.
+
+He got up suddenly, went to the door, locked it, put the key in his
+pocket, and, coming back, sat down again beside the table.
+
+Billy watched him with shrewd, hunted eyes.  What did Charley mean to do?
+To give him in charge?  To send him to jail?  To shut him out from the
+world where he had enjoyed himself so much for years and years?  Never to
+go forth free among his fellows!  Never to play the gallant with all the
+pretty girls he knew!  Never to have any sports, or games, or tobacco, or
+good meals, or canoeing in summer, or tobogganing in winter, or moose-
+hunting, or any sort of philandering!
+
+The thoughts that filled his mind now were not those of regret for his
+crime, but the fears of the materialist and sentimentalist, who revolted
+at punishment and all the shame and deprivation it would involve.
+
+"What did you do with the money?" said Charley, after a minute's
+silence, in which two minds had travelled far.
+
+"I put it into mines."
+
+"What mines?"
+
+"Out on Lake Superior."
+
+"What sort of mines?"
+
+"Arsenic."
+
+Charley's eye-glass dropped, and rattled against the gold button of his
+white waistcoat.
+
+"In arsenic-mines!"  He put the monocle to his eye again.  "On whose
+advice?"
+
+"John Brown's."
+
+"John Brown's!"  Charley Steele's ideas were suddenly shaken and
+scattered by a man's name, as a bolting horse will crumple into confusion
+a crowd of people.  So this was the way his John Brown had come home to
+roost.  He lifted the empty whiskey-glass to his lips and drained air.
+He was terribly thirsty; he needed something to pull himself together.
+Five years of dissipation had not robbed him of his splendid native
+ability, but it had, as it were, broken the continuity of his will and
+the sequence of his intellect.
+
+"It was not investment?" he asked, his tongue thick and hot in his
+mouth.
+
+"No.  What would have been the good?"
+
+"Of course.  Speculation--you bought heavily to sell on an expected
+rise?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was something so even in Charley's manner and tone that Billy
+misinterpreted it.  It seemed hopeful that Charley was going to make the
+best of a bad job.
+
+"You see," Billy said eagerly, "it seemed dead certain.  He showed me the
+way the thing was being done, the way the company was being floated, how
+the market in New York was catching hold.  It looked splendid.  I thought
+I could use the money for a week or so, then put it back, and have a nice
+little scoop, at no one's cost.  I thought it was a dead-sure thing--and
+I was hard up, and Kathleen wouldn't lend me any more.  If Kathleen had
+only done the decent thing--"
+
+A sudden flush of anger swept over Charley's face--never before in his
+life had that face been so sensitive, never even as a child.  Something
+had waked in the odd soul of Beauty Steele.
+
+"Don't be a sweep--leave Kathleen out of it!" he said, in a sharp,
+querulous voice--a voice unnatural to himself, suggestive of little use,
+as though he were learning to speak, using strange words stumblingly
+through a melee of the emotions.  It was not the voice of Charley Steele
+the fop, the poseur, the idlest man in the world.
+
+"What part of the twenty-five thousand went into the arsenic?" he said,
+after a pause.  There was no feeling in the voice now; it was again even
+and inquiring.
+
+"Nearly all."
+
+"Don't lie.  You've been living freely.  Tell the truth, or--or I'll know
+the reason why, Billy."
+
+"About two-thirds-that's the truth.  I had debts, and I paid them."
+
+"And you bet on the races?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And lost?"
+
+"Yes.  See here, Charley; it was the most awful luck--"
+
+"Yes, for the fatherless children and widows, and all that are
+oppressed!"
+
+Charley's look again went through and beyond the culprit, and he recalled
+his wife's words and his own reply.  A quick contempt and a sort of
+meditative sarcasm were in the tone.  It was curious, too, that he could
+smile, but the smile did not encourage Billy Wantage now.
+
+"It's all gone, I suppose?" he added.
+
+"All but about a hundred dollars."
+
+"Well, you have had your game; now you must pay for it."
+
+Billy had imagination, and he was melodramatic.  He felt danger ahead.
+
+"I'll go and shoot myself!" he said, banging the table with his fist so
+that the whiskey-tumbler shook.
+
+He was hardly prepared for what followed.  Charley's nerves had been
+irritated; his teeth were on edge.  This threat, made in such a cheap,
+insincere way, was the last thing in the world he could bear to hear.
+He knew that Billy lied; that if there was one thing Billy would not do,
+shooting himself was that one thing.  His own life was very sweet to
+Billy Wantage.  Charley hated him the more at that moment because he
+was Kathleen's brother.  For if there was one thing he knew of Kathleen,
+it was that she could not do a mean thing.  Cold, unsympathetic she might
+be, cruel at a pinch perhaps, but dishonourable--never!  This weak,
+cowardly youth was her brother!  No one had ever seen such a look on
+Charley Steele's face as came upon it now--malicious, vindictive.  He
+stooped over Billy in a fury.
+
+"You think I'm a fool and an ass--you ignorant, brainless, lying cub!
+You make me a thief before all the world by forging my name, and stealing
+the money for which I am responsible, and then you rate me so low that
+you think you'll bamboozle me by threats of suicide.  You haven't the
+courage to shoot yourself--drunk or sober.  And what do you think would
+be gained by it?  Eh, what do you think would be gained?  You can't see
+that you'd insult your sister as well as--as rob me."
+
+Billy Wantage cowered.  This was not the Charley Steele he had known,
+not like the man he had seen since a child.  There was something almost
+uncouth in this harsh high voice, these gauche words, this raw accent;
+but it was powerful and vengeful, and it was full of purpose.  Billy
+quivered, yet his adroit senses caught at a straw in the words, "as rob
+me!" Charley was counting it a robbery of himself, not of the widows and
+orphans!  That gave him a ray of hope.  In a paroxysm of fear, joined to
+emotional excitement, he fell upon his knees, and pleaded for mercy--for
+the sake of one chance in life, for the family name, for Kathleen's sake,
+for the sake of everything he had ruthlessly dishonoured.  Tears came
+readily to his eyes, real tears--of excitement; but he could measure,
+too, the strength of his appeal.
+
+"If you'll stand by me in this, I'll pay you back every cent, Charley,"
+he cried.  "I will, upon my soul and honour!  You shan't lose a penny,
+if you'll only see me through.  I'll work my fingers off to pay it back
+till the last hour of my life.  I'll be straight till the day I die--so
+help me God!"
+
+Charley's eyes wandered to the cupboard where the liqueurs were.  If he
+could only decently take a drink!  But how could he with this boy
+kneeling before him?  His breath scorched his throat.
+
+"Get up!" he said shortly.  "I'll see what I can do--to-morrow.  Go away
+home.  Don't go out again to-night.  And come here at ten o'clock in the
+morning."
+
+Billy took up his hat, straightened his tie, carefully brushed the dust
+from his knees, and, seizing Charley's hand, said: "You're the best
+fellow in the world, Charley."  He went towards the door, dusting his
+face of emotion as he had dusted his knees.  The old selfish, shrewd look
+was again in his eyes.  Charley's gaze followed him gloomily.  Billy
+turned the handle of the door.  It was locked.
+
+Charley came forward and unlocked it.  As Billy passed through, Charley,
+looking sharply in his face, said hoarsely: "By Heaven, I believe you're
+not worth it!"  Then he shut the door again and locked it.
+
+He almost ran back and opened the cupboard.  Taking out the bottle of
+liqueur, he filled a glass and drank it off.  Three times he did this,
+then seated himself at the table with a sigh of relief and no emotion in
+his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+"PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE"'
+
+The sun was setting by the time Charley was ready to leave his office.
+Never in his life had he stayed so late in "the halls of industry," as
+he flippantly called his place of business.  The few cases he had won so
+brilliantly since the beginning of his career, he had studied at night in
+his luxurious bedroom in the white brick house among the maples on the
+hill.  In every case, as at the trial of Joseph Nadeau, the man who
+murdered the timber-merchant, the first prejudice of judge and jury had
+given way slowly before the deep-seeing mind, which had as rare a power
+of analysis as for generalisation, and reduced masses of evidence to
+phrases; and verdicts had been given against all personal prejudice--to
+be followed outside the court by the old prejudice, the old look askance
+at the man called Beauty Steele.
+
+To him it had made no difference at any time.  He cared for neither
+praise nor blame.  In his actions a materialist, in his mind he was a
+watcher of life, a baffled inquirer whose refuge was irony, and whose
+singular habits had in five years become a personal insult to the
+standards polite society and Puritan morality had set up.  Perhaps the
+insult had been intended, for irregularities were committed with an
+insolent disdain for appearances.  He did nothing secretly; his page of
+life was for him who cared to read.  He played cards, he talked
+agnosticism, he went on shooting expeditions which became orgies, he
+drank openly in saloons, he whose forefathers had been gentlemen of King
+George, and who sacrificed all in the great American revolution for
+honour and loyalty--statesmen, writers, politicians, from whom he had
+direct inheritance, through stirring, strengthening forces, in the
+building up of laws and civilisation in a new land.  Why he chose to be
+what he was--if he did choose--he alone could answer.  His personality
+had impressed itself upon his world, first by its idiosyncrasies and
+afterwards by its enigmatical excesses.
+
+What was he thinking of as he laid the papers away in the tin box in a
+drawer, locked it, and put the key in his pocket?  He had found to the
+smallest detail Billy's iniquity, and he was now ready to shoulder the
+responsibility, to save the man, who, he knew, was scarce worth the
+saving.  But Kathleen--there was what gave him pause.  As he turned to
+the window and looked out over the square he shuddered.  He thought of
+the exchange of documents he had made with her that day, and he had a
+sense of satisfaction.  This defalcation of Billy's would cripple him,
+for money had flown these last few years.  He had had heavy losses, and
+he had dug deep into his capital.  Down past the square ran a cool avenue
+of beeches to the water, and he could see his yacht at anchor.  On the
+other side of the water, far down the shore, was a house which had been
+begun as a summer cottage, and had ended in being a mansion.  A few
+Moorish pillars, brought from Algiers for the decoration of the entrance,
+had necessitated the raising of the roof, and then all had to be in
+proportion, and the cottage became like an appanage to a palace.
+So it had gone, and he had cared so little about it all, and for the
+consequences.  He had this day secured Kathleen from absolute poverty, no
+matter what happened, and that had its comfort.  His eyes wandered among
+the trees.  He could see the yellow feathers of the oriole and catch the
+note of the whippoorwill, and from the great church near the voices of
+the choir came over.  He could hear the words "Lord, now lettest thou thy
+servant depart in peace, according to thy word."
+
+Depart in peace--how much peace was there in the world?  Who had it?  The
+remembrance of what Kathleen said to him at the door--"I suppose I ought
+to kiss you"--came to him, was like a refrain in his ears.
+
+"Peace is the penalty of silence and inaction," he said to himself
+meditatively.  "Where there is action there is no peace.  If the brain
+and body fatten, then there is peace.  Kathleen and I have lived at
+peace, I suppose.  I never said a word to her that mightn't be put down
+in large type and pasted on my tombstone, and she never said a word to
+me--till to-day--that wasn't like a water-colour picture.  Not till
+to-day, in a moment's strife and trouble, did I ever get near her.  And
+we've lived in peace.  Peace?  Where is the right kind of peace?  Over
+there is old Sainton.  He married a rich woman, he has had the platter of
+plenty before him always, he wears ribbons and such like baubles given by
+the Queen, but his son had to flee the country.  There's Herring.  He
+doesn't sleep because his daughter is going to marry an Italian count.
+There's Latouche.  His place in the cabinet is begotten in corruption,
+in the hotbed of faction war.  There's Kenealy.  His wife has led him a
+dance of deep damnation.  There's the lot of them--every one, not an
+ounce of peace among them, except with old Casson, who weighs eighteen
+stone, lives like a pig, grows stuffier in mind and body every day, and
+drinks half a bottle of whiskey every night.  There's no one else--yes,
+there is!"
+
+He was looking at a small black-robed figure with clean-shaven face,
+white hair, and shovel-hat, who passed slowly along the wooden walk
+beneath, with meditative content in his face.
+
+"There's peace," he said with a laugh.  "I've known Father Hallon for
+twenty-five years, and no man ever worked so hard, ever saw more trouble,
+ever shared other people's bad luck mere than he; ever took the bit in
+his teeth, when it was a matter of duty, stronger than he; and yet
+there's peace; he has it; a peace that passes all understanding--mine
+anyhow.  I've never had a minute's real peace.  The World, or Nature, or
+God, or It, whatever the name is, owes me peace.  And how is It to give
+it?  Why, by answering my questions.  Now it's a curious thing that the
+only person I ever met who could answer any questions of mine--answer
+them in the way that satisfies--is Suzon.  She works things down to
+phrases.  She has wisdom in the raw, and a real grip on life, and yet all
+the men she has known have been river-drivers and farmers, and a few men
+from town who mistook the sort of Suzon she is.  Virtuous and straight,
+she's a born child of Aphrodite too--by nature.  She was made for love.
+A thousand years ago she would have had a thousand loves!  And she thinks
+the world is a magnificent place, and she loves it, and wallows--fairly
+wallows--in content.  Now which is right: Suzon or Father Hallon--
+Aphrodite or the Nazarene?  Which is peace--as the bird and the beast
+of the field get it--the fallow futile content, or--"
+
+He suddenly stopped, hiccoughed, then hurriedly drawing paper before him,
+he sat down.  For an hour he wrote.  It grew darker.  He pushed the table
+nearer the window, and the singing of the choir in the church came in
+upon him as his pen seemed to etch words into the paper, firm, eccentric,
+meaning.  What he wrote that evening has been preserved, and the yellow
+sheets lie loosely in a black despatch-box which contains the few records
+Charley Steele left behind him.  What he wrote that night was the note of
+his mind, the key to all those strange events through which he began to
+move two hours after the lines were written:
+
+               Over thy face is a veil of white sea-mist,
+               Only thine eyes shine like stars; bless or blight me,
+               I will hold close to the leash at thy wrist,
+               O Aphrodite!
+
+               Thou in the East and I here in the West,
+               Under our newer skies purple and pleasant:
+               Who shall decide which is better--attest,
+               Saga or peasant?
+
+               Thou with Serapis, Osiris, and Isis,
+               I with Jehovah, in vapours and shadows;
+               Thou with the gods' joy-enhancing devices,
+               Sweet-smelling meadows!
+
+               What is there given us?--Food and some raiment,
+               Toiling to reach to some Patmian haven,
+               Giving up all for uncertain repayment,
+               Feeding the raven!
+
+               Striving to peer through the infinite azure,
+               Alternate turning to earthward and falling,
+               Measuring life with Damastian measure,
+               Finite, appalling.
+
+               What does it matter!  They passed who with Homer
+               Poured out the wine at the feet of their idols:
+               Passing, what found they?  To-come a misnomer,
+               It and their idols?
+
+               Sacristan, acolyte, player, or preacher,
+               Each to his office, but who holds the key?
+               Death, only Death--thou, the ultimate teacher
+               Wilt show it to me.
+
+               And when the forts and the barriers fall,
+               Shall we then find One the true, the almighty,
+               Wisely to speak with the worst of us all--
+               Ah, Aphrodite!
+
+               Waiting, I turn from the futile, the human,
+               Gone is the life of me, laughing with youth
+               Steals to learn all in the face of a woman,
+               Mendicant Truth!
+
+Rising with a bitter laugh, and murmuring the last lines, he thrust the
+papers into a drawer, locked it, and going quickly from the room, he went
+down-stairs.  His horse and cart were waiting for him, and he got in.
+
+The groom looked at him inquiringly.  "The Cote Dorion!" he said, and
+they sped away through the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE COST OF THE ORNAMENT
+
+One, two, three, four, five, six miles.  The sharp click of the iron
+hoofs on the road; the strong rush of the river; the sweet smell of the
+maple and the pungent balsam; the dank rich odour of the cedar swamp; the
+cry of the loon from the water; the flaming crane in the fishing-boat;
+the fisherman, spear in hand, staring into the dark waters tinged with
+sombre red; the voice of a lonely settler keeping time to the ping of the
+axe as, lengthening out his day to nightly weariness, he felled a tree;
+river-drivers' camps spotted along the shore; huge cribs or rafts which
+had swung down the great stream for scores of miles, the immense oars
+motionless, the little houses on the timbers blinking with light; and
+from cheerful raftsmen coming the old familiar song of the rivers:
+
+                   "En roulant, ma boule roulant,
+                    En roulant ma boule!"
+
+Not once had Charley Steele turned his head as the horse sped on.  His
+face was kept straight along the line of the road; he seemed not to see
+or to hear, to be unresponsive to sound or scene.  The monocle at his eye
+was like a veil to hide the soul, a defence against inquiry, itself the
+unceasing question, a sort of battery thrown forward, a kind of field-
+casemate for a lonely besieged spirit.
+
+It was full of suggestion.  It might have been the glass behind which
+showed some mediaeval relic, the body of some ancient Egyptian king whose
+life had been spent in doing wonders and making signs--the primitive,
+anthropomorphic being.  He might have been a stone man, for any motion
+that he made.  Yet looking at him closely you would have seen discontent
+in the eye, a kind of glaze of the sardonic over the whole face.
+
+What is the good!  the face asked.  What is there worth doing?  it said.
+What a limitless futility!  it urged, fain to be contradicted too, as the
+grim melancholy of the figure suggested.
+
+"To be an animal and soak in the world," he thought to himself--" that is
+natural; and the unnatural is civilisation, and the cheap adventure of
+the mind into fields of baffling speculation, lighted by the flickering
+intelligences of dead speculators, whose seats we have bought in the
+stock-exchange of mortality, and exhaust our lives in paying for.  To
+eat, to drink, to lie fallow, indifferent to what comes after, to roam
+like the deer, and to fight like the tiger--"
+
+He came to a dead stop in his thinking.  "To fight like the tiger!"  He
+turned his head quickly now to where upon a raft some river-drivers were
+singing:
+
+              "And when a man in the fight goes down,
+               Why, we will carry him home!"
+
+"To fight like the tiger!"  Ravage--the struggle to possess from all the
+world what one wished for one's self, and to do it without mercy and
+without fear-that was the clear plan in the primitive world, where action
+was more than speech and dominance than knowledge.  Was not civilisation
+a mistake, and religion the insinuating delusion designed to cover it up;
+or, if not designed, accepted by the original few who saw that humanity
+could not turn back, and must even go forward with illusions, lest in
+mere despair all men died and the world died with them?
+
+His eyes wandered to the raft where the men were singing, and he
+remembered the threat made: that if he came again to the Cote Dorion he
+"would get what for!"  He remembered the warning of Rouge Gosselin
+conveyed by Jolicoeur, and a sinister smile crossed over his face.  The
+contradictions of his own thoughts came home to him suddenly, for was it
+not the case that his physical strength alone, no matter what his skill,
+would be of small service to him in a dark corner of contest?  Primitive
+ideas could only hold in a primitive world.  His real weapon was his
+brain, that which civilisation had given him in lieu of primitive prowess
+and the giant's strength.
+
+They had come to a long piece of corduroy-road, and the horse's hoofs
+struck rumbling hollow sounds from the floor of cedar logs.  There was a
+swamp on one side where fire-flies were flickering, and there flashed
+into Charley Steele's mind some verses he had once learned at school:
+
+              "They made her a grave too cold and damp
+               For a soul so warm and true--"
+
+It kept repeating itself in his brain in a strange dreary monotone.
+
+"Stop the horse.  I'll walk the rest of the way," he said presently to
+the groom.  "You needn't come for me, Finn; I'll walk back as far as the
+Marochal Tavern.  At twelve sharp I'll be there.  Give yourself a drink
+and some supper"--he put a dollar into the man's hand--"and no white
+whiskey, mind: a bottle of beer and a leg of mutton, that's the thing."
+He nodded his head, and by the light of the moon walked away smartly down
+the corduroy-road through the shadows of the swamp.  Finn the groom
+looked after him.
+
+"Well, if he ain't a queer dick!  A reg'lar 'centric--but a reg'lar
+brick, cutting a wide swathe as he goes.  He's a tip-topper; and he's a
+sort of tough too--a sort of a kind of a tough.  Well, it's none of my
+business.  Get up!" he added to the horse, and turning round in the road
+with difficulty, he drove back a mile to the Tavern Marochal for his beer
+and mutton--and white whiskey.
+
+Charley stepped on briskly, his shining leather shoes, straw hat, and
+light cane in no good keeping with his surroundings.  He was thinking
+that he had never been in such a mood for talk with Suzon Charlemagne.
+Charlemagne's tavern of the Cote Dorion was known over half a province,
+and its patrons carried news of it half across a continent.  Suzon
+Charlemagne--a girl of the people, a tavern-girl, a friend of sulking,
+coarse river-drivers!  But she had an alert precision of brain, an
+instinct that clove through wastes of mental underbrush to the tree of
+knowledge.  Her mental sight was as keen and accurate as that which runs
+along the rifle-barrel of the great hunter with the red deer in view.
+Suzon Charlemagne no company for Charley Steele?  What did it matter!  He
+had entered into other people's lives to-day, had played their games with
+them and for them, and now he would play his own game, live his own life
+in his own way through the rest of this day.  He thirsted for some sort
+of combat, for the sharp contrasts of life, for the common and the base;
+he thirsted even for the white whiskey against which he had warned
+his groom.  He was reckless--not blindly, but wilfully, wildly reckless,
+caring not at all what fate or penalty might come his way.
+
+"What do I care!" he said to himself.  "I shall never squeal at any
+penalty.  I shall never say in the great round-up that I was weak and
+I fell.  I'll take my gruel expecting it, not fearing it--if there is
+to be any gruel anywhere, or any round-up anywhere!"
+
+A figure suddenly appeared coming round the bend of the road before him.
+It was Rouge Gosselin.  Rouge Gosselin was inclined to speak.  Some
+satanic whim or malicious foppery made Charley stare him blankly in the
+face.  The monocle and the stare stopped the bon soir and the friendly
+warning on Rouge Gosselin's tongue, and the pilot passed on with a
+muttered oath.
+
+Gosselin had not gone far, however, before he suddenly stopped and
+laughed outright, for at the bottom he had great good-nature, in keeping
+with his "six-foot" height, and his temper was friendly if quick.  It
+seemed so absurd, so audacious, that a man could act like Charley Steele,
+that he at once became interested in the phenomenon, and followed slowly
+after Charley, saying as he went: "Tiens, there will be things to watch
+to-night!"
+
+Before Charley was within five hundred yards of the tavern he could hear
+the laughter and song coming from the old seigneury which Theophile
+Charlemagne called now the Cote Dorion Hotel, after the name given to the
+point on which the house stood.  Low and wide-roofed, with dormer windows
+and a wide stoop in front, and walls three feet thick, behind, on the
+river side, it hung over the water, its narrow veranda supported by
+piles, with steps down to the water-side.  Seldom was there an hour when
+boats were not tied to these steps.  Summer and winter the tavern was a
+place of resort.  Inside, the low ceiling, the broad rafters, the great
+fireplace, the well-worn floor, the deep windows, the wooden cross let
+into the wall, and the varied and picturesque humanity frequenting this
+great room, gave it an air of romance.  Yet there were people who called
+the tavern a "shebang"--slander as it was against Suzon Charlemagne,
+which every river-driver and woodsman and habitant who frequented the
+place would have resented with violence.  It was because they thought
+Charley Steele slandered the girl and the place in his mind, that the
+river-drivers had sworn they would make it hot for him if he came again.
+Charley was the last man in the world to undeceive them by words.
+
+When he coolly walked into the great room, where a half-dozen of them
+were already assembled, drinking white "whiskey-wine," he had no
+intention of setting himself right.  He raised his hat cavalierly to
+Suzon and shook hands with her.
+
+He took no notice of the men around him.  "Brandy, please!" he said.
+"Why do I drink, do you say?" he added, as Suzon placed the bottle and
+glass before him.
+
+She was silent for an instant, then she said gravely: "Perhaps because
+you like it; perhaps because something was left out of you when you were
+made, and--"
+
+She paused and went no further, for a red-shirted river-driver with brass
+rings in his ears came close to them, and called gruffly for whiskey.  He
+glowered at Charley, who looked at him indolently, then raised his glass
+towards Suzon and drank the brandy.
+
+"Pish!" said Red Shirt, and, turning round, joined his comrades.  It was
+clear he wanted a pretext to quarrel.
+
+"Perhaps because you like it; perhaps because something was left out of
+you when you were made--" Charley smiled pleasantly as Suzon came over to
+him again.  "You've answered the question," he said, "and struck the
+thing at the centre.  Which is it?  The difficulty to decide which has
+divided the world.  If it's only a physical craving, it means that we are
+materialists naturally, and that the soil from which the grape came is
+the soil that's in us; that it is the body feeding on itself all the
+time; that like returns to like, and we live a little together, and then
+mould together for ever and ever, amen.  If it isn't a natural craving--
+like to like--it's a proof of immortality, for it represents the wild
+wish to forget the world, to be in another medium.
+
+"I am only myself when I am drunk.  Liquor makes me human.  At other times
+I'm merely Charley Steele!  Now isn't it funny, this sort of talk here?"
+
+"I don't know about that," she answered, "if, as you say, it's natural.
+This tavern's the only place I have to think in, and what seems to you
+funny is a sort of ordinary fact to me."
+
+"Right again, ma belle Suzon.  Nothing's incongruous.  I've never felt so
+much like singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs as when I've been
+drinking.  I remember the last time I was squiffy I sang all the way home
+that old nursery hymn:
+
+                  "'On the other side of Jordan,
+                    In the sweet fields of Eden,
+                    Where the tree of life is blooming,
+                         There is rest for you.
+                    There is rest for the weary,
+                    There is rest for the weary,
+                    There is rest for the weary,
+                         There is rest for you!'"
+
+"I should have liked to hear you sing it--sure!" said Suzon, laughing.
+
+Charley tossed off a quarter-tumbler of brandy, which, instead of
+flushing the face, seemed only to deepen the whiteness of the skin,
+showing up more brightly the spots of colour in the cheeks, that white
+and red which had made him known as Beauty Steele.  With a whimsical
+humour, behind which was the natural disposition of the man to do what he
+listed without thinking of the consequences, he suddenly began singing,
+in a voice shaken a little now by drink, but full of a curious magnetism:
+
+                    "On the other side of Jordan--"
+
+"Oh, don't; please don't!" said the girl, in fear, for she saw two
+river-drivers entering the door, one of whom had sworn he would do for
+Charley Steele if ever he crossed his path.
+
+"Oh, don't--M'sieu' Charley!" she again urged.  The "Charley" caught his
+ear, and the daring in his eye brightened still more.  He was ready for
+any change or chance to-night, was standing on the verge of any
+adventure, the most reckless soul in Christendom.
+
+                   "On the other side of Jordan,
+                    In the sweet fields of Eden,
+                    Where the tree of life is blooming,
+                         There is rest for you!"
+
+What more incongruous thing than this flaneur in patent leathers and red
+tie, this "hell-of-a-fellow with a pane of glass in his eye," as Jake
+Hough, the horse-doctor, afterwards said, surrounded by red and blue-
+shirted river-men, woodsmen, loafers, and toughs, singing a sacred song
+with all the unction of a choir-boy; with a magnetism, too, that did its
+work in spite of all prejudice?  It was as if he were counsel in one of
+those cases when, the minds and sympathies of judge and jury at first
+arrayed against him, he had irresistibly cloven his way to their
+judgment--not stealing away their hearts, but governing, dominating their
+intelligences.  Whenever he had done this he had been drinking hard, was
+in a mental world created by drink, serene, clear-eyed, in which his
+brain worked like an invincible machine, perfect and powerful.  Was it
+the case that, as he himself suggested, he was never so natural as when
+under this influence?  That then and only then the real man spoke, that
+then and only then the primitive soul awakened, that it supplied the
+thing left out of him at birth?
+
+                   "There is rest for the weary,
+                    There is rest for the weary,
+                    There is rest for the weary,
+                         There is rest for you!"
+
+One, two verses he sang as the men, at first snorting and scornful,
+shuffled angrily; then Jake Hough, the English horse-doctor, roared in
+the refrain:
+
+                   "There is rest for the weary,
+                         There is rest for you!"
+
+Upon which, carried away, every one of them roared, gurgled, or shouted
+
+                   "There is rest for the weary,
+                         There is rest for you!"
+
+Rouge Gosselin, who had entered during the singing, now spoke up quickly
+in French:
+
+"A sermon now, M'sieu'!"
+
+Charley took his monocle out of his eye and put it back again.  Now each
+man present seemed singled out for an attack by this little battery of
+glass.  He did not reply directly to Rouge Gosselin, but standing
+perfectly still, with one hand resting on the counter at which Suzon
+stood, he prepared to speak.
+
+Suzon did not attempt to stop him now, but gazed at him in a sort of awe.
+These men present were Catholics, and held religion in superstitious
+respect, however far from practising its precepts.  Many of them had been
+profane and blasphemous in their time; may have sworn "sacre bapteme!"
+one of the worst oaths of their race; but it had been done in the
+wildness of anger, and they were little likely to endure from Charley
+Steele any word that sounded like blasphemy.  Besides, the world said
+that he was an infidel, and that was enough for bitter prejudice.
+
+In the pause--very short--before Charley began speaking, Suzon's
+fingers stole to his on the counter and pressed them quickly.  He made no
+response; he was scarcely aware of it.  He was in a kind of dream.  In an
+even, conversational tone, in French at once idiomatic and very simple,
+he began:
+
+"My dear friends, this is a world where men get tired.  If they work they
+get tired, and if they play they get tired.  If they look straight ahead
+of them they walk straight, but then they get blind by-and-by; if they
+look round them and get open-eyed, their feet stumble and they fall.  It
+is a world of contradictions.  If a man drinks much he loses his head,
+and if he doesn't drink at all he loses heart.  If he asks questions he
+gets into trouble, and if he doesn't ask them he gets old before his
+time.  Take the hymn we have just sung:
+
+                   "'On the other side of Jordan,
+                    In the sweet fields of Eden,
+                    Where the tree of life is blooming,
+                         There is rest for you!'
+
+"We all like that, because we get tired, and it isn't always summer, and
+nothing blooms all the year round.  We get up early and we work late, and
+we sleep hard, and when the weather is good and wages good, and there's
+plenty in the house, we stay sober and we sadly sing, 'On the other side
+of Jordan'; but when the weather's heavy and funds scarce, and the pork
+and molasses and bread come hard, we get drunk, and we sing the comic
+chanson 'Brigadier, vows avez raison!'  We've been singing a sad song
+to-night when we're feeling happy.  We didn't think whether it was sad or
+not, we only knew it pleased our ears, and we wanted those sweet fields
+of Eden, and the blooming tree of life, and the rest under the tree.  But
+ask a question or two.  Where is the other side of Jordan?  Do you go up
+to it, or down to it?  And how do you go?  And those sweet fields of
+Eden, what do they look like, and how many will they hold?  Isn't it
+clear that the things that make us happiest in this world are the things
+we go for blind?"
+
+He paused.  Now a dozen men came a step or two nearer, and crowded close
+together, looking over each others' shoulders at him with sharp,
+wondering eyes.
+
+"Isn't that so?" he continued.  "Do you realise that no man knows where
+that Jordan and those fields are, and what the flower of the tree of life
+looks like?  Let us ask a question again.  Why is it that the one being
+in all the world who could tell us anything about it, the one being who
+had ever seen Jordan or Eden or that tree of life-in fact, the one of all
+creation who could describe heaven, never told?  Isn't it queer?  Here he
+was--that one man-standing just as I am among you, and round him were the
+men who followed him, all ordinary men, with ordinary curiosity.  And he
+said he had come down from heaven, and for years they were with him, and
+yet they never asked him what that heaven was like: what it looked like,
+what it felt like, what sort of life they lived there, what manner of
+folk were the angels, what was the appearance of God.  Why didn't they
+ask, and why didn't he answer?  People must have kept asking that
+question afterwards, for a man called John answered it.  He described,
+as only an oriental Jew would or could, a place all precious stones and
+gold and jewels and candles, in oriental language very splendid and
+auriferous.  But why didn't those twelve men ask the One Man who knew,
+and why didn't the One answer?  And why didn't the One tell without being
+asked?"
+
+He paused again, and now there came a shuffling and a murmuring, a
+curious rumble, a hard breathing, for Charley had touched with steely
+finger the tender places in the natures of these Catholics, who, whatever
+their lives, held fast to the immemorial form, the sacredness of Mother
+Church.  They were ever ready to step into the galley which should bear
+them all home, with the invisible rowers of God at the oars, down the
+wild rapids, to the haven of St.  Peter.  There was savagery in their
+faces now.
+
+He saw, and he could not refrain from smiling as he stretched out his
+hand to them again with a little quieting gesture, and continued
+soothingly:
+
+"But why should we ask?  There's a thing called electricity.  Well, you
+know that if you take a slice out of anything, less remains behind.  We
+can take the air out of this room, and scarcely leave any in it.
+
+"We take a drink out of a bottle, and certainly there isn't as much left
+in it!  But the queer thing is that with this electricity you take it
+away and just as much remains.  It goes out from your toe, rushes away to
+Timbuctoo, and is back in your toe before you can wink.  Why?  No one
+knows.  What's the good of asking?  You can't see it: you can only see
+what it does.  What good would it do us if we knew all about it?  There
+it is, and it's going to revolutionise the world.  It's no good asking--
+no one knows what it is and where it comes from, or what it looks like.
+It's better to go it blind, because you feel the power, though you can't
+see where it comes from.  You can't tell where the fields of Eden are,
+but you believe they're somewhere, and that you'll get to them some day.
+So say your prayers, believe all you can, don't ask questions, and don't
+try to answer 'em; and remember that Charley Steele preached to you the
+fear of the Lord at the Cote Dorion, and wound up the service with the
+fine old hymn:
+
+          "'I'll away, I'll away, to the promised land--'"
+
+A whole verse of this camp-meeting hymn he sang in an ominous silence
+now, for it had crept into their minds that the hymn they had previously
+sung so loudly was a Protestant hymn, and that this was another
+Protestant hymn of the rankest sort.  When he stopped singing and pushed
+over his glass for Suzon to fill it, the crowd were noiseless and silent
+for a moment, for the spell was still on them.  They did not recover
+themselves until they saw him lift his glass to Suzon, his back on them,
+again insolently oblivious of them all.  They could not see his face, but
+they could see the face of Suzon Charlemagne, and they misunderstood the
+light in her eye, the flush on her cheek.  They set it down to a personal
+interest in Charley Steele.
+
+Charley had, however, thrown a spell over her in another fashion.  In her
+eye, in her face, was admiration, the sympathy of a strong intelligence,
+the wonder of a mind in the presence of its master, but they thought they
+saw passion, love, desire, in her face--in the face of their Suzon, the
+pride of the river, the flower of the Cote Dorion.  Not alone because
+Charley had blasphemed against religion did they hate him at this moment,
+but because every heart was scorched with envy and jealousy--the black
+unreasoning jealousy which the unlettered, the dull, the crude, feels for
+the lettered, the able and the outwardly refined.
+
+Charley was back again in the unfriendly climate of his natural life.
+Suzon felt the troubled air round them, saw the dark looks on the faces
+of the men, and was at once afraid and elated.  She loved the glow of
+excitement, she had a keen sense of danger, but she also felt that in any
+possible trouble to-night the chances of escape would be small for the
+man before her.
+
+He pushed out his glass again.  She mechanically poured brandy into it.
+
+"You've had more than enough," she said, in a low voice.
+
+"Every man knows his own capacity, Suzon.  Love me little, love me long,"
+he added, again raising his glass to her, as the men behind suddenly
+moved forward upon the bar.
+
+"Don't--for God's sake!" she whispered hastily.  "Do go--or there'll be
+trouble!"
+
+The black face of Theophile Charlemagne was also turned anxiously in
+Charley's direction as he pushed out glasses for those who called for
+liquor.
+
+"Oh, do, do go--like a good soul!" Suzon urged.  Charley laughed
+disdainfully.  "Like a good soul!"  Had it come to this, that Suzon
+pleaded with him as if he were a foolish, obstreperous child!
+
+"Faithless and unbelieving!" he said to Suzon in English.  "Didn't I
+play my game well a minute ago--eh--eh--eh, Suzon?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes, M'sieu'," she replied in English; "but now you are
+differen' and so are they.  You must goah, so, you must!"
+
+He laughed again, a queer sardonic sort of laugh, yet he put out his hand
+and touched the girl's arm lightly with a forefinger.  "I am a Quaker
+born; I never stir till the spirit moves me," he said.
+
+He scented conflict, and his spirits rose at the thought.  Some reckless
+demon of adventure possessed him; some fatalistic courage was upon him.
+So far as the eye could see, the liquor he had drunk had done no more
+than darken the blue of his eye, for his hand was steady, his body was
+well poised, his look was direct; there seemed some strange electric
+force in leash behind his face, a watchful yet nonchalant energy of
+spirit, joined to an indolent pose of body.  As the girl looked at him
+something of his unreckoning courage passed into her.  Somehow she
+believed in him, felt that by some wild chance he might again conquer
+this truculent element now almost surrounding him.  She spoke quickly to
+her step-father.  "He won't go.  What can we do?"
+
+"You go, and he'll follow," said Theophile, who didn't want a row--
+a dangerous row-in his house.
+
+"No, he won't," she said; "and I don't believe they'd let him follow me."
+
+There was no time to say more.  The crowd were insistent and restless
+now.  They seemed to have a plan of campaign, and they began to carry it
+out.  First one, then another, brushed roughly against Charley.  Cool and
+collected, he refused to accept the insults.
+
+"Pardon," he said, in each case; "I am very awkward."
+
+He smiled all the time; he seemed waiting.  The pushing and crowding
+became worse.  "Don't mention it," he said.  "You should learn how to
+carry your liquor in your legs."
+
+Suddenly he changed from apology to attack.  He talked at them with a
+cheerful scorn, a deprecating impertinence, as though they were children;
+he chided them with patient imprecations.  This confused them for a
+moment and cleared a small space around him.  There was no defiance in
+his aspect, no aggressiveness of manner; he was as quiet as though it
+were a drawing-room and he a master of monologues.  He hurled original
+epithets at them in well-cadenced French, he called them what he listed,
+but in language which half-veiled the insults--the more infuriating to
+his hearers because they did not perfectly understand.
+
+Suddenly a low-set fellow, with brass rings in his ears, pulled off his
+coat and threw it on the floor.  "I'll eat your heart," he said, and
+rolled up blue sleeves along a hairy arm.
+
+"My child," said Charley, "be careful what you eat.  Take up your coat
+again, and learn that it is only dogs that delight to bark and bite.  Our
+little hands were never made to tear each other's eyes."
+
+The low-set fellow made a rush forward, but Rouge Gosselin held him back.
+"No, no, Jougon," he said.  "I have the oldest grudge."
+
+Jougon struggled with Rouge Gosselin.  "Be good, Jougon," said Charley.
+
+As he spoke a heavy tumbler flew from the other side of the room.
+Charley saw the missile thrown and dodged.  It missed his temple, but
+caught the rim of his straw hat, carrying it off his head, and crashed
+into a lantern hanging against the wall, putting out the light.  The room
+was only lighted now by another lantern on the other side of the room.
+Charley stooped, picked up his hat, and put it on his head again coolly.
+
+"Stop that, or I'll clear the bar!" cried Theophile Charlemagne, taking
+the pistol Suzon slipped into his hand.  The sight of the pistol drove
+the men wild, and more than one snatched at the knife in his belt.
+
+At that instant there pushed forward into the clear space beside Charley
+Steele the great figure of Jake Hough, the horse-doctor, the strongest
+man, and the most popular Englishman on the river.  He took his stand by
+Charley, raised his great hand, smote him in the small of his back, and
+said:
+
+"By the Lord, you have sand, and I'll stand by you!"  Under the friendly
+but heavy stroke the monocle shot from Charley's eye the length of the
+string.  Charley lifted it again, put it up, and staring hard at Jake,
+coolly said:
+
+"I beg your pardon--but have I ever--been introduced to you?"
+
+What unbelievable indifference to danger, what disdain to friendliness,
+made Charley act as he did is a matter for speculation.  It was throwing
+away his one chance; it was foppery on the scaffold--an incorrigible
+affectation or a relentless purpose.
+
+Jake Hough strode forward into the crowd, rage in his eye.  "Go to the
+devil, then, and take care of yourself!" he said roughly.
+
+"Please," said Charley.
+
+They were the last words he uttered that night, for suddenly the other
+lantern went out, there was a rush and a struggle, a muffled groan, a
+shrill woman's voice, a scramble and hurrying feet, a noise of a
+something splashing heavily in the water outside.  When the lights were
+up again the room was empty, save for Theophile Charlemagne, Jake Hough,
+and Suzon, who lay in a faint on the floor with a nasty bruise on her
+forehead.
+
+A score of river-drivers were scattering into the country-side, and
+somewhere in the black river, alive or dead, was Charley Steele.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+He had had acquaintances, but never friendships, and never loves
+He has wheeled his nuptial bed into the street
+He left his fellow-citizens very much alone
+I am only myself when I am drunk
+I should remember to forget it
+Liquor makes me human
+Nervous legs at a gallop
+So say your prayers, believe all you can, don't ask questions
+Was not civilisation a mistake
+Who knows!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT OF WAY
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 2.
+
+
+IX.       OLD DEBTS FOR NEW
+X.        THE WAY IN AND THE WAY OUT
+XI.       THE RAISING OF THE CURTAIN
+XII.      THE COMING OF ROSALIE
+XIII.     HOW CHARLEY WENT ADVENTURING, AND WHAT HE FOUND
+XIV.      ROSALIE, CHARLEY, AND THE MAN THE WIDOW PLOMONDON JILTED
+XV.       THE MARK IN THE PAPER
+XVI.      MADAME DAUPHIN HAS A MISSION
+XVII.     THE TAILOR MAKES A MIDNIGHT FORAY
+XVIII.    THE STEALING OF THE CROSS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+OLD DEBTS FOR NEW
+
+Jo Portugtais was breaking the law of the river--he was running a little
+raft down the stream at night, instead of tying up at sundown and camping
+on the shore, or sitting snugly over cooking-pot by the little wooden
+caboose on his raft.  But defiance of custom and tradition was a habit
+with Jo Portugais.  He had lived in his own way many a year, and he was
+likely to do so till the end, though he was a young man yet.  He had many
+professions, or rather many gifts, which he practised as it pleased him.
+He was river-driver, woodsman, hunter, carpenter, guide, as whim or
+opportunity came to him.  On the evening when Charley Steele met with his
+mishap he was a river-driver--or so it seemed.  He had been up nor'west a
+hundred and fifty miles, and he had come down-stream alone with his raft-
+which in the usual course should take two men to guide it--through
+slides, over rapids, and in strong currents.  Defying the code of the
+river, with only one small light at the rear of his raft, he voyaged the
+swift current towards his home, which, when he arrived opposite the Cote
+Dorion, was still a hundred miles below.  He had watched the lights in
+the river-drivers' camps, had seen the men beside the fires, and had
+drifted on, with no temptation to join in the songs floating out over the
+dark water, to share the contents of the jugs raised to boisterous lips,
+or to thrust his hand into the greasy cooking-pot for a succulent bone.
+
+He drifted on until he came opposite Charlemagne's tavern.  Here the
+current carried him inshore.  He saw the dim light, he saw dark figures
+in the bar-room, he even got a glimpse of Suzon Charlemagne.  He dropped
+the house behind quickly, but looked back, leaning on the oar and
+thinking how swift was the rush of the current past the tavern.  His eyes
+were on the tavern door and the light shining through it.  Suddenly the
+light disappeared, and the door vanished into darkness.  He heard a
+scuffle, and then a heavy splash.
+
+"There's trouble there," said Jo Portugais, straining his eyes through
+the night, for a kind of low roar, dwindling to a loud whispering, and
+then a noise of hurrying feet, came down the stream, and he could dimly
+see dark figures running away into the night by different paths.
+
+"Some dirty work, very sure," said Jo Portugais, and his eyes travelled
+back over the dark water like a lynx's, for the splash was in his ear,
+and a sort of prescience possessed him.  He could not stop his raft.  It
+must go on down the current, or be swerved to the shore, to be fastened.
+
+"God knows, it had an ugly sound," said Jo Portugais, and again strained
+his eyes and ears.  He shifted his position and took another oar, where
+the raft-lantern might not throw a reflection upon the water.  He saw a
+light shine again through the tavern doorway, then a dark object block
+the light, and a head thrust forward towards the river as though
+listening.
+
+At this moment he fancied he saw something in the water nearing him.  He
+stretched his neck.  Yes, there was something.
+
+"It's a man.  God save us--was it murder?" said Jo Portugais, and
+shuddered.  "Was it murder?"
+
+The body moved more swiftly than the raft.  There was a hand thrust up--
+two hands.
+
+"He's alive!" said Jo Portugais, and, hurriedly pulling round his waist
+a rope tied to a timber, jumped into the water.
+
+Three minutes later, on the raft, he was examining a wound in the head of
+an insensible man.
+
+As his hand wandered over the body towards the heart, it touched
+something that rattled against a button.  He picked it up mechanically
+and held it to the light.  It was an eye-glass.
+
+"My God!" said Jo Portugais, and peered into the man's face.  "It's
+him."  Then he remembered the last words the man had spoken to him--
+"Get out of my sight.  You're as guilty as hell!"  But his heart yearned
+towards the man nevertheless.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE WAY IN AND THE WAY OUT
+
+In his own world of the parish of Chaudiere Jo Portugais was counted a
+widely travelled man.  He had adventured freely on the great rivers and
+in the forests, and had journeyed up towards Hudson's Bay farther than
+any man in seven parishes.
+
+Jo's father and mother had both died in one year--when he was twenty-
+five.  That year had turned him from a clean-shaven cheerful boy into a
+morose bearded man who looked forty, for it had been marked by his
+disappearance from Chaudiere and his return at the end of it, to find his
+mother dead and his father dying broken-hearted.  What had driven Jo from
+home only his father knew; what had happened to him during that year only
+Jo himself knew, and he told no one, not even his dying father.
+
+A mystery surrounded him, and no one pierced it.  He was a figure apart
+in Chaudiere parish.  A dreadful memory that haunted him, carried him out
+of the village, which clustered round the parish church, into Vadrome
+Mountain, three miles away, where he lived apart from all his kind.  It
+was here he brought the man with the eye-glass one early dawn, after two
+nights and two days on the river, pulling him up the long hill in a low
+cart with his strong faithful dogs, hitching himself with them and
+toiling upwards through the dark.  In his three-roomed hut he laid his
+charge down upon a pile of bear-skins, and tended him with a strange
+gentleness, bathing the wound in the head and binding it again and again.
+
+The next morning the sick man opened his eyes heavily.  He then began
+fumbling mechanically on his breast.  At last his fingers found his
+monocle.  He feebly put it to his eye, and looked at Jo in a strange,
+questioning, uncomprehending way.
+
+"I beg--your pardon," he said haltingly, "have I ever--been intro--"
+Suddenly his eyes closed, a frown gathered on his forehead.  After a
+minute his eyes opened again, and he gazed with painful, pathetic
+seriousness at Jo.  This grew to a kind of childish terror; then slowly,
+as a shadow passes, the perplexity, anxiety and terror cleared away, and
+left his forehead calm, his eyes unvexed and peaceful.  The monocle
+dropped, and he did not heed it.  At length he said wearily, and with an
+incredibly simple dependence:
+
+"I am thirsty now."
+
+Jo lifted a wooden bowl to his lips, and he drank, drank, drank to
+repletion.  When he had finished he patted Jo's shoulder.
+
+"I am always thirsty," he said.  "I shall be hungry too.  I always am."
+
+Jo brought him some milk and bread in a bowl.  When the sick man had
+eaten and drunk the bowlful to the last drop and crumb, he lay back with
+a sigh of content, but trembling from weakness and the strain, though
+Jo's hand had been under his head, and he had been fed like a little
+child.
+
+All day he lay and watched Jo as he worked, as he came and went.
+Sometimes he put his hand to his head and said to Jo: "It hurts."
+Then Jo would cool the wound with fresh water from the mountain spring,
+and he would drag down the bowl to drink from it greedily.
+
+It was as though he could never get enough water to drink.  So the first
+day in the hut at Vadrome Mountain passed without questioning on the part
+of either Charley Steele or his host.
+
+With good reason.  Jo Portugais saw that memory was gone; that the past
+was blotted out.  He had watched that first terrible struggle of memory
+to reassert itself, as the eyes mechanically looked out upon new and
+strange surroundings, but it was only the automatic habit of the sight,
+the fumbling of the blind soul in its cell-fumbling for the latch which
+it could not find, for the door which would not open.  The first day on
+the raft, as Charley had opened his eyes upon the world again after that
+awful night at the Cote Dorion, Jo.  had seen that same blank
+uncomprehending look--as it were, the first look of a mind upon the
+world.  This time he saw, and understood what he saw, and spoke as men
+speak, but with no knowledge or memory behind it--only the involuntary
+action of muscle and mind repeated from the vanished past.
+
+Charley Steele was as a little child, and having no past, and
+comprehending in the present only its limited physical needs and motions,
+he had no hope, no future, no understanding.  In three days he was upon
+his feet, and in four he walked out of doors and followed Jo into the
+woods, and watched him fell a tree and do a woodsman's work.  Indoors he
+regarded all Jo did with eager interest and a pleased, complacent look,
+and readily did as he was told.  He seldom spoke--not above three or four
+times a day, and then simply and directly, and only concerning his wants.
+From first to last he never asked a question, and there was never any
+inquiry by look or word.  A hundred and twenty miles lay between him and
+his old home, between him and Kathleen and Billy and Jean Jolicoeur's
+saloon, but between him and his past life the unending miles of eternity
+intervened.  He was removed from it as completely as though he were dead
+and buried.
+
+A month went by.  Sometimes Jo went down to the village below, and then,
+at first, he locked the door of the house behind him upon Charley.
+Against this Charley made no motion and said no word, but patiently
+awaited Jo's return.  So it was that, at last, Jo made no attempt to lock
+the door, but with a nod or a good-bye left him alone.  When Charley saw
+him returning he would go to meet him, and shake hands with him, and say
+"Good-day," and then would come in with him and help him get supper or do
+the work of the house.
+
+Since Charley came no one had visited the house, for there were no paths
+beyond it, and no one came to the Vadrome Mountain, save by chance.  But
+after two months had gone the Cure came.  Twice a year the Cure made it a
+point to visit Jo in the interests of his soul, though the visits came to
+little, for Jo never went to confession, and seldom to mass.  On this
+occasion the Cure arrived when Jo was out in the woods.  He discovered
+Charley.  Charley made no answer to his astonished and friendly greeting,
+but watched him with a wide-eyed anxiety till the Cure seated himself at
+the door to await Jo's coming.  Presently, as he sat there, Charley, who
+had studied his face as a child studies the unfamiliar face of a
+stranger, brought him a bowl of bread and milk and put it in his hands.
+The Cure smiled and thanked him, and Charley smiled in return and said:
+"It is very good."
+
+As the Cure ate, Charley watched him with satisfaction, and nodded at him
+kindly.
+
+When Jo came he lied to the Cure.  He said he had found Charley wandering
+in the woods, with a wound in his head, and had brought him home with him
+and cared for him.  Forty miles away he had found him.
+
+The Cure was perplexed.  What was there to do?  He believed what Jo said.
+So far as he knew, Jo had never lied to him before, and he thought he
+understood Jo's interest in this man with the look of a child and no
+memory: Jo's life was terribly lonely; he had no one to care for, and no
+one cared for him; here was what might comfort him!  Through this
+helpless man might come a way to Jo's own good.  So he argued with
+himself.
+
+What to do?  Tell the story to the world by writing to the newspaper at
+Quebec?  Jo pooh-poohed this.  Wait till the man's memory came back?
+Would it come back--what chance was there of its ever coming back?  Jo
+said that they ought to wait and see--wait awhile, and then, if his
+memory did not return, they would try to find his friends, by publishing
+his story abroad.
+
+Chaudiere was far from anywhere: it knew little of the world, and the
+world knew naught of it, and this was a large problem for the Cure.
+Perhaps Jo was right, he thought.  The man was being well cared for, and
+what more could be wished at the moment?  The Cure was a simple man, and
+when Jo urged that if the sick man could get well anywhere in the world
+it would be at Vadrome Mountain in Chaudiere, the Cure's parochial pride
+was roused, and he was ready to believe all Jo said.  He also saw reason
+in Jo's request that the village should not be told of the sick man's
+presence.  Before he left, the Cure knelt down and prayed, "for the good
+of this poor mortal's soul and body."
+
+As he prayed, Charley knelt down also, and kept his eyes-calm unwondering
+eyes-full fixed on the good M. Loisel, whose grey hair, thin peaceful
+face, and dark brown eyes made a noble picture of patience and devotion.
+
+When the Cure shook him by the hand, murmuring in good-bye, "God be
+gracious to thee, my son," Charley nodded in a friendly way.  He watched
+the departing figure till it disappeared over the crest of the hill.
+
+This day marked an epoch in the solitude of the hut on Vadrome Mountain.
+Jo had an inspiration.  He got a second set of carpenter's tools, and
+straightway began to build a new room to the house.  He gave the extra
+set of tools to Charley with an encouraging word.  For the first time
+since he had been brought here, Charley's face took on a look of
+interest.  In half-an-hour he was at work, smiling and perspiring, and
+quickly learning the craft.  He seldom spoke, but he sometimes laughed a
+mirthful, natural boy's laugh of good spirits and contentment.  From that
+day his interest in things increased, and before two months went round,
+while yet it was late autumn, he looked in perfect health.  He ate
+moderately, drank a great deal of water, and slept half the circle of the
+clock each day.  His skin was like silk; the colour of his face was as
+that of an apple; he was more than ever Beauty Steele.  The Cure came
+two or three times, and Charley spoke to him but never held conversation,
+and no word concerning the past ever passed his tongue, nor did he have
+memory of what was said to him from one day to the next.  A hundred ways
+Jo had tried to rouse his memory.  But the words Cote Dorion had no
+meaning to him, and he listened blankly to all names and phrases once so
+familiar.  Yet he spoke French and English in a slow, passive,
+involuntary way.  All was automatic, mechanical.
+
+The weeks again wore on, and autumn became winter, and then at last one
+day the Cure came, bringing his brother, a great Parisian surgeon lately
+arrived from France on a short visit.  The Cure had told his brother the
+story, and had been met by a keen, astonished interest in the unknown man
+on Vadrome Mountain.  A slight pressure on the brain from accident had
+before now produced loss of memory--the great man's professional
+curiosity was aroused: he saw a nice piece of surgical work ready
+to his hand; he asked to be taken to Vadrome Mountain.
+
+Now the Cure had lived long out of the world, and was not in touch with
+the swift-minded action and adventuring intellects of such men as his
+brother, Marcel Loisel.  Was it not tempting Providence, a surgical
+operation?  He was so used to people getting ill and getting well without
+a doctor--the nearest was twenty miles distant--or getting ill and dying
+in what seemed a natural and preordained way, that to cut open a man's
+head and look into his brain, and do this or that to his skull, seemed
+almost sinful.  Was it not better to wait and see if the poor man would
+not recover in God's appointed time?
+
+In answer to his sensitively eager and diverse questions, Marcel Loisel
+replied that his dear Cure was merely mediaeval, and that he had
+sacrificed his mental powers on the altar of a simple faith, which might
+remove mountains but was of no value in a case like this, where, clearly,
+surgery was the only providence.
+
+At this the Cure got to his feet, came over, laid his hand on his
+brother's shoulder, and said, with tears in his eyes:
+
+"Marcel, you shock me.  Indeed you shock me!"
+
+Then he twisted a knot in his cassock cords, and added "Come then,
+Marcel.  We will go to him.  And may God guide us aright!"
+
+That afternoon the two grey-haired men visited Vadrome Mountain, and
+there they found Charley at work in the little room that the two men had
+built.  Charley nodded pleasantly when the Cure introduced his brother,
+but showed no further interest at first.  He went on working at the
+cupboard under his hand.  His cap was off and his hair was a little
+rumpled where the wound had been, for he had a habit of rubbing the place
+now and then--an abstracted, sensitive motion--although he seemed to
+suffer no pain.  The surgeon's eyes fastened on the place, and as Charley
+worked and his brother talked, he studied the man, the scar, the contour
+of the head.  At last he came up to Charley and softly placed his fingers
+on the scar, feeling the skull.  Charley turned quickly.
+
+There was something in the long, piercing look of the surgeon which
+seemed to come through limitless space to the sleeping and imprisoned
+memory of Charley's sick mind.  A confused, anxious, half-fearful look
+crept into the wide blue eyes.  It was like a troubled ghost, flitting
+along the boundaries of sight and sense, and leaving a chill and a
+horrified wonder behind.  The surgeon gazed on, and the trouble in
+Charley's eye passed to his face, stayed an instant.  Then he turned away
+to Jo Portugais.  "I am thirsty now," he said, and he touched his lips in
+the way he was wont to do in those countless ages ago, when, millions
+upon millions of miles away, people said: "There goes Charley Steele!"
+
+"I am thirsty now," and that touch of the lip with the tongue, were a
+revelation to the surgeon.
+
+A half-hour later he was walking homeward with the Cure.  Jo accompanied
+them for a distance.  As they emerged into the wider road-paths that
+began half-way down the mountain, the Cure, who had watched his brother's
+face for a long time in silence, said:
+
+"What is in your mind, Marcel?"  The surgeon turned with a half-smile.
+
+"He is happy now.  No memory, no conscience, no pain, no responsibility,
+no trouble--nothing behind or before.  Is it good to bring him back?"
+
+The Cure had thought it all over, and he had wholly changed his mind
+since that first talk with his brother.  "To save a mind, Marcel!" he
+said.
+
+"Then to save a soul?" suggested the surgeon.  "Would he thank me?"
+
+"It is our duty to save him."
+
+"Body and mind and soul, eh?  And if I look after the body and the mind?"
+
+"His soul is in God's hands, Marcel."
+
+"But will he thank me?  How can you tell what sorrows, what troubles, he
+has had?  What struggles, temptations, sins?  He has none now, of any
+sort; not a stain, physical or moral."
+
+"That is not life, Marcel."
+
+"Well, well, you have changed.  This morning it was I who would, and you
+hesitated."
+
+"I see differently now, Marcel."
+
+The surgeon put a hand playfully on his brother's shoulder.
+
+"Did you think, my dear Prosper, that I should hesitate?  Am I a
+sentimentalist?  But what will he say?
+
+"We need not think of that, Marcel."
+
+"But yet suppose that with memory come again sin and shame--even crime?"
+
+"We will pray for him."  "But if he isn't a Catholic?"
+
+"One must pray for sinners," said the Curb, after a silence.
+
+This time the surgeon laid a hand on the shoulder of his brother
+affectionately.  "Upon my soul, dear Prosper, you almost persuade me to
+be reactionary and mediaeval."
+
+The Curb turned half uneasily towards Jo, who was following at a little
+distance.  This seemed hardly the sort of thing for him to hear.
+
+"You had better return now, Jo," he said.
+
+"As you wish, M'sieu'," Jo answered, then looked inquiringly at the
+surgeon.
+
+"In about five days, Portugais.  Have you a steady hand and a quick eye?"
+
+Jo spread out his hands in deprecation, and turned to the Curb, as though
+for him to answer.
+
+"Jo is something of a physician and surgeon too, Marcel.  He has a gift.
+He has cured many in the parish with his herbs and tinctures, and he has
+set legs and arms successfully."
+
+The surgeon eyed Jo humorously, but kindly.  "He is probably as good a
+doctor as some of us.  Medicine is a gift, surgery is a gift and an art.
+You shall hear from me, Portugais."  He looked again keenly at Jo.  "You
+have not given him 'herbs and tinctures'?"
+
+"Nothing, M'sieu'."
+
+"Very sensible.  Good-day, Portugais."
+
+"Good-day, my son," said the priest, and raised his fingers in
+benediction, as Jo turned and quickly retraced his steps.
+
+"Why did you ask him if he had given the poor man any herbs or tinctures,
+Marcel?" said the priest.
+
+"Because those quack tinctures have whiskey in them."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Whiskey in any form would be bad for him," the surgeon answered
+evasively.
+
+But to himself he kept saying: "The man was a drunkard--he was a
+drunkard."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE RAISING OF THE CURTAIN
+
+M. Marcel Loisel did his work with a masterly precision, with the aid of
+his brother and Portugais.  The man under the instruments, not wholly
+insensible, groaned once or twice.  Once or twice, too, his eyes opened
+with a dumb hunted look, then closed as with an irresistible weariness.
+When the work was over, and every stain or sign of surgery removed, sleep
+came down on the bed--a deep and saturating sleep, which seemed to fill
+the room with peace.  For hours the surgeon sat beside the couch, now and
+again feeling the pulse, wetting the hot lips, touching the forehead with
+his palm.  At last, with a look of satisfaction, he came forward to where
+Jo and the Cure sat beside the fire.
+
+"It is all right," he said.  "Let him sleep as long as he will."  He
+turned again to the bed.  "I wish I could stay to see the end of it.
+Is there no chance, Prosper?" he added to the priest.
+
+"Impossible, Marcel.  You must have sleep.  You have a seventy-mile drive
+before you to-morrow, and sixty the next day.  You can only reach the
+port now by starting at daylight to-morrow."
+
+So it was that Marcel Loisel, the great surgeon, was compelled to leave
+Chaudiere before he knew that the memory of the man who had been under
+his knife had actually returned to him.  He had, however, no doubt in
+his own mind, and he was confident that there could be no physical harm
+from the operation.  Sleep was the all-important thing.  In it lay the
+strength for the shock of the awakening--if awakening of memory there
+was to be.
+
+Before he left he stooped over Charley and said musingly: "I wonder what
+you will wake up to, my friend?"  Then he touched the wound with a light
+caressing finger.  "It was well done, well done," he murmured proudly.
+
+A moment afterwards he was hurrying down the hill to the open road, where
+a cariole awaited the Cure and himself.
+
+For a day and a half Charley slept, and Jo watched him with an
+affectionate solicitude.  Once or twice, becoming anxious, because of the
+heavy breathing and the motionless sleep, he had forced open the teeth,
+and poured a little broth between.
+
+Just before dawn on the second morning, worn out and heavy with slumber,
+Jo lay down by the piled-up fire and dropped into a sleep that wrapped
+him like a blanket, folding him away into a drenching darkness.
+
+For a time there was a deep silence, troubled only by Jo's deep
+breathing, which seemed itself like the pulse of the silence.  Charley
+appeared not to be breathing at all.  He was lying on his back, seemingly
+lifeless.  Suddenly on the snug silence there was a sharp sound.  A tree
+outside snapped with the frost.
+
+Charley awoke.  The body seemed not to awake, for it did not stir, but
+the eyes opened wide and full, looking straight before them--straight up
+to the brown smoke-stained rafters, along which were ranged guns and
+fishing-tackle, axes and bear-traps.  Full clear blue eyes, healthy and
+untired as a child's fresh from an all-night's drowse, they looked and
+looked.  Yet, at first, the body did not stir; only the mind seemed to be
+awakening, the soul creeping out from slumber into the day.  Presently,
+however, as the eyes gazed, there stole into them a wonder, a trouble, an
+anxiety.  For a moment they strained at the rafters and the crude weapons
+and implements there, then the body moved, quickly, eagerly, and turned
+to see the flickering shadows made by the fire and the simple order of
+the room.
+
+A minute more, and Charley was sitting on the side of his couch, dazed
+and staring.  This hut, this fire, the figure by the hearth in a sound
+sleep-his hand went to his head: it felt the bandage there!
+
+He remembered now!  Last night at the Cote Dorion!  Last night he had
+talked with Suzon Charlemagne at the Cote Dorion; last night he had drunk
+harder than he had ever drunk in his life, he had defied, chaffed,
+insulted the river-drivers.  The whole scene came back: the faces of
+Suzon and her father; Suzon's fingers on his for an instant; the glass of
+brandy beside him; the lanterns on the walls; the hymn he sang; the
+sermon he preached--he shuddered a little; the rumble of angry noises
+round him; the tumbler thrown; the crash of the lantern, and only one
+light left in the place!  Then Jake Hough and his heavy hand, the flying
+monocle, and his disdainful, insulting reply; the sight of the pistol in
+the hand of Suzon's father; then a rush, a darkness, and his own fierce
+plunge towards the door, beyond which were the stars and the cool night
+and the dark river.  Curses, hands that battered and tore at him, the
+doorway reached, and then a blow on the head and--falling, falling,
+falling, and distant noises growing more distant, and suddenly and
+sweetly--absolute silence.
+
+Again he shuddered.  Why?  He remembered that scene in his office
+yesterday with Kathleen, and the one later with Billy.  A sensitive chill
+swept all over him, making his flesh creep, and a flush sped over his
+face from chin to brow.  To-day he must pick up all these threads again,
+must make things right for Billy, must replace the money he had stolen,
+must face Kathleen again he shuddered.  Was he at the Cote Dorion still?
+He looked round him.  No, this was not the sort of house to be found at
+the Cote Dorion.  Clearly this was the hut of a hunter.  Probably he had
+been fished out of the river by this woodsman and brought here.  He felt
+his head.  The wound was fresh and very sore.  He had played for death,
+with an insulting disdain, yet here he was alive.
+
+Certainly he was not intended to be drowned or knifed--he remembered the
+knives he saw unsheathed--or kicked or pummelled into the hereafter.  It
+was about ten o'clock when he had had his "accident"--he affected a
+smile, yet somehow he did not smile easily--it must be now about five,
+for here was the morning creeping in behind the deer-skin blind at the
+window.
+
+Strange that he felt none the worse for his mishap, and his tongue was as
+clean and fresh as if he had been drinking milk last night, and not very
+doubtful brandy at the Cote Dorion.  No fever in his hands, no headache,
+only the sore skull, so well and tightly bandaged but a wonderful thirst,
+and an intolerable hunger.  He smiled.  When had he ever been hungry for
+breakfast before?  Here he was with a fine appetite: it was like coals of
+fire heaped on his head by Nature for last night's business at the Cote
+Dorion.  How true it was that penalties did not always come with--
+indiscretions.  Yet, all at once, he flushed again to the forehead, for a
+curious sense of shame flashed through his whole being, and one Charley
+Steele--the Charley Steele of this morning, an unknown, unadventuring,
+onlooking Charley Steele--was viewing with abashed eyes the Charley
+Steele who had ended a doubtful career in the coarse and desperate
+proceedings of last night.  With a nervous confusion he sought refuge in
+his eye-glass.  His fingers fumbled over his waistcoat, but did not find
+it.  The weapon of defence and attack, the symbol of interrogation and
+incomprehensibility, was gone.  Beauty Steele was under the eyes of
+another self, and neither disdain, nor contempt, nor the passive stare,
+were available.  He got suddenly to his feet, and started forward, as
+though to find refuge from himself.
+
+The abrupt action sent the blood to his head, and feeling a blindness
+come over him, he put both hands up to his temples, and sank back on the
+couch, dizzy and faint.
+
+His motions waked Jo Portugais, who scrambled from the floor, and came
+towards him.
+
+"M'sieu'," he said, "you must not.  You are faint."  He dropped his hands
+supportingly to Charley's shoulders.
+
+Charley nodded, but did not yet look up.  His head throbbed sorely.
+"Water--please!" he said.
+
+In an instant Jo was beside him again, with a bowl of fresh water at his
+lips.  He drank, drank, drank, until the great bowl was drained to the
+last drop.
+
+"Whew!  That was good!" he said, and looked up at Jo with a smile.
+"Thank you, my friend; I haven't the honour of your acquaintance, but--"
+
+He stopped suddenly and stared at Jo.  Inquiry, mystification, were in
+his look.
+
+"Have I ever seen you before?" he said.  "Who knows, M'sieu'!"
+
+Since Jo had stood before Charley in the dock near six years ago he had
+greatly changed.  The marks of smallpox, a heavy beard, grey hair, and
+solitary life had altered him beyond Charley's recognition.
+
+Jo could hardly speak.  His legs were trembling under him, for now he
+knew that Charley Steele was himself again.  He was no longer the simple,
+quiet man-child of three days ago, and of these months past, but the man
+who had saved him from hanging, to whom he owed a debt he dare not
+acknowledge.  Jo's brain was in a muddle.  Now that the great crisis was
+over, now that the expected thing had come, and face to face with the
+cure, he had neither tongue, nor strength, nor wit.  His words stuck in
+his throat where his heart was, and for a minute his eyes had a kind of
+mist before them.
+
+Meanwhile Charley's eyes were upon him, curious, fixed, abstracted.
+
+"Is this your house?"
+
+"It is, M'sieu'."
+
+"You fished me out of the river by the Cote Dorion?"  He still held his
+head with his hands, for it throbbed so, but his eyes were intent on his
+companion.
+
+"Yes, M'sieu'."
+
+Charley's hand mechanically fumbled for his monocle.  Jo turned quickly
+to the wall, and taking it by its cord from the nail where it had been
+for these long months, handed it over.  Charley took it and mechanically
+put it in his eye.  "Thank you, my friend," he said.  "Have I been
+conscious at all since you rescued me last night?" he asked.
+
+"In a way, M'sieu'."
+
+"Ah, well, I can't remember, but it was very kind of you--I do thank you
+very much.  Do you think you could find me something to eat?  I beg your
+pardon--it isn't breakfast-time, of course, but I was never so hungry in
+my life!"
+
+"In a minute, M'sieu'--in one minute.  But lie down, you must lie down a
+little.  You got up too quick, and it makes your head throb.  You have
+had nothing to eat."
+
+"Nothing, since yesterday noon, and very little then.  I didn't eat
+anything at the Cote Dorion, I remember."  He lay back on the couch and
+closed his eyes.  The throbbing in his head presently stopped, and he
+felt that if he ate something he could go to sleep again, it was so
+restful in this place--a whole day's sleep and rest, how good it would be
+after last night's racketing!  Here was primitive and material comfort,
+the secret of content, if you liked!  Here was this poor hunter-fellow,
+with enough to eat and to drink, earning it every day by every day's
+labour, and, like Robinson Crusoe no doubt, living in a serene self-
+sufficiency and an elysian retirement.  Probably he had no
+responsibilities in the world, with no one to say him nay, himself only
+to consider in all the universe: a divine conception of adequate life.
+Yet himself, Charley Steele, an idler, a waster, with no purpose in life,
+with scarcely the necessity to earn his bread-never, at any rate, until
+lately--was the slave of the civilisation to which he belonged.  Was
+civilisation worth the game?
+
+His hand involuntarily went to his head.  It changed the course of his
+thoughts.  He must go back to-day to put Billy's crime right, to replace
+the trust-moneys Billy had taken by forging his brother-in-law's name.
+Not a moment must be lost.  No doubt he was within driving distance of
+his office, and, bandaged head or no bandaged head, last night's
+disgraceful doings notwithstanding, it was his duty to face the wondering
+eyes--what did he care for wondering eyes?  hadn't he been making eyes
+wonder all his life?--face the wondering eyes in the little city, and set
+a crooked business straight.  Fool and scoundrel certainly Billy was, but
+there was Kathleen!
+
+His lips tightened; he had a strange anxious flutter of the heart.  When
+had his heart fluttered like this?  When had he ever before considered
+Kathleen's feelings as to his personal conduct so delicately?  Well,
+since yesterday he did feel it, and a sudden sense of pity sprang up in
+him--vague, shamefaced pity, which belied the sudden egotistical flourish
+with which he put his monocle to his eye and tried futilely to smile in
+the old way.
+
+He had lain with his eyes closed.  They opened now, and he saw his host
+spreading a newspaper as a kind of cloth on a small rough table, and
+putting some food upon it-bread, meat, and a bowl of soup.  It was
+thoughtful of this man to make his soup overnight-he saw Jo lift it from
+beside the fire where it had been kept hot.  A good fellow-an excellent
+fellow, this woodsman.
+
+His head did not throb now, and he drew himself up slowly on his elbow-
+then, after a moment, lifted himself to a sitting posture.
+
+"What is your name, my friend?" he said.
+
+"Jo Portugais, M'sieu'," Jo answered, and brought a candle and put it on
+the table, then lifted the tin-plate from over the bowl of savoury soup.
+
+Never before had Charley Steele sat down to such a breakfast.  A roll and
+a cup of coffee had been enough, and often too much, for him.  Yet now he
+could not wait to eat the soup with a spoon, but lifted the bowl and took
+a long draught of it, and set it down with a sigh of content.  Then he
+broke bread into the soup--large pieces of black oat bread--until the
+bowl was a mass of luscious pulp.  This he ate almost ravenously, his eye
+wandering avidly the while to the small piece of meat beside the bowl.
+What meat was it?  It looked like venison, yet summer was not the time
+for venison.  What did it matter!  Jo sat on a bench beside the fire, his
+face turned towards his guest, dreading the moment when the man he had
+nursed and cared for, with whom he had eaten and drunk for so long,
+should know the truth about himself.  He could not tell him all there was
+to tell, he was taking another means of letting him know.
+
+Charley did not speak.  Hunger was a new sensation, a delicious thing,
+too good to be broken by talking.  He ate till he had cleared away the
+last crumbs of bread and meat and drunk the last drop of soup.  He looked
+at the woodsman as though wondering if he would bring more.  Jo evidently
+thought he had had enough, for he did not move.  Charley's glance
+withdrew from Jo, and busied itself with the few crumbs remaining upon
+the table.  He saw a little piece of bread on the floor.  He picked it up
+and ate it with relish, laughing to himself.
+
+"How long will it take us to get to town?  Can we do it this morning?"
+
+"Not this morning, M'sieu'," said Jo, in a sort of hoarse whisper.
+
+"How many hours would it take?"
+
+He was gathering the last crumbs of his feast with his hand, and looking
+casually down at the newspaper spread as a table-cloth.
+
+All at once his hand stopped, his eyes became fixed on a spot in the
+paper.  He gave a hoarse, guttural cry, like an animal in agony.  His
+lips became dry, his hand wiped a blinding mist from his eyes.
+
+Jo watched him with an intense alarm and a horrified curiosity.  He felt
+a base coward for not having told Charley what this paper contained.
+Never had he seen such a look as this.  He felt his beads, and told them
+over and over again, as Charley Steele, in a dry, croaking sort of
+whisper, read, in letters that seemed monstrous symbols of fire, a record
+of himself:
+
+"To-day, by special license from the civil and ecclesiastical courts [the
+paragraph in the paper began], was married, at St. Theobald's Church,
+Mrs. Charles Steele, daughter of the late Hon.  Julien Wantage, and niece
+of the late Eustace Wantage, Esq., to Captain Thomas Fairing, of the
+Royal Fusileers--"
+
+Charley snatched at the top of the paper and read the date "Tenth of
+February, 18-!" It was August when he was at the Cote Dorion, the 5th
+August, 18-, and this paper was February 10th, 18-.  He read on, in the
+month-old paper, with every nerve in his body throbbing now: a fierce
+beating that seemed as if it must burst the heart and the veins:
+
+"--Captain Thomas Fairing, of the Royal Fusileers, whose career in our
+midst has been marked by an honourable sense of public and private duty.
+Our fellow-citizens will unite with us in congratulating the bride, whose
+previous misfortunes have only increased the respect in which she is
+held.  If all remember the obscure death of her first husband (though the
+body was not found, there has never been a doubt of his death), and the
+subsequent discovery that he had embezzled trust-moneys to the extent of
+twenty-five thousand dollars, thereby setting the final seal of shame
+upon a misspent life, destined for brilliant and powerful uses, all
+have conspired to forget the association of our beautiful and admired
+townswoman with his career.  It is painful to refer to these
+circumstances, but it is only within the past few days that the estate of
+the misguided man has been wound up, and the money he embezzled restored
+to its rightful owners; and it is better to make these remarks now than
+repeat them in the future, only to arouse painful memories in quarters
+where we should least desire to wound.
+
+"In her new life, blessed by a romantic devotion known and admired by
+all, Mrs. Fairing and her husband will be followed by the affectionate
+good wishes of the whole community."
+
+The man on the hearth-stone shrank back at the sight of the still, white
+face, in which the eyes were like sparks of fire.  His impulse had been
+to go over and offer the hand of sympathy to the stricken man, but his
+simple mind grasped the fact that no one might, with impunity, invade
+this awful quiet.  Charley was frozen in body, but his brain was awake
+with the heat of "a burning fiery furnace."
+
+Seven months of unconscious life-seven months of silence--no sight, no
+seeing, no knowing; seven months of oblivion, in which the world had
+buried him out of ken in an unknown grave of infamy!  Seven months--and
+Kathleen was married again to the man she had always loved.  To the world
+he himself was a rogue and thief.  Billy had remained silent--Billy, whom
+he had so befriended, had let decent men heap scorn and reproaches on his
+memory.  Here was what the world thought of him--he read the lines over
+again, his eyes scorching, but his finger steady, as it traced the lines
+slowly: "the obscure death .  .  .  .  ."  "embezzled trustmoneys .  .  .
+.  ."  "the final seal of shame upon a misspent life!"
+
+These were the epitaphs on the tombstone of Charley Steele; dead and
+buried, out of sight, out of repute, soon to be out of mind and out of
+memory, save as a warning to others--an old example raked out of the
+dust-bin of time by the scavengers of morality, to toss at all who trod
+the paths of dalliance.
+
+What was there to do?  Go back?  Go back and knock at Kathleen's door,
+another Enoch Arden, and say: "I have come to my own again?"  Return and
+tell Tom Fairing to go his way and show his face no more?  Break up this
+union, this marriage of love in which these two rejoiced?  Summon
+Kathleen out of her illegal intercourse with the man who had been true to
+her all these years?
+
+To what end?  What had he ever done for her that he might destroy her
+now?  What sort of Spartan tragedy was this, that the woman who had been
+the victim of circumstances, who had been the slave to a tie he never
+felt, yet which had been as iron-bound to her, should now be brought out
+to be mangled body and soul for no fault of her own?  What had she done?
+What had she ever done to give him right to touch so much as a hair of
+her head?
+
+Go back, and bring Billy to justice, and clear his own name?  Go back,
+and send Kathleen's brother, the forger, to jail?  What an achievement
+in justice!  Would not the world have a right to say that the only decent
+thing he could do was to eliminate himself from the equation?  What
+profit for him in the great summing-up, that he was technically innocent
+of this one thing, and that to establish his innocence he broke a woman's
+heart and destroyed a boy's life?  To what end!  It was the murderer
+coming back as a ghost to avenge himself for being hanged.  Suppose he
+went back--the death's-head at the feast--what would there be for himself
+afterwards; for any one for whom he was responsible?  Living at that
+price?
+
+To die and end it all, to disappear from this petty life where he had
+done so little, and that little ill?  To die?
+
+No.  There was in him some deep, if obscure, fatalism after all.  If he
+had been meant to die now, why had he not gone to the bottom of the river
+that yesterday at the Cote Dorion?  Why had he been saved by this yokel
+at the fire, and brought here to lie in oblivion in this mountain hut,
+wrapped in silence and lost to the world?  Why had his brain and senses
+lain fallow all these months, a vacuous vegetation, an empty
+consciousness?  Was it fate?  Did it not seem probable that the Great
+Machine had, in its automatic movement, tossed him up again on the shores
+of Time because he had not fallen on the trap-door predestined for his
+eternal exit?
+
+It was clear to him that death by his own hand was futile, and that if
+there were trap-doors set for him alone, it were well to wait until he
+trod upon them and fell through in his appointed hour in the movement of
+the Great Machine.
+
+What to do--where to live--how to live?
+
+He got slowly to his feet and took a step forward half blindly.  The man
+on the bench stirred.  Crossing the room he dropped a hand on the man's
+shoulder.  "Open the blind, my friend."
+
+Jo Portugais got to his feet quickly, eyes averted--he did not dare look
+into Charley's face--and went over and drew back the deer-skin blind.
+The clear, crisp sunlight of a frosty morning broke gladly into the room.
+Charley turned and blew out the candle on the table where he had eaten,
+then walked feebly to the window.  Standing on the crest of the mountain
+the hut looked down through a clearing, flanked by forest trees.
+
+It was a goodly scene.  The green and frosted foliage of the pines and
+cedars; the flowery tracery of frost hanging like cobwebs everywhere; the
+poudre sparkle in the air; the hills of silver and emerald sloping down
+to the valley miles away, where the village clustered about the great old
+parish church; the smoke from a hundred chimneys, in purple spirals,
+rising straight up in the windless air; over all peace and a perfect
+silence.
+
+Charley mechanically fixed his eye-glass and stood with hands resting on
+the window-sill, looking, looking out upon a new world.
+
+At length he turned.
+
+"Is there anything I can do for you, M'sieu'?" said Jo huskily.
+
+Charley held out his hand and clasped Jo's.  "Tell me about all these
+months," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE COMING OF ROSALIE
+
+Charley Steele saw himself as he had been through the eyes of another.
+He saw the work that he had done in the carpentering shed, and had no
+memory of it.  The real Charley Steele had been enveloped in oblivion for
+seven months.  During that time a mild phantom of himself had wandered,
+as it were in a somnambulistic dream, through the purlieus of life.
+Open-eyed, but with the soul asleep, all idiosyncrasy laid aside, all
+acquired impressions and influences vanished, he had been walking in the
+world with no more complexity of mind than a new-born child, nothing
+intervening between the sight of the eyes and the original sense.
+
+Now, when the real Charley Steele emerged again, the folds of mind and
+soul unrolling to the million-voiced creation and touched by the antenna
+of a various civilisation, the phantom Charley was gone once more into
+obscurity.  The real Charley could remember naught of the other, could
+feel naught, save, as in the stirring industrious day, one remembers that
+he has dreamed a strange dream the night before, and cannot recall it,
+though the overpowering sense of it remains.
+
+He saw the work of his hands, the things he had made with adze and plane,
+with chisel and hammer, but nothing seemed familiar save the smell of the
+glue pot, which brought back in a cloudy impression curious unfamiliar
+feelings.  Sights, sounds, motions, passed in a confused way through his
+mind as the smell of the glue crept through his nostrils; and he
+struggled hard to remember.  But no--seven months of his life were gone
+for ever.  Yet he knew and felt that a vast change had gone over him, had
+passed through him.  While the soul had lain fallow, while the body had
+been growing back to childlike health again, and Nature had been pouring
+into his sick senses her healing balm; while the medicaments of peace and
+sleep and quiet labour had been having their way with him, he had been
+reorganised, renewed, flushed of the turgid silt of dissipation.  For his
+sins and weaknesses there had been no gall and vinegar to drink.
+
+As Charley stood looking round the workshop, Jo entered, shaking the snow
+from his moccasined feet.  "The Cure, M'sieu' Loisel, has come," he said.
+Charley turned, and, without a word, followed Jo into the house.  There,
+standing at the window and looking down at the village beneath, was the
+Cure.  As Charley entered, M. Loisel carne forward with outstretched
+hand.
+
+"I am glad to see you well again, Monsieur," he said, and his cool thin
+hand held Charley's for a moment, as he looked him benignly in the eye.
+
+With a kind of instinct as to the course he must henceforth pursue,
+Charley replied simply, dropping his eye-glass as he met that clear
+soluble look of the priest--such a well of simplicity he had never before
+seen.  Only naked eye could meet that naked eye, imperfect though his own
+sight was.
+
+"It is good of you to feel so, and to come and tell me so," he answered
+quietly.  "I have been a great trouble, I know."
+
+There was none of the old pose in his manner, none of the old cryptic
+quality in his words.
+
+"We were anxious for your sake--and for the sake of your friends,
+Monsieur."
+
+Charley evaded the suggestion.  "I cannot easily repay your kindness and
+that of Jo Portugais, my good friend here," he rejoined.
+
+"M'sieu'," replied Jo, his face turned away, and his foot pushing a log
+on the fire, "you have repaid it."
+
+Charley shook his head.  "I am in a conspiracy of kindness," he said.
+"It is all a mystery to me.  For why should one expect such treatment
+from strangers, when, besides all, one can never make any real return,
+not even to pay for board and lodging!"
+
+"'I was a stranger and ye took me in,"' said the Cure, smiling by no
+means sentimentally.  "So said the Friend of the World."
+
+Charley looked the Curb steadily in the eyes.  He was thinking how simply
+this man had said these things; as if, indeed, they were part of his
+life; as though it were usual speech with him, a something that belonged,
+not an acquired language.  There was the old impulse to ask a question,
+and he put the monocle to his eye, but his lips did not open, and the
+eye-glass fell again.  He had seen familiarity with sacred names and
+things in the uneducated, in excited revivalists, worked up to a state
+clairvoyant and conversational with the Creator; but he had never heard
+an educated man speak as this man did.
+
+At last Charley said: "Your brother--Portugais tells me that your
+brother, the surgeon, has gone away.  I should have liked to thank him
+--if no more."
+
+"I have written him of your good recovery.  He will be glad, I know.  But
+my brother, from one stand-point--a human stand-point--had scruples.
+These I did not share, but they were strong in him, Monsieur.  Marcel
+asked himself--"  He stopped suddenly and looked towards Jo.
+
+Charley saw the look, and said quickly: "Speak plainly.  Portugais is my
+friend."
+
+Jo turned slowly towards him, and a light seemed to come to his eyes--a
+shining something that resolved itself into a dog-like fondness, an utter
+obedience, a strange intense gratitude.
+
+"Marcel asked himself," the Cure continued, "whether you would thank him
+for bringing you back to--to life and memory.  I fear he was trying to
+see what I should say--I fear so.  Marcel said, 'Suppose that he should
+curse me for it?  Who knows what he would be brought back to--to what
+suffering and pain, perhaps?'  Marcel said that."
+
+"And you replied, Monsieur le Cure?"
+
+"I replied that Nature required you to answer that question for yourself,
+and whether bitterly or gladly, it was your duty to take up your life and
+live it out.  Besides, it was not you alone that had to be considered.
+One does not live alone or die alone in this world.  There were your
+friends to consider."
+
+"And because I had no friends here, you were compelled to think for me!"
+answered Charley calmly.  "Truth is, it was not a question of my friends,
+for what I was during those seven months, or what I am now, can make no
+difference to them."
+
+He looked the Cure in the eyes steadily, and as though he would convey
+his intentions without words.  The Curb understood.  The habit of
+listening to the revelations of the human heart had given him something
+of that clairvoyance which can only be pursued by the primitive mind,
+unvexed by complexity.
+
+"It is, then, as though you had not come to life again?  It is as though
+you had no past, Monsieur?"
+
+"It is that, Monsieur."
+
+Jo suddenly turned and left the room, for he heard a step on the frosty
+snow without.
+
+"You will remain here, Monsieur?" said the Cure.  "I cannot tell."
+
+The Cure had the bravery of simple souls with a duty to perform.  He
+fastened his eyes on Charley.  "Monsieur, is there any reason why you
+should not stay here?  I ask it now, man to man--not as a priest of my
+people, but as man to man."
+
+Charley did not answer for a moment.  He was wondering how he should put
+his reply.  But his look did not waver, and the Cure saw the honesty of
+the gaze.  At length he replied: "If you mean, have I committed any crime
+which the law may punish?--I answer no, Monsieur.  If you mean, have I
+robbed or killed, or forged--or wronged a woman as men wrong women?  No.
+These, I take it, are the things that matter first.  For the rest, you
+can think of me as badly as you will, or as well, for what I do
+henceforth is the only thing that really concerns the world, Monsieur le
+Cure."
+
+The Cure came forward and put out his hand with a kindly gesture.
+"Monsieur, you have suffered," he said.
+
+"Never, never at all, Monsieur.  Never for a moment, until I was dropped
+down here like a stone from a sling.  I had life by the throat; now it
+has me there--that is all."
+
+"You are not a Catholic, Monsieur?" asked the priest, almost pleadingly,
+and as though the question had been much on his mind.
+
+"No, Monsieur."
+
+The Cure made no rejoinder.  If he was not a Catholic, what matter
+what he was?  If he was not a Catholic, were he Buddhist, pagan, or
+Protestant, the position for them personally was the same.  "I am very
+sorry," he said gently.  "I might have helped you had you been a
+Catholic."
+
+The eye-glass came like lightning to the eye, and a caustic, questioning
+phrase was on the tongue, but Charley stopped himself in time.  For,
+apart from all else, this priest had been his friend in calamity, had
+acted with a charming sensibility.  The eye-glass troubled the Cure, and
+the look on Charley's face troubled him still more, but it passed as
+Charley said, in a voice as simple as the Cure's own:
+
+"You may still help me as you have already done.  I give you my word,
+too"--strange that he touched his lips with his tongue as he did in the
+old days when his mind turned to Jean Jolicoeur's saloon--"that I will do
+nothing to cause regret for your humanity and--and Christian kindness."
+Again the tongue touched the lips--a wave of the old life had swept over
+him, the old thirst had rushed upon him.  Perhaps it was the force of
+this feeling which made him add, with a curious energy, "I give you my
+word, Monsieur le Cure."  At that moment the door opened and Jo entered.
+
+"M'sieu'," he said to Charley, "a registered parcel has come for you.
+It has been brought by the postmaster's daughter.  She will give it to no
+one but yourself."
+
+Charley's face paled, and the Cure's was scarcely less pale.  In
+Charley's mind was the question, Who had discovered his presence here?
+Was he not, then, to escape?  Who should send him parcels through the
+post?
+
+The Cure was perturbed.  Was he, then, to know who this man was--his name
+and history?  Was the story of his life now to be told?
+
+Charley broke the silence.  "Tell the girl to come in."  Instantly
+afterwards the postmaster's daughter entered.  The look of the girl's
+face, at once delicate and rosy with health, almost put the question of
+the letter out of his mind for an instant.  Her dark eyes met his as he
+came forward with outstretched hand.
+
+"This is addressed, as you will see, 'To the Sick Man at the House of Jo
+Portugais, at Vadrome Mountain.'  Are you that person, Monsieur?" she
+asked.
+
+As she handed the parcel, Charley's eyes scanned her face quickly.  How
+did this habitant girl come by this perfect French accent, this refined
+manner?  He did not know the handwriting on the parcel; he hastily tore
+it open.  Inside were a few dozen small packets.  Here also was a sheet
+of paper.  He opened and read it quickly.  It said:
+
+     Monsieur, I am not sure that you have recovered your memory and your
+     health, and I am also not sure that in such case you will thank me
+     for my work.  If you think I have done you an injury, pray accept my
+     profound apologies.  Monsieur, you have been a drunkard.  If you
+     would reverse the record now, these powders, taken at opportune
+     moments, will aid you.  Monsieur, with every expression of my good-
+     will, and the hope that you will convey to me without reserve your
+     feelings on this delicate matter, I append my address in Paris, and
+     I have the honour to subscribe myself, with high consideration,
+     Monsieur, yours faithfully,
+                                        MARCEL LOISEL.
+
+The others looked at him with varied feelings as he read.  Curiosity,
+inquiry, expectation, were common to them all, but with each was a
+different personal feeling.  The Cure's has been described.  Jo
+Portugais' mind was asking if this meant that the man who had come
+into his life must now go out of it; and the girl was asking who was
+this mysterious man, like none she had ever seen or known.
+
+Without hesitation Charley handed over the letter to the Cure, who took
+it with surprise, read it with amazement, and handed it back with a flush
+on his face.
+
+"Thank you," said Charley to the girl.  "It is good of you to bring it
+all this way.  May I ask--"
+
+"She is Mademoiselle Rosalie Evanturel," said the Cure smiling.
+
+"I am Charles Mallard," said Charley slowly.  "Thank you.  I will go now,
+Monsieur Mallard," the girl said, lifting her eyes to his face.  He
+bowed.  As she turned and went towards the door her eyes met his.  She
+blushed.
+
+"Wait, Mademoiselle; I will go back with you," said the Cure kindly.  He
+turned to Charley and held out his hand.  "God be with you, Monsieur--
+Charles," he said.  "Come and see me soon."  Remembering that his brother
+had written that the man was a drunkard, his eyes had a look of pity.
+This was the man's own secret and his.  It was a way to the man's heart;
+he would use it.
+
+As the two went out of the door, the girl looked back.  Charley was
+putting the surgeon's letter into the fire, and did not see her; yet she
+blushed again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HOW CHARLEY WENT ADVENTURING AND WHAT HE FOUND
+
+A week passed.  Charley's life was running in a tiny circle, but his mind
+was compassing large revolutions.  The events of the last few days had
+cut deep.  His life had been turned upside down.  All his predispositions
+had been suddenly brought to check, his habits turned upon the flank and
+routed, his mental postures flung into confusion.  He had to start life
+again; but it could not be in the way of any previous travel of mind or
+body.  The line of cleavage was sharp and wide, and the only connection
+with the past was in the long-reaching influence of evil habits, which
+crept from their coverts, now and again, to mock him as his old self had
+mocked life--to mock him and to tempt him.  Through seven months of
+healthy life for his body, while brain and will were sleeping, the whole
+man had made long strides towards recreation.  But with the renewal of
+will and mind the old weaknesses, roused by memory, began to emerge
+intermittently, as water rises from a spring.  There was something
+terrible in this repetition of sensation--the law of habit answering
+to the machine-like throbbing of memory, as, a kaleidoscope turning,
+turning, its pictures pass a certain point at fixed intervals--an
+automatic recurrence.  He found himself at times touching his lips with
+his tongue, and with this act came the dry throat, the hot eye, the
+restless hand feeling for a glass that eluded his fingers.
+
+Twice in one week did this fever surge up in him, and it caught him in
+those moments when, exhausted by the struggle of his mind to adapt itself
+to the new conditions, his senses were delicately susceptible.  Visions
+of Jolicoeur's saloon came to his mind's eye.  With a singular
+separateness, a new-developed dual sense, he saw himself standing in the
+summer heat, looking over to the cool dark doorway of the saloon, and he
+caught again the smell of the fresh-drawn beer.  He was conscious of
+watching himself do this and that, of seeing himself move here and there.
+He began to look upon Charley Steele as a man he had known--he, Charles
+Mallard, had known--while he had to suffer for what Charley Steele had
+done.  Then, all at once, as he was thinking and dreaming and seeing,
+there would seize upon him the old appetite, coincident with the seizure
+of his brain by the old sense of cynicism at its worst--such a worst as
+had made him insult Jake Hough when the rough countryman was ready to
+take his part that wild night at the Cote Dorion.
+
+At such moments life became a conflict--almost a terror--for as yet he
+had not swung into line with the new order of things.  In truth, there
+was no order of things; for one life was behind him and the new one was
+not yet decided upon, save that here he would stay--here out of the
+world, out of the game, far from old associations, cut off, and to be for
+ever cut off, from all that he had ever known or seen or felt or loved!
+.  .  .  Loved!  When did he ever love?  If love was synonymous with
+unselfishness, with the desire to give greater than the desire to get,
+then he had never known love.  He realised now that he had given Kathleen
+only what might be given across a dinner-table--the sensuous tribute of
+a temperament, passionate without true passion or faith or friendship.
+Kathleen had known that he gave her nothing worth the having; for in some
+meagre sense she knew what love was, and had given it meagrely, after her
+nature, to another man, preserving meanwhile the letter of the law,
+respecting that bond which he had shamed by his excesses.
+
+Kathleen was now sitting at another man's table--no, probably at his own
+table--his, Charley Steele's own table in his own house--the house he had
+given her by deed of gift the day he died.  Tom Fairing was sitting where
+he used to sit, talking across the table--not as he used to talk--looking
+into Kathleen's face as he had never looked.  He was no more to them than
+a dark memory.  "Well, why should I be more?" he asked himself.  "I am
+dead, if not buried.  They think me down among the fishes.  My game is
+done; and when she gets older and understands life better, Kathleen will
+say, 'Poor Charley--he might have been anything!'  She'll be sure to say
+that some day, for habit and memory go round in a circle and pass the
+same point again and again.  For me--they take me by the throat--"  He
+put his hand up as if to free his throat from a grip, his tongue touched
+his lips, his hands grew restless.
+
+"It comes back on me like a fit of ague, this miserable thirst.  If I
+were within sight of Jolicoeur's saloon, I should be drinking hard this
+minute.  But I'm here, and--"  His hand felt his pocket, and he took out
+the powders the great surgeon had sent him.
+
+"He knew--how did he know that I was a drunkard?  Does a man carry in his
+face the tale he would not tell?  Jo says I didn't talk of the past, that
+I never had delirium, that I never said a word to suggest who I was, or
+where I came from.  Then how did the doctor--man know?  I suppose every
+particular habit carries its own signal, and the expert knows the
+ciphers."  He opened the paper containing the powders, and looked round
+for water, then paused, folded the paper up, and put it in his pocket
+again.  He went over to the window and looked out.  His shoulders set
+square.  "No, no, no, not a speck on my tongue!" he said.  "What I can't
+do of my own will is not worth doing.  It's too foolish, to yield to the
+shadow of an old appetite.  I play this game alone--here in Chaudiere."
+
+He looked out and down.  The sweet sun of early spring was shining
+hard, and the snow was beginning to pack, to hang like a blanket on the
+branches, to lie like a soft coverlet over all the forest and the fields.
+Far away on the frozen river were saplings stuck up to show where the ice
+was safe--a long line of poles from shore to shore--and carioles were
+hurrying across to the village.  Being market-day, the place was alive
+with the cheerful commerce of the habitant.  The bell of the parish
+church was ringing.  The sound of it came up distantly and peacefully.
+Charley drew a long breath, turned away to a pail of water, filled a
+dipper half full, and drank it off gaspingly.  Then he returned to the
+window with a look of relief.
+
+"That does it," he said.  "The horrible thing is gone again--out of my
+brain and out of my throat."
+
+As he stood there, Jo came up the hill with a bundle in his arms.
+Charley watched him for a moment, half whimsically, half curiously.  Yet
+he sighed once too as Portugais opened the door and came into the room.
+"Well done, Jo!" said he.  "You have 'em?"
+
+"Yes, M'sieu'.  A good suit, and I believe they'll fit.  Old Trudel says
+it's the best suit he's made in a year.  I'm afraid he'll not make many
+more suits, old Trudel.
+
+"He's very bad.  When he goes there'll be no tailor--ah, old Trudel will
+be missed for sure, M'sieu'!"
+
+Jo spread the clothes out on the table--a coat, waistcoat, and trousers
+of fulled cloth, grey and bulky, and smelling of the loom and the
+tailor's iron.  Charley looked at them interestedly, then glanced at the
+clothes he had on, the suit that had belonged to him last year--grave-
+clothes.
+
+He drew himself up as though rousing from a dream.  "Come, Jo, clear out,
+and you shall have your new habitant in a minute," he said.  Portugais
+left the room, and when he came back, Charley was dressed in the suit of
+grey fulled cloth.  It was loose, but comfortable, and save for the
+refined face--on which a beard was growing now--and the eye-glass, he
+might easily have passed for a farmer.  When he put on the dog-skin fur
+cap and a small muffler round his neck, it was the costume of the
+habitant complete.
+
+Yet it was no disguise, for it was part of the life that Charles Mallard,
+once Charley Steele, should lead henceforth.
+
+He turned to the door and opened it.  "Good-bye, Portugais," he said.
+
+Jo was startled.  "Where are you going, M'sieu'?"
+
+"To the village."
+
+"What to do, M'sieu'?"
+
+"Who knows?"
+
+"You will come back?" Jo asked anxiously.
+
+"Before sundown, Jo.  Good-bye!"
+
+This was the first long walk he had taken since he had become himself
+again.  The sweet, cold air, with a bracing wind in his face, gave peace
+to the nerves but now strained and fevered in the fight with appetite.
+His mind cleared, and he drank in the sunny air and the pungent smell of
+the balsams.  His feet light with moccasins, he even ran a distance,
+enjoying the glow from a fast-beating pulse.
+
+As he came into the high-road, people passed him in carioles and sleighs.
+Some eyed him curiously.  What did he mean to do?  What object had he in
+coming to the village?  What did he expect?  As he entered the village
+his pace slackened.  He had no destination, no object.  He was simply
+aware that his new life was beginning.
+
+He passed a little house on which was a sign, "Narcisse Dauphin, Notary."
+It gave him a curious feeling.  It was the old life before him.  "Charles
+Mallard, Notary?"--No, that was not for him.  Everything that reminded
+him of the past, that brought him in touch with it, must be set aside.
+He moved on.  Should he go to the Cure?  No; one thing at a time, and
+today he wanted his thoughts for himself.  More people passed him, and
+spoke of him to each other, though there was no coarse curiosity--the
+habitant has manners.
+
+Presently he passed a low shop with a divided door.  The lower half was
+closed, the upper open, and the winter sun was shining full into the
+room, where a bright fire burned.
+
+Charley looked up.  Over the door was painted, in straggling letters:
+"Louis Trudel, Tailor."  He looked inside.  There, on a low table, bent
+over his work, with a needle in his hand, sat Louis Trudel the tailor.
+Hearing footsteps, feeling a shadow, he looked up.  Charley started at
+the look of the shrunken, yellow face; for if ever death had set his
+seal, it was on that haggard parchment.  The tailor's yellow eyes ran
+from Charley's face to his clothes.
+
+"I knew they'd fit," he said, with a snarl.  "Drove me hard, too!"
+
+Charley had an inspiration.  He opened the halfdoor, and entered.
+
+"Do you want help?" he said, fixing his eyes on the tailor's, steady and
+persistent.
+
+"What's the good of wanting--I can't get it," was the irritable reply, as
+he uncrossed his legs.
+
+Charley took the iron out of his hand.  "I'll press, if you'll show me
+how," he said.
+
+"I don't want a fiddling ten-minutes' help like that."
+
+"It isn't fiddling.  I'm going to stay, if you think I'll do."
+
+"You are going to stop-every day?"  The old man's voice quavered a
+little.
+
+"Precisely that."  Charley wetted a seam with water as he had often seen
+tailors do.  He dropped the hot iron on the seam, and sniffed with
+satisfaction.
+
+"Who are you?" said the tailor.
+
+"A man who wants work.  The Cure knows.  It's all right.  Shall I stay?"
+
+The tailor nodded, and sat down with a colour in his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+ROSALIE, CHARLEY, AND THE MAN THE WIDOW PLOMONDON JILTED
+
+From the moment there came to the post-office the letter addressed to
+"The Sick Man at the House of Jo Portugais at Vadrome Mountain," Rosalie
+Evanturel dreamed dreams.  Mystery, so fascinating a thing in all the
+experiences of life, took hold of her.  The strange man in the lonely
+hut on the hill, the bandaged head, the keen, piercing blue eyes, the
+monocle, like a masked battery of the mind, levelled at her--all appealed
+to that life she lived apart from the people with whom she had daily
+commerce.  Her world was a world of books and dreams, and simple,
+practical duties of life.  Most books were romance to her, for most were
+of a life to which she had not been educated.  Even one or two purely
+Protestant books of missionary enterprise, found in a box in her dead
+mother's room, had had all the charms of poetry and adventure.  It was
+all new, therefore all delightful, even when the Protestant sentiments
+shocked her as being not merely untrue, but hurting that aesthetic sense
+never remote from the mind of the devout Catholic.
+
+She had blushed when monsieur had first looked at her, in the hut on
+Vadrome Mountain, not because there was any soft sentiment about him in
+her heart--how could there be for a man she had but just seen!--but
+because her feelings, her imagination, were all at high temperature;
+because the man compelled attention.  The feeling sprang from a deep
+sensibility, a natural sense, not yet made incredulous by the ironies of
+life.  These had never presented themselves to her in a country, in a
+parish, where people said of fortune and misfortune, happiness and
+sorrow, "C'est le bon Dieu!"--always "C'est le bon Dieu!"
+
+In some sense it was a pity that she had brains above the ordinary, that
+she had had a good education and nice tastes.  It was the cultivation of
+the primitive and idealistic mind, which could not rationalise a sense of
+romance, of the altruistic, by knowledge of life.  As she sat behind the
+post-office counter she read all sorts of books that came her way.  When
+she learned English so as to read it almost as easily as she read French,
+her greatest joy was to pore over Shakespeare, with a heart full of
+wonder, and, very often, eyes full of tears--so near to the eyes of her
+race.  Her imagination inhabited Chaudiere with a different folk, living
+in homes very unlike these wide, sweeping-roofed structures, with double
+windows and clean-scrubbed steps, tall doors, and wide, uncovered stoops.
+Her people--people of bright dreaming--were not quarrelsome, or childish,
+or merely traditional, like the habitants.  They were picturesque and
+able and simple, doing good things in disguise, succouring distress,
+yielding their lives without thought for a cause, or a woman, and loving
+with an undying love.
+
+Charley was of these people--from the first instant she saw him.  The
+Cure, the Avocat, and the Seigneur were also of them, but placidly,
+unimportantly.  "The Sick Man at Jo Portugais' House" came out of a
+mysterious distance.  Something in his eyes said, "I have seen, I have
+known," told her that when he spoke she would answer freely, that they
+were kinsfolk in some hidden way.  Her nature was open and frank; she
+lived upon the house-tops, as it were, going in and out of the lives of
+the people of Chaudiere with neighbourly sympathy and understanding.  Yet
+she knew that she was not of them, and they knew that, poor as she was,
+in her veins flowed the blood of the old nobility of France.  For this
+the Cure could vouch.  Her official position made her the servant of the
+public, and she did her duty with naturalness.
+
+She had been a figure in the parish ever since the day she returned from
+the convent at Quebec, and took her dead mother's place in the home and
+the parish.  She had a quick temper, but there was not a cheerless note
+in her nature, and there was scarce a dog or a horse in the parish but
+knew her touch, and responded to it.  Squirrels ate out of her hand, she
+had even tamed two partridges, and she kept in her little garden a bear
+she had brought up from a cub.  Her devotion to her crippled father was
+in keeping with her quick response to every incident of sorrow or joy in
+the parish--only modified by wilful prejudices scarcely in keeping with
+her unselfishness.
+
+As Mrs. Flynn, the Seigneur's Irish cook, said of her: "Shure, she's not
+made all av wan piece, the darlin'!  She'll wear like silk, but she's not
+linen for everybody's washin'."  And Mrs. Flynn knew a thing or two, as
+was conceded by all in Chaudiere.  No gossip was Mrs. Flynn, but she knew
+well what was going on in the parish, and she had strong views upon all
+subjects, and a special interest in the welfare of two people in
+Chaudiere.  One of these was the Seigneur, who, when her husband died,
+leaving behind him a name for wit and neighbourliness, and nothing else,
+proposed that she should come to be his cook.  In spite of her protest
+that what was "fit for Teddy was not fit for a gintleman of quality," the
+Seigneur had had his way, never repenting of his choice.  Mrs. Flynn's
+cooking was not her only good point.  She had the rarest sense and an
+unfailing spring of good-nature--life bubbled round her.  It was she that
+had suggested the crippled M. Evanturel to the Seigneur when the office
+of postmaster became vacant, and the Seigneur had acted on her
+suggestion, henceforth taking greater interest in Rosalie.
+
+It was Mrs. Flynn who gave Rosalie information concerning Charley's
+arrival at the shop of Louis Trudel the tailor.  The morning after
+Charley came, Mrs. Flynn had called for a waistcoat of the Seigneur, who
+was expected home from a visit to Quebec.  She found Charley standing at
+a table pressing seams, and her quick eye took him in with knowledge and
+instinct.  She was the one person, save Rosalie, who could always divert
+old Louis, and this morning she puckered his sour face with amusement by
+the story of the courtship of the widow Plomondon and Germain Boily the
+horse-trainer, whose greatest gift was animal-training, and greatest
+weakness a fondness for widows, temporary and otherwise.  Before she left
+the shop, with the stranger's smile answering to her nod, she had made up
+her mind that Charley was a tailor by courtesy only.  So she told Rosalie
+a few moments afterwards.
+
+"'Tis a man, darlin', that's seen the wide wurruld.  'Tis himisperes he
+knows, not parrishes.  Fwhat's he doin' here, I dun'no'.  Fwhere's he
+come from, I dun'no'.  French or English, I dun'no'.  But a gintleman
+born, I know.  'Tis no tailor, darlin', but tailorin' he'll do as aisy as
+he'll do a hunderd other things anny day.  But how he shlipped in here,
+an' when he shlipped in here, an' what's he come for, an' how long he's
+stayin', an' meanin' well, or doin' ill, I dun'no', darlin', I dun'
+no'."
+
+"I don't think he'll do ill, Mrs. Flynn," said Rosalie, in English.
+
+"An' if ye haven't seen him, how d'ye know?" asked Mrs. Flynn, taking a
+pinch of snuff.
+
+"I have seen him--but not in the tailor-shop.  I saw him at Jo Portugais'
+a fortnight ago."
+
+"Aisy, aisy, darlin'.  At Jo Portugais'--that's a quare place for a
+stranger.  'Tis not wid Jo's introducshun I'd be comin' to Chaudiere."
+
+"He comes with the Cure's introduction."
+
+"An' how d'ye know that, darlin'?"
+
+"The Curb was at Jo Portugais' with monsieur when I went there."
+
+"You wint there!"
+
+"To take him a letter--the stranger."  "What's his name, darlin'?"
+
+"The letter I took him was addressed, 'To the Sick Man at Jo Portugais'
+House at Vadrome Mountain.'"
+
+"Ah, thin, the Cure knows.  'Tis some rich man come to get well, and
+plays at bein' tailor.  But why didn't the letther come to his name,
+I wander now?  That's what I wander."
+
+Rosalie shook her head, and looked reflectively through the window
+towards the tailor-shop.
+
+"How manny times have ye seen him?"
+
+"Only once;" answered Rosalie truthfully.  She did not, however, tell
+Mrs. Flynn that she had thrice walked nearly to Vadrome Mountain in the
+hope of seeing him again; and that she had gone to her favourite resort,
+the Rest of the Flax-Beaters, lying in the way of the riverpath from
+Vadrome Mountain, on the chance of his passing.  She did not tell Mrs.
+Flynn that there had scarcely been a waking hour when she had not thought
+of him.
+
+"What Portugais knows, he'll not be tellin'," said Mrs. Flynn, after a
+moment.  "An' 'tis no business of ours, is it, darlin'?  Shure, there's
+Jo comin' out of the tailor-shop now!"
+
+They both looked out of the window, and saw Jo encounter Filion Lacasse
+the saddler, and Maximilian Cour the baker.  The three stood in the
+middle of the street for a minute, Jo talking freely.  He was usually
+morose and taciturn, but now he spoke as though eager to unburden his
+mind--Charley and he had agreed upon what should be said to the people of
+Chaudiere.
+
+The sight of the confidences among the three was too much for Mrs. Flynn.
+She opened the door of the post office and called to Jo.  "Like three
+crows shtandin' there!" she said.  "Come in--ma'm'selle says come in,
+and tell your tales here, if they're fit to hear, Jo Portugais.  Who are
+you to say no when ma'm'selle bids!" she added.
+
+Very soon afterwards Jo was inside the post-office, telling his tale with
+the deliberation of a lesson learned by heart.
+
+"It's all right, as ma'm'selle knows," he said.  "The Cure was there when
+ma'm'selle brought a letter to M'sieu' Mallard.  The Cure knows all.
+M'sieu' come to my house sick-and he stayed there.  There is nothing like
+the pine-trees and the junipers to cure some things.  He was with me very
+quiet some time.  The Cure come and come.  He knows.  When m'sieu' got
+well, he say, 'I will not go from Chaudiere; I will stay.  I am poor, and
+I will earn my bread here.' At first, when he is getting well, he is
+carpent'ring.  He makes cupboards and picture-frames.  The Cure has one
+of the cupboards in the sacristy; the frames he puts on the Stations of
+the Cross in the church."
+
+"That's good enough for me!" said Maximilian Cour.  "Did he make them
+for nothing?" asked Filion Lacasse solemnly.
+
+"Not one cent did he ask.  What's more, he's working for Louis Trudel for
+nothing.  He come through the village yesterday; he see Louis old and
+sick on his bench, and he set down and go to work."
+
+"That's good enough for me," said the saddler.  "If a man work for the
+Church for nothing, he is a Christian.  If he work for Louis Trudel for
+nothing, he is a fool--first-class--or a saint.  I wouldn't work for
+Louis Trudel if he give me five dollars a day."
+
+"Tiens!  the man that work for Louis Trudel work for the Church, for all
+old Louis makes goes to the Church in the end--that is his will.  The
+Notary knows," said Maximilian Cour.
+
+"See there, now," interposed Mrs. Flynn, pointing across the street to
+the tailor-shop.  "Look at that grocer-man stickin' in his head; and
+there's Magloire Cadoret and that pig of a barber, Moise Moisan, starin'
+through the dure, an'--"
+
+As she spoke, the barber and his companion suddenly turned their faces to
+the street, and started forward with startled exclamations, the grocer
+following.  They all ran out from the post-office.  Not far up the street
+a crowd was gathering.  Rosalie locked the office-door and followed the
+others quickly.
+
+In front of the Hotel Trois Couronnes a painful thing was happening.
+Germain Boily, the horse-trainer, fresh from his disappointment with the
+widow Plomondon, had driven his tamed moose up to the Trois Couronnes,
+and had drunk enough whiskey to make him ill-tempered.  He had then begun
+to "show off" the animal, but the savage instincts of the moose being
+roused, he had attacked his master, charging with wide-branching horns,
+and striking with his feet.  Boily was too drunk to fight intelligently.
+He went down under the hoofs of the enraged animal, as his huge boar-
+hound, always with him, fastened on the moose's throat, dragged him to
+the ground, and tore gaping wounds in his neck.
+
+It was all the work of a moment.  People ran from the doorways and
+sidewalks, but stayed at a comfortable distance until the moose was
+dragged down; then they made to approach the insensible man.  Before any
+one could reach him, however, the great hound, with dripping fangs,
+rushed to his master's body, and, standing over it, showed his teeth
+savagely.  The hotel-keeper approached, but the bristles of the hound
+stood up, he prepared to attack, and the landlord drew back in haste.
+Then M. Dauphin, the Notary, who had joined the crowd, held out a hand
+coaxingly, and with insinuating rhetoric drew a little nearer than the
+landlord had done; but he retreated precipitously as the hound crouched
+back for a spring.  Some one called for a gun, and Filion Lacasse ran
+into his shop.  The animal had now settled down on his master's body, his
+bloodshot eyes watching in menace.  The one chance seemed to be to shoot
+him, and there must be no bungling, lest his prostrate master suffer at
+the same time.  The crowd had melted away into the houses, and were now
+standing at doorways and windows, ready for instant retreat.
+
+Filion Lacasse's gun was now at disposal, but who would fire it?  Jo
+Portugais was an expert shot, and he reached out a hand for the weapon.
+
+As he did so, Rosalie Evanturel cried: "Wait, oh, wait!"  Before any one
+could interfere she moved along the open space to the mad beast, speaking
+soothingly, and calling his name.
+
+The crowd held their breath.  A woman fainted.  Some wrung their hands,
+and Jo Portugais, with blanched face, stood with gun half raised.  With
+assured kindness of voice and manner, Rosalie walked deliberately over to
+the hound.  At first the animal's bristles came up, and he prepared to
+spring, but murmuring to him, she held out her hand, and presently laid
+it on his huge head.  With a growl of subjection, the dog drew from the
+body of his master, and licked Rosalie's fingers as she knelt beside
+Boily and felt his heart.  She put her arm round the dog's neck, and said
+to the crowd, "Some one come--only one--ah, yes, you, Monsieur!" she
+added, as Charley, who had just arrived on the scene, came forward.
+"Only you, if you can lift him.  Take him to my house."
+
+Her arm still round the dog, she talked to him, as Charley came forward,
+and, lifting up the body of the little horse-trainer, drew him across his
+shoulder.  The hound at first resented the act, but under Rosalie's touch
+became quiet, and followed at their heels towards the post-office,
+licking the wounded man's hands as they hung down.  Inside M. Evanturel's
+house the injured man was laid upon a couch.  Charley examined his
+wounds, and, finding them severe, advised that the Cure be sent for,
+while he and Jo Portugais set about restoring him to consciousness.
+Jo had skill of a sort, and his crude medicaments were efficacious.
+
+When the Cure came, the injured man was handed over to his care, and he
+arranged that in the evening Boily should be removed to his house, to
+await the arrival of the doctor from the next parish.
+
+This was Charley's public introduction to the people of Chaudiere, and it
+was his second meeting with Rosalie Evanturel.
+
+The incident brought him into immediate prominence.  Before he left the
+post-office, Filion Lacasse, Maximilian Cour, and Mrs. Flynn had given
+forth his history, as related by Jo Portugais.  The village was agog with
+excitement.
+
+But attention was not centred on himself, for Rosalie's courage had set
+the parish talking.  When the Notary stood on the steps of the saddler's
+shop, and with fine rhetoric proposed a vote of admiration for the girl,
+the cheering could be heard inside the post-office, and it brought Mrs.
+Flynn outside.
+
+"'Tis for her, the darlin'--for Ma'm'selle Rosalie--they're splittin'
+their throats!" she said to Charley as he was making his way from the
+sick man's room to the street door.  "Did ye iver see such an eye an'
+hand?  That avil baste that's killed two Injins already--an' all the men
+o' the place sneakin' behind dures, an' she walkin' up cool as leaf in
+mornin' dew, an' quietin' the divil's own!  Did ye iver see annything
+like it, sir--you that's seen so much?"
+
+"Madame, it is not touch of hand alone, or voice alone," answered
+Charley.
+
+"Shure, 'tis somethin' kin in baste an' maid, you're manin' thin?"
+
+"Quite so, Madame."
+
+"Simple like, an' understandin' what Noah understood in that ark av his
+--for talk to the bastes he must have, explainin' what was for thim to
+do."
+
+"Like that, Madame."
+
+"Thrue for you, sir, 'tis as you say.  There's language more than tongue
+of man can shpake.  But listen, thin, to me"--her voice got lower--
+"for 'tis not the furst time, a thing like that, the lady she is--
+granddaughter of a Seigneur, and descinded from nobility in France!  'Tis
+not the furst time to be doin' brave things.  Just a shlip of a girl she
+was, three years ago, afther her mother died, an' she was back from
+convint.  A woman come to the parish an' was took sick in the house of
+her brother--from France she was.  Small-pox they said at furst.  'Twas
+no small-pox, but plague, got upon the seas.  Alone she was in the house
+--her brother left her alone, the black-hearted coward.  The people
+wouldn't go near the place.  The Cure was away.  Alone the woman was--
+poor soul!  Who wint--who wint and cared for her?  Who do ye think, sir?"
+
+"Mademoiselle?"
+
+"None other.  'Go tell Mrs. Flynn,' says she, 'to care for my father till
+I come back,' an' away she wint to the house of plague.  A week she
+stayed, an' no one wint near her.  Alone she was with the woman and the
+plague.  'Lave her be,' said the Cure when he come back; "tis for the
+love of God.  God is with her--lave her be, and pray for her,' says he.
+An' he wint himself, but she would not let him in.  ''Tis my work,' says
+she.  ''Tis God's work for me to do,' says she.  'An' the woman will live
+if 'tis God's will,' says she.  'There's an agnus dei on her breast,'
+says she.  'Go an' pray,' says she.  Pray the Cure did, an' pray did we
+all, but the woman died of the plague.  All alone did Rosalie draw her to
+the grave on a stone-boat down the lane, an' over the hill, an' into the
+churchyard.  An' buried her with her own hands at night, no one knowin'
+till the mornin', she did.  So it was.  An' the burial over, she wint
+back an' burned the house to the ground--sarve the villain right that
+lave the sick woman alone!  An' her own clothes she burned, an' put on
+the clothes I brought her wid me own hand.  An' for that thing she did,
+the love o' God in her heart, is it for Widdy Flynn or Cure or anny other
+to forgit?  Shure the Cure was for iver broken-hearted, for that he was
+sick abed for days an' could not go to the house when the woman died, an'
+say to Rosalie, 'Let me in for her last hour.'  But the word of Rosalie
+--shure 'twas as good as the words of a praste, savin' the Cure prisince
+wheriver he may be!"
+
+This was the story of Rosalie which Mrs. Flynn told Charley, as he stood
+at the street door of the post-office.  When she had finished, Charley
+went back into the room where Rosalie sat beside the sick man's couch,
+the hound at her feet.  She came forward, surprised, for he had bade her
+good-bye but a few minutes before.
+
+"May I sit and watch for an hour longer, Mademoiselle?" he said.  "You
+will have your duties in the post-office."
+
+"Monsieur--it is good of you," she answered.
+
+For two hours Charley watched her going in and out, whispering directions
+to Mrs. Flynn, doing household duty, bringing warmth in with her, and
+leaving light behind her.
+
+It was afternoon when he returned to his bench in the tailor-shop, and
+was received by old Louis Trudel in peevish silence.  For an hour they
+worked in silence, and then the tailor said:
+
+"A brave girl--that.  We will work till nine to-night!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE MARK IN THE PAPER
+
+Chaudiere was nearing the last of its nine-days' wonder.  It had filed
+past the doorway of the tailor-shop; it had loitered on the other side of
+the street; it had been measured for more clothes than in three months
+past--that it might see Charley at work in the shop, cross-legged on a
+bench, or wielding the goose, his eye glass in his eye.  Here was
+sensation indeed, for though old M. Rossignol, the Seigneur, had an eye-
+glass, it was held to his eye--a large bone-bound thing with a little
+gold handle; but no one in Chaudiere had ever worn a glass in his eye
+like that.  Also, no one in Chaudiere had ever looked quite like
+"M'sieu'"--for so it was that, after the first few days (a real tribute
+to his importance and sign of the interest he created) Charley came to be
+called "M'sieu'," and the Mallard was at last entirely dropped.
+
+Presently people came and stood at the tailor's door and talked, or
+listened to Louis Trudel and M'sieu' talking.  And it came to be noised
+abroad that the stranger talked as well as the Cure and better than the
+Notary.  By-and-by they associated his eye-glass with his talent, so that
+it seemed, as it were, to be the cause of it.  Yet their talk was ever of
+simple subjects, of everyday life about them, now and then of politics,
+occasionally of the events of the world filtered to them through vast
+tracts of country.  There was one subject which, however, was barred;
+perhaps because there was knowledge abroad that M'sieu' was not a
+Catholic, perhaps because Charley himself adroitly changed the
+conversation when it veered that way.
+
+Though the parish had not quite made up its mind about him, there were a
+number of things in his favour.  In the first place, the Cure seemed
+satisfied; secondly, he minded his own business.  Also, he was working
+for Louis Trudel for nothing.  These things Jo Portugais diligently
+impressed on the minds of all who would listen.
+
+From above the frosted part of the windows of the post-office, in the
+corner where she sorted letters, Rosalie could look over at the tailor's
+shop at an angle; could sometimes even see M'sieu' standing at the long
+table with a piece of chalk, a pair of shears, or a measure.  She watched
+the tailor-shop herself, but it annoyed her when she saw any one else do
+so.  She resented--she was a woman and loved monopoly--all inquiry
+regarding M'sieu', so frequently addressed to her.
+
+One afternoon, as Charley came out, on his way to the house on Vadrome
+Mountain, she happened to be outside.  He saw her, paused, lifted his fur
+cap, and crossed the street to her.
+
+"Have you, perhaps, paper, pens, and ink for sale, Mademoiselle?"
+
+"Yes, oh yes; come in, Monsieur Mallard."
+
+"Ah, it is nice of you to remember me," he answered.  "I see you every
+day--often," she answered.
+
+"Of course, we are neighbours," he responded.  "The man--the horse-
+trainer--is quite well again?"
+
+"He has gone home almost well," she answered.  She placed pens, paper,
+and ink before him.  "Will these do?"
+
+"Perfectly," he answered mechanically, and laid a few pens and a bottle
+of ink beside the paper.
+
+"You were very brave that day," he said--they had not talked together
+since, though seeing each other so often.
+
+"Oh, no; I knew he would make friends with me--the hound."
+
+"Of course," he rejoined.
+
+"We should show animals that we trust them," she said, in some confusion,
+for being near him made her heart throb painfully.
+
+He did not answer.  Presently his eye glanced at the paper again, and was
+arrested.  He ran his fingers over it, and a curious look flashed across
+his face.  He held the paper up to the light quickly, and looked through
+it.  It was thin, half-foreign paper, without lines, and there was a
+water-mark in it-large, shadowy, filmy--Kathleen.
+
+It was paper made in the mills which had belonged to Kathleen's uncle.
+This water-mark was made to celebrate their marriage-day.  Only for one
+year had this paper been made, and then the trade in it was stopped.  It
+had gone its ways down the channels of commerce, and here it was in his
+hand, a reminder, not only of the old life, but, as it were, the
+parchment for the new.  There it was, a piece of plain good paper, ready
+for pen and ink and his letter to the Cure's brother in Paris--the only
+letter he would ever write, ever again until he died, so he told himself;
+but hold it up to the light and there was the name over which his letter
+must be written--Kathleen, invisible but permanent, obscured, but brought
+to life by the raising of a hand.
+
+The girl caught the flash of feeling in his face, saw him holding the
+paper up to the light, and then, with an abstracted air, calmly lay it
+down.
+
+"That will do, thank you," he said.  "Give me the whole packet."  She
+wrapped it up for him without a word, and he laid down a two-dollar note,
+the last he had in the world.
+
+"How much of this paper have you?" he asked.  The girl looked under the
+counter.  "Six packets," she said.  "Six, and a few sheets over."
+
+"I will take it all.  But keep it for me, for a week, or perhaps a
+fortnight, will you?"  He did not need all this paper to write letters
+upon, yet he meant to buy all the paper of this sort that the shop
+contained.  But he must get money from Louis Trudel--he would speak about
+it to-morrow.
+
+"Monsieur does not want me to sell even the loose sheets?"
+
+"No.  I like the paper, and I will take it all."
+
+"Very good, Monsieur."
+
+Her heart was beating hard.  All this man did had peculiar significance
+to her.  His look seemed to say: "Do not fear.  I will tell you things."
+
+She gave him the parcel and the change, and he turned to go.  "You read
+much?" he asked, almost casually, yet deeply interested in the charm and
+intelligence of her face.
+
+"Why, yes, Monsieur," she answered quickly.  "I am always reading."
+
+He did not speak at once.  He was wondering whether, in this primitive
+place, such a mind and nature would be the wiser for reading; whether it
+were not better to be without a mental aspiration, which might set up
+false standards.
+
+"What are you reading now?" he asked, with his hand on the door.
+
+"Antony and Cleopatra, also Enoch Arden," she answered, in good English,
+and without accent.
+
+His head turned quickly towards her, but he did not speak.
+
+"Enoch Arden is terrible," she added eagerly.  "Don't you think so,
+Monsieur?"
+
+"It is very painful," he answered.  "Good-night."  He opened the door and
+went out.
+
+She ran to the door and watched him go down the street.  For a little she
+stood thinking, then, turning to the counter, and snatching up a sheet of
+the paper he had bought, held it up to the light.  She gave a cry of
+amazement.
+
+"Kathleen!" she exclaimed.
+
+She thought of the start he gave when he looked at the water-mark; she
+thought of the look on his face when he said he would buy all this paper
+she had.
+
+"Who was Kathleen?" she whispered, as though she was afraid some one
+would hear.  "Who was Kathleen!" she said again resentfully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+MADAME DAUPHIN HAS A MISSION
+
+One day Charley began to know the gossip of the village about him from a
+source less friendly than Jo Portugais.  The Notary's wife, bringing her
+boy to be measured for a suit of broadcloth, asked Charley if the things
+Jo had told about him were true, and if it was also true that he was a
+Protestant, and perhaps an Englishman.  As yet, Charley had been asked
+no direct questions, for the people of Chaudiere had the consideration
+of their temperament; but the Notary's wife was half English, and being
+a figure in the place, she took to herself more privileges than did old
+Madame Dugal, the Cure's sister.
+
+To her ill-disguised impertinence in English, as bad as her French and as
+fluent, Charley listened with quiet interest.  When she had finished her
+voluble statement she said, with a simper and a sneer-for, after all, a
+Notary's wife must keep her position--"And now, what is the truth about
+it?  And are you a Protestant?"
+
+There was a sinister look in old Trudel's eyes as, cross-legged on his
+table, he listened to Madame Dauphin.  He remembered the time, twenty-
+five years ago, when he had proposed to this babbling woman, and had been
+rejected with scorn--to his subsequent satisfaction; for there was no
+visible reason why any one should envy the Notary, in his house or out of
+it.  Already Trudel had a respect for the tongue of M'sieu'.  He had not
+talked much the few days he had been in the shop, but, as the old man had
+said to Filion Lacasse the saddler, his brain was like a pair of shears--
+it went clip, clip, clip right through everything.  He now hoped that his
+new apprentice, with the hand of a master-workman, would go clip, clip
+through madame's inquisitiveness.  He was not disappointed, for he heard
+Charley say:
+
+"One person in the witness-box at a time, Madame.  Till Jo Portugais is
+cross-examined and steps down, I don't see what I can do!"
+
+"But you are a Protestant!" said the woman snappishly.  This man was
+only a tailor, dressed in fulled cloth, and no doubt his past life would
+not bear inspection; and she was the Notary's wife, and had said to
+people in the village that she would find out the man's history from
+himself.
+
+"That is one good reason why I should not go to confession," he replied
+casually, and turned to a table where he had been cutting a waistcoat--
+for the first time in his life.
+
+"Do you think I'm going to stand your impertinence?  Do you know who I
+am?"
+
+Charley calmly put up his monocle.  He looked at the foolish little woman
+with so cruel a flash of the eye that she shrank back.
+
+"I should know you anywhere," he said.
+
+"Come, Stephan," she said nervously to her boy, and pulled him towards
+the door.
+
+On the instant Charley's feeling changed.  Was he then going to carry the
+old life into the new, and rebuke a silly garish woman whose faults were
+generic more than personal?  He hurried forward to the door and
+courteously opened it for her.
+
+"Permit me, Madame," he said.
+
+She saw that there was nothing ironical in this politeness.  She had a
+sudden apprehension of an unusual quality called "the genteel," for no
+storekeeper in Chaudiere ever opened or shut a shop-door for anybody.
+She smiled a vacuous smile; she played "the lady" terribly, as, with a
+curious conception of dignity, she held her body stiff as a ramrod, and
+with a prim merci sailed into the street.
+
+This gorgeous exit changed her opinion of the man she had been unable to
+catechise.  Undoubtedly he had snubbed her--that was the word she used in
+her mind--but his last act had enabled her, in the sight of several
+habitants and even of Madame Dugal, "to put on airs," as the charming
+Madame Dugal said afterwards.
+
+Thinking it better to give the impression that she had had a successful
+interview, she shook her head mysteriously when asked about M'sieu', and
+murmured, "He is quite the gentleman!" which she thought a socially
+distinguished remark.
+
+When she had gone, Charley turned to old Louis.
+
+"I don't want to turn your customers away," he said quietly, "but there
+it is!  I don't need to answer questions as a part of the business, do
+I?"
+
+There was a sour grin on the face of old Trudel.  He grunted some
+inaudible answer, then, after a pause, added: "I'd have been hung for
+murder, if she'd answered the question I asked her once as I wanted her
+to."
+
+He opened and shut his shears with a sardonic gesture.
+
+Charley smiled, and went to the window.  For a minute he stood watching
+Madame Dauphin and Rosalie at the post-office door.  The memory of his
+talk with Rosalie was vivid to him at the moment.  He was thinking also
+that he had not a penny in the world to pay for the rest of the paper he
+had bought.  He turned round and put on his coat slowly.
+
+"What are you doing that for?" asked the old man, with a kind of snarl,
+yet with trepidation.
+
+"I don't think I'll work any more to-day."
+
+"Not work!  Smoke of the devil, isn't Sunday enough to play in?  You're
+not put out by that fool wife of Dauphin's?"
+
+"Oh no--not that!  I want an understanding about wages."
+
+To Louis the dread crisis had come.  He turned a little green, for he was
+very miserly-for the love of God.
+
+He had scarcely realised what was happening when Charley first sat down
+on the bench beside him.  He had been taken by surprise.  Apart from the
+excitement of the new experience, he had profited by the curiosity of the
+public, for he had orders enough to keep him busy until summer, and he
+had had to give out work to two extra women in the parish, though he had
+never before had more than one working for him.  But his ruling passion
+was strong in him.  He always remembered with satisfaction that once when
+the Cure was absent and he was supposed to be dying, a priest from
+another parish came, and, the ministrations over, he had made an offering
+of a gold piece.  When the young priest hesitated, his fingers had crept
+back to the gold piece, closed on it, and drawn it back beneath the
+coverlet again.  He had then peacefully fallen asleep.  It was a gracious
+memory.
+
+"I don't need much, I don't want a great deal," continued Charley when
+the tailor did not answer, "but I have to pay for my bed and board, and I
+can't do it on nothing."
+
+"How have you done it so far?" peevishly replied the tailor.
+
+"By working after hours at carpentering up there"--he made a gesture
+towards Vadrome Mountain.  "But I can't go on doing that all the time,
+or I'll be like you too soon."
+
+"Be like me!"  The voice of the tailor rose shrilly.
+
+"Be like me!  What's the matter with me?"
+
+"Only that you're in a bad way before your time, and that you mayn't get
+out of this hole without stepping into another.  You work too hard,
+Monsieur Trudel."
+
+"What do you want--wages?"
+
+Charley inclined his head.  "If you think I'm worth them."
+
+The tailor viciously snipped a piece of cloth.  "How can I pay you wages,
+if you stand there doing nothing?"  "This is my day for doing nothing,"
+Charley answered pleasantly, for the tailor-man amused him, and the
+whimsical mental attitude of his past life was being brought to the
+surface by this odd figure, with big spectacles pushed up on a yellow
+forehead, and shrunken hands viciously clutching the shears.
+
+"You don't mean to say you're not going to work to-day, and this suit of
+clothes promised for to-morrow night--for the Manor House too!"
+
+With a piece of chalk Charley idly made heads on brown paper.  "After
+all, why should clothes be the first thing in one's mind--when they are
+some one else's!  It's a beautiful day outside.  I've never felt the sun
+so warm and the air so crisp and sweet--never in all my life."
+
+"Then where have you lived?" snapped out the tailor with a sneer.
+"You must be a Yankee--they have only what we leave over down there!"
+--he jerked his head southward.  "We don't stop to look at weather here.
+I suppose you did where you come from?"
+
+Charley smiled in a distant sort of way.  "Where I came from, when we
+weren't paid for our work we always stopped to consider our health--and
+the weather.  I don't want a great deal.  I put it to you honestly.  Do
+you want me?  If you do, will you give me enough to live on--enough to
+buy a suit of clothes a year, to pay for food and a room?  If I work for
+you for nothing, I have to live on others for nothing, or kill myself as
+you're doing."
+
+There was no answer at once, and Charley went on: "I came to you because
+I saw you wanted help badly.  I saw that you were hard-pushed and sick--"
+
+"I wasn't sick," interrupted the tailor with a snarl.
+
+"Well, overworked, which is the same thing in the end.  I did the best I
+could: I gave you my hands--awkward enough they were at first, I know,
+but--"
+
+"It's a lie.  They weren't awkward," churlishly cut in the tailor.
+
+"Well, perhaps they weren't so awkward, but they didn't know quite what
+to do--"
+
+"You knew as well as if you'd been taught," came back in a growl.
+
+"Well, then, I wasn't awkward, and I had a knack for the work.  What was
+more, I wanted work.  I wanted to work at the first thing that appealed
+to me.  I had no particular fancy for tailoring--you get bowlegged in
+time!"--the old spirit was fighting with the new--"but here you were at
+work, and there I was idle, and I had been ill, and some one who wasn't
+responsible for me--a stranger-worked for me and cared for me.  Wasn't it
+natural, when you were playing the devil with yourself, that I should
+step in and give you a hand?  You've been better since--isn't that so?"
+The tailor did not answer.
+
+"But I can't go on as we are, though I want only enough to keep me
+going," Charley continued.
+
+"And if I don't give you what you want, you'll leave?"
+
+"No.  I'm never going to leave you.  I'm going to stay here, for you'll
+never get another man so cheap; and it suits me to stay--you need some
+one to look after you."
+
+A curious soft look suddenly flashed into the tailor's eyes.
+
+"Will you take on the business after I'm gone?" he asked at last.
+"It's along time to look ahead, I know," he added quickly, for not in
+words would he acknowledge the possibility of the end.
+
+"I should think so," Charley answered, his eyes on the bright sun and the
+soft snow on the trees beyond the window.
+
+The tailor snatched up a pattern and figured on it for a moment.
+Then he handed it to Charley.  "Will that do?" he asked with anxious,
+acquisitive look, his yellow eyes blinking hard.
+
+Charley looked at it musingly, then said "Yes, if you give me a room
+here."
+
+"I meant board and lodging too," said Louis Trudel with an outburst of
+eager generosity, for, as it was, he had offered about one-half of what
+Charley was worth to him.
+
+Charley nodded.  "Very well, that will do," he said, and took off his
+coat and went to work.  For a long time they worked silently.  The tailor
+was in great good-humour; for the terrible trial was over, and he now had
+an assistant who would be a better tailor than himself.  There would be
+more profit, more silver nails for the church door, and more masses for
+his soul.
+
+"The Cure says you are all right.  .  .  .  When will you come here?" he
+said at last.
+
+"To-morrow night I shall sleep here," answered Charley.
+
+So it was arranged that Charley should come to live in the tailor's
+house, to sleep in the room which the tailor had provided for a wife
+twenty-five years before--even for her that was now known as Madame
+Dauphin.
+
+All morning the tailor chuckled to himself.  When they sat down at noon
+to a piece of venison which Charley had prepared himself--taking the
+frying-pan out of the hands of Margot Patry, the old servant, and cooking
+it to a turn--Louis Trudel saw his years lengthen to an indefinite
+period.  He even allowed himself to nervously stand up, bow, shake
+Charley's hand jerkingly, and say:
+
+"M'sieu', I care not what you are or where you come from, or even if
+you're a Protestant, perhaps an Englishman.  You're a gentleman and a
+tailor, and old Louis Trudel will not forget you.  It shall be as you
+said this morning--it is no day for work.  We will play, and the clothes
+for the Manor can go to the devil.  Smoke of hell-fire, I will go and
+have a pipe with that, poor wretch the Notary!"
+
+So, a wonderful thing happened.  Louis Trudel, on a week-day and a
+market-day, went to smoke a pipe with Narcisse Dauphin, and to tell him
+that M. Mallard was going to stay with him for ever, at fine wages.  He
+also announced that he had paid this whole week's wages in advance; but
+he did not tell what he did not know--that half the money had already
+been given to old Margot, whose son lay ill at home with a broken leg,
+and whose children were living on bread and water.  Charley had slowly
+drawn from the woman the story of her life as he sat by the kitchen fire
+and talked to her, while her master was talking to the Notary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE TAILOR MAKES A MIDNIGHT FORAY
+
+Since the day Charley had brought home the paper bought at the post-
+office, and water-marked Kathleen, he had, at odd times, written down
+his thoughts, and promptly torn the paper up again or put it in the fire.
+In the repression of the new life, in which he must live wholly alone, so
+far as all past habits of mind were concerned, it was a relief to record
+his passing reflections, as he had been wont to do when the necessity for
+it was less.  Writing them here was like the bursting of an imprisoned
+stream; it was relaxing the ceaseless eye of vigilance; freeing an
+imprisoned personality.  This personality was not yet merged into that
+which must take its place, must express itself in the involuntary acts
+which tell of a habit of mind and body--no longer the imitative and the
+histrionic, but the inherent and the real.
+
+On the afternoon of the day that old Louis agreed to give him wages, and
+went to smoke a pipe with the Notary, Charley scribbled down his thoughts
+on this matter of personality and habit.
+
+"Who knows," he wrote, "which is the real self?  A child comes into the
+world gin-begotten, with the instinct for liquor in his brain, like the
+scent of the fox in the nostrils of the hound.  And that seems the real.
+But the same child caught up on the hands of chance is carried into
+another atmosphere, is cared for by ginhating minds and hearts: habit
+fastens on him--fair, decent, and temperate habit--and he grows up like
+the Cure yonder, a brother of Aaron.  Which is the real?  Is the instinct
+for the gin killed, or covered?  Is the habit of good living mere habit
+and mere acting, in which the real man never lives his real life, or is
+it the real life?
+
+"Who knows!  Here am I, born with a question in my mouth, with the ever-
+present 'non possumus' in me.  Here am I, to whom life was one poor
+futility; to whom brain was but animal intelligence abnormally developed;
+to whom speechless sensibility and intelligence was the only reality; to
+whom nothing from beyond ever sent a flash of conviction, an intimation,
+into my soul--not one.  To me God always seemed a being of dreams, the
+creation of a personal need and helplessness, the despairing cry of the
+victims of futility--And here am I flung like a stone from a sling into
+this field where men believe in God as a present and tangible being; who
+reply to all life's agonies and joys and exultations with the words
+'C'est le bon Dieu.' And what shall I become?  Will habit do its work,
+and shall I cease to be me?  Shall I, in the permanency of habit, become
+like unto this tailor here, whose life narrows into one sole cause; whose
+only wish is to have the Church draw the coverlet of forgiveness and
+safety over him; who has solved all questions in a blind belief or an
+inherited predisposition--which?  This stingy, hard, unhappy man--how
+should he know what I am denied!  Or does he know?  Is it all illusion?
+If there is a God who receives such devotion, to the exclusion of natural
+demand and spiritual anxieties, why does not this tailor 'let his light
+so shine before men that they may see his good works, and glorify his
+Father which is in heaven?' That is it.  Therefore, wherefore, tailor-
+man?  Therefore, wherefore, God?  Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-
+man!"
+
+Seated on his bench in the shop, with his eyes ever and anon raised
+towards the little post-office opposite, he wrote these words.
+Afterwards he sat and thought till the shadows deepened, and the tailor
+came in to supper.  Then he took up the pieces of paper, and, going to
+the fire, which was still lighted of an evening, thrust them inside.
+
+Louis Trudel saw the paper burning, and, glancing down, he noticed that
+one piece--the last--had slipped to the floor and was lying under the
+table.  He saw the pencil still in Charley's hand.  Forthwith his natural
+suspicion leaped up, and the cunning of the monomaniac was upon him.
+With all his belief in le bon Dieu and the Church, Louis Trudel trusted
+no one.  One eye was ever open to distrust man, while the other was ever
+closed with blind belief in Heaven.
+
+As Charley stooped to put wood in the fire, the tailor thrust a foot
+forward and pushed the piece of paper further under the table.
+
+That night the tailor crept down into the shop, felt for the paper in the
+dark, found it, and carried it away to his room.  All kinds of thoughts
+had raged through his diseased mind.  It was a letter, perhaps, and if a
+letter, then he would gain some facts about the man's life.  But if it
+was a letter, why did he burn it?  It was said that he never received a
+letter and never sent one, therefore it was little likely to be a letter.
+if not a letter, then what could it be?  Perhaps the man was English and
+a spy of the English government, for was there not disaffection in some
+of the parishes?  Perhaps it was a plan of robbery.  To such a state of
+hallucination did his weakened mind come, that he forgot the kindly
+feeling he had had for this stranger who had worked for him without pay.
+Suspicion, the bane of sick old age, was hot on him.  He remembered that
+M'sieu' had put an arm through his when they went upstairs, and that now
+increased suspicion.  Why should the man have been so friendly?  To lull
+him into confidence, perhaps, and then to rob and murder him in his
+sleep.  Thank God, his ready money was well hid, and the rest was safe in
+the bank far away!  He crept back to his room with the paper in his hand.
+It was the last sheet of what Charley had written, and had been
+accidentally brushed off on the floor.  It was in French, and, holding
+the candle close, he slowly deciphered the crabbed, characteristic
+handwriting.
+
+His eyes dilated, his yellow cheeks took on spots of unhealthy red, his
+hand trembled.  Anger seized him, and he mumbled the words over and over
+again to himself.  Twice or thrice, as the paper lay in one hand, he
+struck it with the clinched fist of the other, muttering and distraught.
+
+"This tailor here.  .  .  .  This stingy, hard, unhappy man.  .  .  .  If
+there is a God!  .  .  .  Therefore, wherefore, tailor-man?  .  .  .
+Therefore, wherefore, God?  .  .  .  Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-
+man!"
+
+Hatred of himself, blasphemy, the profane and hellish humour of--of the
+infidel!  A Protestant heretic--he was already damned; a robber--you
+could put him in jail; a spy--you could shoot him or tar and feather him;
+a murderer--you could hang him.  But an infide--this was a deadly poison,
+a black danger, a being capable of all crimes.  An infidel--"Therefore,
+wherefore, tailor-man?  .  .  .  Therefore, wherefore, God?  .  .  .
+Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!"
+
+The devil laughing--the devil incarnate come to mock a poor tailor, to
+sow plague through a parish where all were at peace in the bosom of the
+Church.  The tailor had three ruling passions--cupidity, vanity, and
+religion.  Charley had now touched the three, and the whole man was
+alive.  His cupidity had been flattered by the unpaid service of a
+capable assistant, but now he saw that he was paying the devil a wage.
+His vanity was overwhelmed by a satanic ridicule.  His religion and his
+God had been assaulted in so shameful a way that no punishment could be
+great enough for the man of hell.  In religion he was a fanatic; he was a
+demented fanatic now.
+
+He thrust the paper into his pocket, then crept out into the hall and to
+the door of Charley's bedroom.  He put his ear to the door.  After a
+moment he softly raised the latch, and opened the door and listened
+again.  'M'sieu' was in a deep sleep.
+
+Louis Trudel scarcely knew why he had listened, why he had opened the
+door and stood looking at the figure in the bed, barely definable in the
+semi-darkness of the room.  If he had meant harm to the helpless man, he
+had brought no weapon; if he had been curious, there the man was
+peacefully sleeping!
+
+His sick, morbid imagination was so alive, that he scarcely knew what he
+did.  As he stood there listening, hatred and horror in his heart, a
+voice said to him: "Thou shalt do no murder."  The words kept ringing in
+his ears.  Yet he had not thought of murder.  The fancied command itself
+was his first temptation towards such a deed.  He had thought of raising
+the parish, of condign punishment of many sorts, but not this.  As he
+closed the door softly, killing entered his mind and stayed there.  "Thou
+shalt not" had been the first instigation to "Thou shalt."
+
+It haunted him as he returned to his room, undressed himself, and went
+to bed.  He could not sleep.  "Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!"
+The challenge had been to himself.  He must respond to it.  The duty lay
+with him; he must answer this black infidel for the Church, for faith,
+for God.
+
+The more he thought of it, the more Charley's face came before him, with
+the monocle shining and hard in the eye.  The monocle haunted him.  That
+was the infidel's sign.  "Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!"  What
+sign should he show?
+
+Presently he sat up straight in bed.  In another minute he was out and
+dressing.  Five minutes later he was on his way to the parish church.
+When he reached it he took a tool from his pocket and unscrewed a small
+iron cross from the front door.  It was a cross which had been blessed by
+the Pope, and had been brought to Chaudiere by the beloved mother of the
+Cure, now dead.
+
+"When I have done with it I will put it back," he said, as he thrust it
+inside his shirt, and hurried stealthily back to his house.  As he got
+into bed he gave a noiseless, mirthless laugh.  All night he lay with his
+yellow eyes wide open, gazing at the ceiling.  He was up at dawn,
+hovering about the fire in the shop.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE STEALING OF THE CROSS
+
+If Charley had been less engaged with his own thoughts, he would have
+noticed the curious baleful look in the eyes of the tailor; but he was
+deeply absorbed in a struggle that had nothing to do with Louis Trudel.
+
+The old fever of thirst and desire was upon him.  All morning the door of
+Jolicoeur's saloon was opening and shutting before his mind's eye, and
+there was a smell of liquor everywhere.  It was in his nostrils when the
+hot steam rose from the clothes he was pressing, in the thick odour of
+the fulled cloth, in the melting snow outside the door.
+
+Time and again he felt that he must run out of the shop and away to the
+little tavern where white whiskey was sold to unwise habitants.  But he
+fought on.  Here was the heritage of his past, the lengthening chain of
+slavery to his old self--was it his real self?  Here was what would
+prevent him from forgetting all that he had been and not been, all the
+happiness he might have had, all that he had lost--the ceaseless
+reminder.  He was still the victim to a poison which gave not only a
+struggle of body, but a struggle of soul--if he had a soul.
+
+"If he had a soul!"  The phrase kept repeating itself to him even as he
+fought the fever in his throat, resisting the temptation to take that
+medicine which the Curb's brother had sent him.
+
+"If he had a soul!"  The thinking served as an antidote, for by the
+ceaseless iteration his mind was lulled into a kind of drowse.  Again and
+again he went to the pail of water that stood on the window-sill, and
+lifting it to his lips, drank deep and full, to quench the wearing
+thirst.
+
+"If he had a soul!"  He looked at Louis Trudel, silent and morose, the
+clammy yellow of a great sickness in his face and hands, but his mind
+only intent on making a waistcoat--and the end of all things very near!
+The words he had written the night before came to him: "Therefore,
+wherefore, tailor-man?  Therefore, wherefore, God?  .  .  .  Show me a
+sign from Heaven, tailor-man!"  As if in reply to his thoughts there came
+the sound of singing, and of bells ringing in the parish church.
+
+A procession with banners was coming near.  It was a holy day, and
+Chaudiere was mindful of its duties.  The wanderers of the parish had
+come home for Easter.  All who belonged to Chaudiere and worked in the
+woods or shanties, or lived in big cities far away, were returned--those
+who could return--to take the holy communion in the parish church.
+Yesterday the parish had been alive with a pious hilarity.  The great
+church had been crowded beyond the doors, the streets had been full of
+cheerily dressed habitants.  There had, however, come a sudden chill to
+the seemly rejoicings--the little iron cross blessed by the Pope had been
+stolen from the door of the church!
+
+The fact had been told to the Cure as he said the Mass, and from the
+altar steps, before going to the pulpit, he referred to the robbery with
+poignant feeling; for the relic had belonged to a martyr of the Church,
+who, two centuries before, had laid down his life for the Master on the
+coast of Africa.
+
+Louis Trudel had heard the Cure's words, and in his place at the rear of
+the church he smiled sourly to himself.  In due time the little cross
+should be returned, but it had work to do first.  He did not take the
+holy communion this Easter day, or go to confession as was his wont.
+Not, however, until a certain day later did the Cure realise this, though
+for thirty years the tailor had never omitted his Easter-time duties.
+
+The people guessed and guessed, but they knew not on whom to cast
+suspicion at first.  No sane Catholic of Chaudiere could possibly have
+taken the holy thing.  Presently a murmur crept about that M'sieu' might
+have been the thief.  He was not a Catholic, and--who could tell?  Who
+knew where he came from?  Who knew what he had been?  Perhaps a jail-
+bird-robber-murderer!  Charley, however, stitched on, intent upon his own
+struggle.
+
+The procession passed the doorway: men bearing banners with sacred texts,
+acolytes swinging censers, a figure of the Saviour carved in wood borne
+aloft, the Cure under a silk canopy, and a long line of habitants
+following with sacred song.  People fell upon their knees in the street
+as the procession passed, and the Cure's face was bent here and there,
+his hand raised in blessing.
+
+Old Louis got up from his bench, and, putting on a coat over his wool
+jacket, hastened to the doorway, knelt down, made the sign of the cross,
+and said a prayer.  Then he turned quickly towards Charley, who, looking
+at the procession, then at the tailor, then back again at the procession,
+smiled.
+
+Charley was hardly conscious of what he did.  His mind had ranged far
+beyond this scene to the large issues which these symbols represented.
+Was it one universal self-deception?  Was this "religion" the pathetic,
+the soul-breaking make-believe of mortality?  So he smiled--at himself,
+at his own soul, which seemed alone in this play, the skeleton in armour,
+the thing that did not belong.  His own words written that fateful day
+before he died at the Cote Dorion came to him:
+
+"Sacristan, acolyte, player, or preacher, Each to his office, but who
+holds the key?  Death, only Death, thou, the ultimate teacher, Wilt show
+it to me!"
+
+He was suddenly startled from his reverie, through which the procession
+was moving--a cloud of witnesses.  It was the voice of Louis Trudel,
+sharp and piercing:
+
+"Don't you believe in God and the Son of God?"
+
+"God knows!" answered Charley slowly in reply--an involuntary
+exclamation of helplessness, an automatic phrase deflected from its first
+significance to meet a casual need of the mind.  Yet it seemed like
+satire, like a sardonic, even vulgar, humour.  So it struck Louis Trudel,
+who snatched up a hot iron from the fire and rushed forward with a snarl.
+So astounded was Charley that he did not stir.  He was not prepared for
+the sudden onslaught.  He did not put up his hand even, but stared at the
+tailor, who, within a foot of him, stopped short with the iron poised.
+
+Louis Trudel repented in time.  With the cunning of the monomaniac he
+realised that an attack now might frustrate his great stroke.  It would
+bring the village to his shop door, precipitate the crisis upon the wrong
+incident.
+
+As it chanced, only one person in Chaudiere saw the act.  That was
+Rosalie Evanturel across the way.  She saw the iron raised, and looked
+for M'sieu' to knock the tailor down; but, instead, she beheld the tailor
+go back and put the iron on the fire again.  She saw also that M'sieu'
+was speaking, though she could hear no words.
+
+Charley's words were simple enough.  "I beg your pardon, Monsieur," he
+said across the room to old Louis; "I meant no offence at all.  I was
+trying to think it out in a human sort of way.  I suppose I wanted a sign
+from Heaven--wanted too much, no doubt."
+
+The tailor's lips twitched, and his hand convulsively clutched the shears
+at his side.
+
+"It is no matter now," he answered shortly.  "I have had signs from
+Heaven; perhaps you will have one too!"
+
+"It would be worth while," rejoined Charley musingly.  Charley wondered
+bitterly if he had made an irreparable error in saying those ill-chosen
+words.  This might mean a breach between them, and so make his position
+in the parish untenable.  He had no wish to go elsewhere--where could he
+go?  It mattered little what he was, tinker or tailor.  He had now only
+to work his way back to the mind of the peasant; to be an animal with
+intelligence; to get close to mother earth, and move down the declivity
+of life with what natural wisdom were possible.  It was his duty to adapt
+himself to the mind of such as this tailor; to acquire what the tailor
+and his like had found--an intolerant belief and an inexpensive security,
+to be got through yielding his nature to the great religious dream.  And
+what perfect tranquillity, what smooth travelling found therein.
+
+Gazing across the street towards the little post-office, he saw Rosalie
+Evanturel at the window.  He fell to thinking about her.  Rosalie, on her
+part, kept wondering what old Louis' violence meant.
+
+Presently she saw a half-dozen men come quickly down the street, and,
+before they reached the tailorshop, stand in a group talking excitedly.
+Afterwards one came forward from the others quickly--Filion Lacasse the
+saddler.  He stopped short at the tailor's door.  Looking at Charley, he
+exclaimed roughly:
+
+"If you don't hand out the cross you stole from the church door, we'll
+tar and feather you, M'sieu'."  Charley looked up, surprised.  It had
+never occurred to him that they could associate him with the theft.
+"I know nothing of the cross," he said quietly.  "You're the only heretic
+in the place.  You've done it.  Who are you?  What are you doing here in
+Chaudiere?"
+
+"Working at my trade," was Charley's quiet answer.  He looked towards
+Louis Trudel, as though to see how he took this ugly charge.
+
+Old Louis responded at once.  "Get away with you, Filion Lacasse," he
+croaked.  "Don't come here with your twaddle.  M'sieu' hasn't stole the
+cross.  What does he want with a cross?  He's not a Catholic."
+
+"If he didn't steal the cross, why, he didn't," answered the saddler;
+"but if he did, what'll you say for yourself, Louis?  You call yourself a
+good Catholic--bah!--when you've got a heretic living with you."
+
+"What's that to you?" growled the tailor, and reached out a nervous hand
+towards the iron.  "I served at the altar before you were born.  Sacre!
+I'll make your grave-clothes yet, and be a good Catholic when you're in
+the churchyard.  Be off with you.  Ach," he sharply added, when Filion
+did not move, "I'll cut your hair for you!"  He scrambled off the bench
+with his shears.
+
+Filion Lacasse disappeared with his friends, and the old man settled back
+on his bench.
+
+Charley, looking up quietly from his work, said "Thank you, Monsieur."
+
+He did not notice what an evil look was in Louis Trudel's face as it
+turned towards him, but Rosalie Evanturel, standing outside, saw it; and
+she stole back to the post-office ill at ease and wondering.
+
+All that day she watched the tailor's shop, and even when the door was
+shut in the evening, her eyes were fastened on the windows.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting
+Suspicion, the bane of sick old age
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT OF WAY
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 3.
+
+
+
+XIX.      THE SIGN FROM HEAVEN
+XX.       THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR
+XXI.      THE CURE HAS AN INSPIRATION
+XXII.     THE WOMAN WHO SAW
+XXIII.    THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT TELL
+XXIV.     THE SEIGNEUR TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME
+XXV.      THE COLONEL TELLS HIS STORY
+XXVI.     A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST
+XXVII.    OUT ON THE OLD TRAIL
+XXVIII.   THE SEIGNEUR GIVES A WARNING
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE SIGN FROM HEAVEN
+
+The agitation and curiosity possessing Rosalie all day held her in the
+evening when the wooden shutters of the tailor's shop were closed and
+only a flickering light showed through the cracks.  She was restless and
+uneasy during supper, and gave more than one unmeaning response to the
+remarks of her crippled father, who, drawn up for supper in his wheel-
+chair, was more than usually inclined to gossip.
+
+Damase Evanturel's mind was stirred concerning the loss of the iron
+cross; the threat made by Filion Lacasse and his companions troubled him.
+The one person beside the Cure, Jo Portugais, and Louis Trudel, to whom
+M'sieu' talked much, was the postmaster, who sometimes met him of an
+evening as he was taking the air.  More than once he had walked behind
+the wheel-chair and pushed it some distance, making the little crippled
+man gossip of village matters.
+
+As the two sat at supper the postmaster was inclined to take a serious
+view of M'sieu's position.  He railed at Filion Lacasse; he called the
+suspicious habitants clodhoppers, who didn't know any better--which was
+a tribute to his own superior birth; and at last, carried away by a
+feverish curiosity, he suggested that Rosalie should go and look through
+the cracks in the shutters of the tailor-shop and find out what was going
+on within.  This was indignantly rejected by Rosalie, but the more she
+thought, the more uneasy she became.  She ceased to reply to her father's
+remarks, and he at last relapsed into gloom, and said that he was tired
+and would go to bed.  Thereupon she wheeled him inside his bedroom, bade
+him good-night, and left him to his moodiness, which, however, was soon
+absorbed in a deep sleep, for the mind of the little grey postmaster
+could no more hold trouble or thought than a sieve.
+
+Left alone, Rosalie began to be tortured.  What were they doing in the
+house opposite?
+
+Go and look through the windows?  But she had never spied on people in
+her life!  Yet would it be spying?  Would it not be pardonable?  In the
+interest of the man who had been attacked in the morning by the tailor,
+who had been threatened by the saddler, and concerning whom she had seen
+a signal pass between old Louis and Filion Lacasse, would it not be a
+humane thing to do?  It might be foolish and feminine to be anxious, but
+did she not mean well, and was it not, therefore, honourable?
+
+The mystery inflamed her imagination.  Charley's passiveness when he was
+assaulted by old Louis and afterwards threatened by the saddler seemed to
+her indifference to any sort of danger--the courage of the hopeless life,
+maybe.  Instantly her heart overflowed with sympathy.  Monsieur was not a
+Catholic perhaps?  Well, so much the more he should be befriended, for he
+was so much the more alone and helpless.  If a man was born a Protestant
+--or English--he could not help it, and should not be punished in this
+world for it, since he was sure to be punished in the next.
+
+Her mind became more and more excited.  The postoffice had been long
+since closed, and her father was asleep--she could hear him snoring.  It
+was ten o'clock, and there was still a light in the tailor's shop.
+Usually the light went out before nine o'clock.  She went to the post-
+office door and looked out.  The streets were empty; there was not a
+light burning anywhere, save in the house of the Notary.  Down towards
+the river a sleigh was making its way over the thin snow of spring, and
+screeching on the stones.  Some late revellers, moving homewards from the
+Trois Couronnes, were roaring at the top of their voices the habitant
+chanson, 'Le Petit Roger Bontemps':
+
+                   "For I am Roger Bontemps,
+                         Gai, gai, gai!
+                    With drink I am full and with joy content,
+                         Gai, gaiment!"
+
+The chanson died away as she stood there, and still the light was burning
+in the shop opposite.  A thought suddenly came to her.  She would go over
+and see if the old housekeeper, Margot Patry, had gone to bed.  Here was
+the solution to the problem, the satisfaction of modesty and propriety.
+
+She crossed the street quickly, hurried round the corner of the house,
+and was passing the side-window of the shop, when a crack in the shutters
+caught her eye.  She heard something fall on the floor within.  Could it
+be that the tailor and M'sieu' were working at so late an hour?  She had
+an irresistible impulse, and glued her eye to the crack.
+
+But presently she started back with a smothered cry.  There by the great
+fireplace stood Louis Trudel picking up a red-hot cross with a pair of
+pincers.  Grasping the iron firmly just below the arms of the cross, the
+tailor held it up again.  He looked at it with a wild triumph, yet with a
+malignancy little in keeping with the object he held--the holy relic he
+had stolen from the door of the parish church.  The girl gave a low cry
+of dismay.
+
+She saw old Louis advance stealthily towards the door of the shop leading
+into the house.  In bewilderment, she stood still an instant, then, with
+a sudden impulse, she ran to the kitchen-door and tried it softly.  It
+was not locked.  She opened it, entered quickly, and found old Margot
+standing in the middle of the room in her night-dress.
+
+"Oh, Rosalie, Rosalie!" cried the old woman, "something's going to
+happen.  M'sieu' Trudel has been queer all evening.  I peeped in the key-
+hole of the shop just now, and--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I've seen too.  Come!" said Rosalie, and going quickly to the
+door, opened it, and passed through to another room.  Here she opened
+another door, leading into the hall between the shop and the house.
+Entering the hall, she saw a glimmer of light above.  It was the reddish
+glow of the iron cross held by old Louis.  She crept softly up the stone
+steps.  She heard a door open very quietly.  She hurried now, and came to
+the landing.  She saw the door of Charley's room open--all the village
+knew what room he slept in--and the moonlight was streaming in at the
+window.
+
+She saw the sleeping man on the bed, and the tailor standing over him.
+Charley was lying with one arm thrown above his head; the other lay over
+the side of the bed.
+
+As she rushed forward, divining old Louis' purpose, the fiery cross
+descended, and a voice cried: "'Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!'"
+
+This voice was drowned by that of another, which, gasping with agony out
+of a deep sleep, as the body sprang upright, cried: "God-oh God!"
+Rosalie's hand grasped old Louis' arm too late.  The tailor sprang back
+with a horrible laugh, striking her aside, and rushed out to the landing.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur!" cried Rosalie, and, snatching a scarf from her
+bosom, thrust it in upon the excoriated breast, as Charley, hardly
+realising what had happened, choked back moans of pain.
+
+"What did he do?" he gasped.
+
+"The iron cross from the church door!" she answered.  "A minute, one
+minute, Monsieur!"
+
+She rushed out upon the landing in time to see the tailor stumble on the
+stairs and fall head forwards to the bottom, at the feet of Margot Patry.
+
+Rosalie paid no heed to the fallen man.  "Oil!  flour!  Quick!" she
+cried.  "Quick!  Quick!"  She stepped over the body of the tailor,
+snatched at Margot's arm, and dragged her into the kitchen.  "Quick-oil
+and flour!"
+
+The old woman showed her where they were, moaning and whining.
+
+"He tried to kill Monsieur," cried Rosalie,  "burned him on the breast
+with the holy cross!"
+
+With oil and flour she hurried back, over the body of the tailor, up the
+stairs, and into Charley's room.  Charley was now out of bed and half
+dressed, though choking with pain, and preserving consciousness only by a
+great effort.
+
+"Good Mademoiselle!" he said.
+
+She took the scarf off gently, soaked it in oil and splashed it with
+flour, and laid it quickly back on the burnt flesh.
+
+Margot came staggering into the room.
+
+"I cannot rouse him.  I cannot rouse him.  He is dead!  He is dead!" she
+whimpered.
+
+"He--"
+
+Charley swayed forward towards the woman, recovered himself, and said:
+
+"Now not a word of what he did to me, remember.  Not one word, or you
+will go to jail with him.  If you keep quiet, I'll say nothing.  He
+didn't know what he was doing."  He turned to Rosalie.  "Not a word of
+this, please," he moaned.  "Hide the cross."
+
+He moved towards the door.  Rosalie saw his purpose, and ran out ahead of
+him and down the stairs to where the tailor lay prone on his face, one
+hand still holding the pincers.  The little iron cross lay in a dark
+corner.  Stooping, she lifted up the tailor's head, then felt his heart.
+
+"He is not dead," she cried.  "Quick, Margot, some water," she added, to
+the whimpering woman.  Margot tottered away, and came again presently
+with the water.
+
+"I will go for some one to help," Rosalie said, rising to her feet, as
+she saw Charley come slowly down the staircase, his face white with
+misery.  She ran and took his arm to help him down.
+
+"No, no, dear Mademoiselle," he said; "I shall be all right presently.
+You must get help to carry him up stairs.  Bring the Notary; he and I can
+carry him up."
+
+"You, Monsieur!  You--it would kill you!  You are terribly hurt."
+
+"I must help to carry him, else people will be asking questions," he
+answered painfully.  "He is going to die.  It must not be known--you
+understand!"  His eyes searched the floor until they found the cross.
+Rosalie picked it up with the pincers.  "It must not be known what he did
+to me," Charley said to the muttering and weeping old woman.  He caught
+her shoulder with his hand, for she seemed scarcely to heed.
+
+She nodded.  "Yes, yes, M'sieu', I will never speak."  Rosalie was
+standing in the door.  "Go quickly, Mademoiselle," he said.  She
+disappeared with the iron cross, and flying across the street, thrust it
+inside the post-office, then ran to the house of the Notary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR
+
+Twenty minutes later the tailor was lying in his bed, breathing, but
+still unconscious, the Notary, M'sieu', and the doctor of the next
+parish, who by chance was in Chaudiere, beside him.  Charley's face was
+drawn and haggard with pain, for he had helped to carry old Louis to bed,
+though every motion of his arms gave him untold agony.  In the doorway
+stood Rosalie and Margot Patry.
+
+"Will he live?" asked the Notary.
+
+The doctor shook his head.  "A few hours, perhaps.  He fell downstairs?"
+
+Charley nodded.  There was silence for some time, as the doctor went on
+with his ministrations, and the Notary sat drumming his fingers on the
+little table beside the bed.  The two women stole away to the kitchen,
+where Rosalie again pressed secrecy on Margot.  In the interest of the
+cause she had even threatened Margot with a charge of complicity.  She
+had heard the phrase "accessory before the fact," and she used it now
+with good effect.
+
+Then she took some fresh flour and oil, and thrust them inside the
+bedroom door where Charley now sat clinching his hands and fighting down
+the pain.  Careful as ever of his personal appearance, however, he had
+brushed every speck of flour from his clothes, and buttoned his coat up
+to the neck.
+
+Nearly an hour passed, and then the Cure appeared.  When he entered the
+sick man's room, Charley followed, and again Rosalie and old Margot came
+and stood within the doorway.
+
+"Peace be to this house!" said the Cure.  He had a few minutes of
+whispered conversation with the doctor, and then turned to Charley.
+
+"He fell down-stairs, Monsieur?  You saw him fall?"
+
+"I was in my room--I heard him fall, Cure."
+
+"Had he been ill during the day?"
+
+"He appeared to be feeble, and he seemed moody."
+
+"More than usual, Monsieur?"  The Cure had heard of the incident of the
+morning when Filion Lacasse accused Charley of stealing the cross.
+
+"Rather more than usual, Monsieur."
+
+The Cure turned towards the door.  "You, Mademoiselle Rosalie, how came
+you to know?"
+
+"I was in the kitchen with Margot, who was not well."
+
+The Cure looked at Margot, who tearfully nodded.  "I was ill," she said,
+"and Rosalie was here with me.  She helped M'sieu' and me.  Rosalie is a
+good girl, and kind to me," she whimpered.
+
+The Cure seemed satisfied, and after looking at the sick man for a
+moment, he came close to Charley.  "I am deeply pained at what happened
+to-day," he said courteously.  "I know you have had nothing to do with
+the beloved little cross."
+
+The Notary tried to draw near and listen, but the Cure's look held him
+back.  The doctor was busy with his patient.
+
+"You are only just, Monsieur," said Charley in response, wishing that
+these kind eyes were fixed anywhere than on his face.
+
+All at once the Cure laid a hand upon his arm.  "You are ill," he said
+anxiously.  "You look very ill indeed.  See, Vaudrey," he added to the
+doctor, "you have another patient here!"
+
+The friendly, oleaginous doctor came over and peered into Charley's face.
+"Ill-sure enough!" he said.  "Look at this sweat!" he pointed to the
+drops of perspiration on Charley's forehead.  "Where do you suffer?"
+
+"Severe pains all through my body," Charley answered simply, for it
+seemed easier to tell the truth, as near as might be.
+
+"I must look to you," said the doctor.  "Go and lie down, and I will come
+to you."
+
+Charley bowed, but did not move.  Just then two things drew the attention
+of all: the tailor showed returning consciousness, and there was noise of
+many voices outside the house and the tramping of feet below-stairs.
+
+"Go and tell them no one must come up," said the doctor to the Notary,
+and the Cure made ready to say the last offices for the dying.
+
+Presently the noise below-stairs diminished, and the priest's voice rose
+in the office, vibrating and touching.  The two women sank to their
+knees, the doctor followed, his eyes still fixed on the dying man.
+Presently, however, Charley did the same; for something penetrating and
+reasonable in the devotion touched him.
+
+All at once Louis Trudel opened his eyes.  Staring round with acute
+excitement, his eyes fell on the Cure, then upon Charley.
+
+"Stop--stop, M'sieu' le Cure!" he cried.  "There's other work to do."
+He gasped and was convulsed, but the pallor of his face was alive with
+fire from the distempered eyes.  He snatched from his breast the paper
+Charley had neglected to burn.  He thrust it into the Curb's hand.
+
+"See--see!" he croaked.  "He is an infidel--black infidel--from hell!"
+His voice rose in a kind of shriek, piercing to every corner of the
+house.  He pointed at Charley with shaking finger.
+
+"He wrote it there--on that paper.  He doesn't--believe in God."
+
+His strength failed him, his hand clutched tremblingly at the air.  He
+laughed, a dry, crackling laugh, and his mouth opened twice or thrice to
+speak, but gasping breaths only came forth.  With a last effort, however-
+-as the priest, shocked, stretched out his hand and said: "Have done,
+have done, Trudel!"--he cried, in a voice that quavered shrilly:
+
+"He asked--tailor-man--sign--from--Heaven.  Look-look!"  He pointed
+wildly at Charley.  "I--gave him--sign of--"
+
+But that was the end.  With a shudder the body collapsed in a formless
+heap, and the tailor-man was gone to tell of the work he had done for his
+faith on earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CURE HAS AN INSPIRATION
+
+White and malicious faces peered through the doorway.  There was an ugly
+murmur coming up the staircase.  Many habitants had heard Louis Trudel's
+last words, and had passed them on with vehement exaggeration.
+
+Chaudiere had been touched in its most superstitious corner.
+Protestantism was a sin, but atheism was a crime against humanity.
+The Protestant might be the victim of a mistake, but the atheist was the
+deliberate son of darkness, the source of fearful dangers.  An atheist in
+their midst was like a scorpion in a flower-bed--no one could tell when
+and where he would sting.  Rough misdemeanours among them had been many,
+there had once been a murder in the parish, but the undefined horrors of
+infidelity were more shameful than crimes the eye could see.
+
+To the minds of these excited people the tailor-man's death was due to
+the infidel before them.  They were ready to do all that might become a
+Catholic intent to avenge the profaned honour of the Church and the
+faith.  Bodily harm was the natural form for their passion to take.
+
+"Bring him out--let us have him!" they cried with fierce gestures, to
+which Rosalie Evanturel turned a pained, indignant face.
+
+As the Curb stood with the paper in his hand, his face set and bitter,
+Rosalie made a step forward.  She meant to tell the truth about Louis
+Trudel, and show how good this man was, who stood charged with an
+imaginary crime.  But she met the warning eye of the man himself, calm
+and resolute, she saw the suffering in the face, endured with what
+composure! and she felt instantly that she must obey him, and that--who
+could tell?--his plan might be the best in the end.  She looked at the
+Cure anxiously.  What would he say and do?  In the Cure's heart and
+mind a great struggle was going on.  All his inherent prejudice, the
+hereditary predisposition of centuries, the ingrain hatred of atheism,
+were alive in him, hardening his mind against the man before him.  His
+first impulse was to let Charley take his fate at the hands of the people
+of Chaudiere, whatever it might be.  But as he looked at the man, as he
+recalled their first meeting, and remembered the simple, quiet life he
+had lived among them--charitable, and unselfish--the barriers of creed
+and habit fell down, and tears unbidden rushed into his eyes.
+
+The Cure had, all at once, the one great inspiration of his life--its one
+beautiful and supreme imagining.  For thus he reasoned swiftly:
+
+Here he was, a priest who had shepherded a flock of the faithful passed
+on to him by another priest before him, who again had received them from
+a guardian of the fold--a family of faithful Catholics whose thoughts
+never strayed into forbidden realms.  He had done no more than keep them
+faithful and prevent them from wandering--counselling, admonishing,
+baptising, and burying, giving in marriage and blessing, sending them on
+their last great journey with the cachet of Holy Church upon them.  But
+never once, never in all his life, had he brought a lost soul into the
+fold.  If he died to-night, he could not say to St. Peter, when he
+arrived at Heaven's gate: "See, I have saved a soul!"  Before
+the Throne he could not say to Him who cried: "Go ye into all the world
+and preach the gospel to every creature"--he could not say: "Lord,
+by Thy grace I found this soul in the wilderness, in the dark and the
+loneliness, having no God to worship, denial and rebellion in his heart;
+and behold, I took him to my breast, and taught him in Thy name, and led
+him home to Thy haven, the Church!"
+
+Thus it was that the Cure dreamed a dream.  He would set his life to
+saving this lost soul.  He would rescue him from the outer darkness.
+
+His face suffused, he handed the paper in his hand back to the man who
+had written the words upon it.  Then he lifted his hand against the
+people at the door and the loud murmuring behind them.
+
+"Peace--peace!" he said, as though from the altar.  "Leave this room of
+death, I command you.  Go at once to your homes.  This man"--he pointed
+to Charley--"is my friend.  Who seeks to harm him, would harm me.  Go
+hence and pray.  Pray for yourselves, pray for him, and for me; and pray
+for the troubled soul of Louis Trudel.  Go in peace."
+
+Soon afterwards the house was empty, save for the Cure, Charley, old
+Margot, and the Notary.
+
+That night Charley sat in the tailor's bedroom, rigid and calm, though
+racked with pain, and watched the candles flickering beside the dead
+body.  He was thinking of the Cure's last words to the people.
+
+"I wonder--I wonder," he said, and through his eyeglass he stared at the
+crucifix that threw a shadow on the dead man's face.  Morning found him
+there.  As dawn crept in he rose to his feet.  "Whither now?" he said,
+like one in a dream.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE WOMAN WHO SAW
+
+Up to the moment of her meeting with Charley, Rosalie Evanturel's life
+had been governed by habit, which was lightly coloured by temperament.
+Since the eventful hour on Vadrome Mountain it had become a life of
+temperament, in which habit was involuntary and mechanical.  She did her
+daily duties with a good heart, but also with a sense superior to the
+practical action.  This grew from day to day, until, in the tragical days
+wherein she had secretly played a great part, she moved as in a dream,
+but a dream so formal that no one saw any change taking place in her,
+or associated her with the events happening across the way.
+
+She had been compelled to answer many questions, for it was known she was
+in the tailor's house when Louis Trudel fell down-stairs, but what more
+was there to tell than that she had run for the Notary, and sent word to
+the Cure, and that she was present when the tailor died, charging M'sieu'
+with being an infidel?  At first she was ill disposed to answer any
+questions, but she soon felt that attitude would only do harm.  For the
+first time in her life she was face to face with moral problems--the
+beginning of sorrow, of knowledge, and of life.
+
+In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they
+may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve.  Secrecy means
+evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind.  To the primitive
+mind, with its direct yes and no, there is danger of it becoming a
+tragical problem ere it is realised that truth is various and diverse.
+Perhaps even with that Mary who hid the matter in her heart--the
+exquisite tragedy and glory of Christendom--there was a delicate feeling
+of guilt, the guilt of the hidden though lofty and beautiful thing.
+
+If secrecy was guilt, then Charley and Rosalie were bound together by a
+bond as strong as death: Rosalie held the key to a series of fateful days
+and doings.
+
+In ordinary course, they might have known each other for five years and
+not have come to this sensitive and delicate association.  With one great
+plunge she had sprung into the river of understanding.  In the moment
+that she had thrust her scarf into his scorched breast, in that little
+upper room, the work of years had been done.
+
+As long as he lived, that mark must remain on M'sieu's breast--the red,
+smooth scar of a cross!  She had seen the sort of shining scar a bad burn
+makes, and at thought of it she flushed, trembled, and turned her head
+away, as though some one were watching her.  Even in the night she
+flushed and buried her face in the pillow when the thought flashed
+through her mind; though when she had soaked the scarf in oil and flour
+and laid it on the angry wound she had not flushed at all, was
+determined, quiet, and resourceful.
+
+That incident had made her from a girl into a woman, from a child of the
+convent into a child of the world.  She no longer thought and felt as she
+had done before.  What she did think or feel could not easily have been
+set down, for her mind was one tremulous confusion of unusual thoughts,
+her heart was beset by new feelings, her imagination, suddenly finding
+itself, was trying its wings helplessly.  The past was full of wonder and
+event, the present full of surprises.
+
+There was M'sieu' established already in Louis Trudel's place, having
+been granted a lease of the house and shop by the Curte, on the part of
+the parish, to which the property had been left; receiving also a gift of
+the furniture and of old Margot, who remained where she had been so many
+years.  She could easily see Charley at work--pale and suffering still
+--for the door was generally open in the sweet April weather, with the
+birds singing, and the trees bursting into blossom.  Her wilful
+imagination traced the cross upon his breast--it almost seemed as if it
+were outside upon his clothes, exposed to every eye, a shining thing all
+fire, not a wound inside, for which old Margot prepared oiled linen now.
+
+The parish was as perturbed as her own mind, for the mystery of the
+stolen cross had never been cleared up, and a few still believed that
+M'sieu' had taken it.  They were of those who kept hinting at dark things
+which would yet be worked upon the infidel in the tailor's shop.  These
+were they to whom the Curb's beautiful ambition did not appeal.  He had
+said that if the man were an infidel, then they must pray that he be
+brought into the fold; but a few were still suspicious, and they said in
+Rosalie's presence: "Where is the little cross?  M'sieu' knows."
+
+He did know.  That was the worst of it.  The cross was in her possession.
+Was it not necessary, then, to quiet suspicion for his sake?  She had
+locked the relic away in a cupboard in her bedroom, and she carried the
+key of it always in her pocket.  Every day she went and looked at it, as
+at some ghostly token.  To her it was a symbol, not of supernatural
+things, but of life in its new reality to her.  It was M'sieu', it was
+herself, it was their secret--she chafed inwardly that Margot should
+share a part of that secret.  If it were only between their two selves--
+between M'sieu' and herself!  If Margot--she paused suddenly, for she was
+going to say, If Margot would only die!  She was not wicked enough to
+wish that; yet in the past few weeks she had found herself capable of
+thinking things beyond the bounds of any past experience.
+
+She found a solution at last.  She would go to-night secretly and nail
+the cross again on the church door, and so stop the chatter of evil
+tongues.  The moon set very early now, and as every one in Chaudiere was
+supposed to be in bed by ten o'clock, the chances of not being seen were
+in her favour.  She received the final impetus to her resolution by a
+quarrelsome and threatening remark of Jo Portugais to some sharp-tongued
+gossip in the post-office.  She was glad that Jo should defend M'sieu',
+but she was jealous of his friendship for the tailor.  Besides, did there
+not appear to be a secret between Jo and M'sieu'?  Was it not possible
+that Jo knew where M'sieu' came from, and all about him?  Of late Jo had
+come in and gone out of the shop oftener than in the past, had even
+brought her bunches of mosses for her flower-pots, the first budding
+lilacs, and some maple-sugar made from the trees on Vadrome Mountain.
+She remembered that when she was a girl at school, years ago--ten years
+ago--Jo Portugais, then scarcely out of his teens, a cheerful, pleasant,
+quick-tempered lad, had brought her bunches of the mountain-ash berry;
+that once he had mended the broken runner of her sled; and yet another
+time had sent her a birch-bark valentine at the convent, where it was
+confiscated by the Mother Superior.  Since those days he had become a
+dark morose figure, living apart from men, never going to confession,
+seldom going to Mass, unloving and unlovable.
+
+There was only one other person in the parish more unloved.  That was the
+woman called Paulette Dubois, who lived in the little house at the outer
+gate of the Manor.  Paulette Dubois had a bad name in the parish--so bad
+that all women shunned her, and few men noticed her.  Yet no one could
+say that at the present time she did not live a careful life, justifying,
+so far as eye could see, the protection of the Seigneur, M. Rossignol,
+a man of queer habits and queerer dress, a dabbler in physical science,
+a devout Catholic, and a constant friend of the Cure.  He it was who,
+when an effort was made to drive Paulette out of the parish, had said
+that she should not go unless she wished; that, having been born in
+Chaudiere, she had a right to live there and die there; and if she had
+sinned there, the parish was in some sense to blame.  Though he had no
+lodge-gates, and though the seigneury was but a great wide low-roofed
+farmhouse, with an observatory, and a chimney-piece dating from the time
+of Louis the Fourteenth, the Seigneur gave Paulette Dubois a little hut
+at his outer gate, which had been there since the great Count Frontenac
+visited Chaudiere.  Probably Rosalie spoke to Paulette Dubois more often
+than did any one else in the parish, but that was because the woman came
+for little things at the shop, and asked for letters, and every week sent
+one--to a man living in Montreal.  She sent these letters, but not more
+than once in six months did she get a reply, and she had not had one in
+a whole year.  Yet every week she asked, and Rosalie found it hard to
+answer her politely, and sometimes showed it.
+
+So it was that the two disliked each other without good cause, save that
+they were separated by a chasm as wide as a sea.  The one disliked the
+other because she must recognise her; the other chafed because she could
+be recognised by Rosalie officially only.
+
+The late afternoon of the day in which Rosalie decided to nail the cross
+on the church door again, Paulette arrived to ask for letters at the
+moment that the office wicket was closed, and Rosalie had answered that
+it was after office hours, and had almost closed the door in her face.
+As she turned away Jo Portugais came out of the tailor-shop opposite.  He
+saw Paulette, and stood still an instant.  She did the same.  A strange
+look passed across the face of each, then they turned and went in
+opposite directions.
+
+Never in her life had time gone so slowly with Rosalie.  She watched the
+clock.  A dozen times she went to the front door and looked out.  She
+tried to read--it was no use; she tried to spin-her fingers trembled; she
+sorted the letters in the office again, and rearranged every letter and
+parcel and paper in its little pigeonhole--then did it all over again.
+She took out again the letter Paulette had dropped in the letter-box; it
+was addressed in the name of the man at Montreal.  She looked at it in a
+kind of awe, as she had ever done the letters of this woman who was
+without the pale.  They had a sense of mystery, an air of forbidden
+imagination.
+
+She put the letter back, went to the door again, and looked out.  It was
+now time to go.  Drawing a hood over her head, she stepped out into the
+night.  There was a little frost, though spring was well forward, and the
+smell of the rich earth and the budding trees was sweet to the sense.
+The moon had just set, but the stars were shining, and here and there
+patches of snow on the hillside and in the fields added to the light.
+Yet it was not bright enough to see far, and as Rosalie moved down the
+street she did not notice a figure at a little distance behind, walking
+on the new-springing grass by the roadside.  All was quiet at the tavern;
+there was no light in the Notary's house--as a rule, he sat up late,
+reading; and even the fiddle of Maximilian Cour, the baker, was silent.
+The Cure's windows were dark, and the church with its white tin spire
+stood up sentinel-like above the village.
+
+Rosalie had the fateful cross in her hand as she softly opened the gate
+of the churchyard and approached the great oak doors.  Taking a screw-
+driver and some screws from her pocket, she felt with a finger for the
+old screw-holes in the door.  Then she began her work, looking fearfully
+round once or twice at first.  Presently, however, because the screws
+were larger than the old ones, it became much harder; the task called
+forth more strength, and drove all thought of being seen out of her mind
+for a space.  At last, however, she gave the final turn to the handle,
+and every screw was in its place, its top level and smooth with the iron
+of the cross.  She stopped and looked round again with an uneasy feeling.
+She could see no one, hear no one, but she began to tremble, and,
+overcome, she fell on her knees before the door, and, with her fingers on
+the foot of the little cross, prayed passionately; for herself, for
+Monsieur.
+
+Suddenly she heard footsteps inside the church.  They were coming towards
+the doorway, nearer and nearer.  At first she was so struck with terror
+that she could not move.  Then with a little cry she sprang to her feet,
+rushed to the gate, threw it open, ran out into the road, ind wildly on
+towards home.  She did not stop for at least three hundred yards.
+Turning and looking back she saw at the church door a pale round light.
+With another cry she sped on, and did not pause till she reached the
+house.  Then, bursting in and locking the door, she hurried to her room,
+undressed quickly, got into bed without saying her prayers, and buried
+her face in the pillow, shivering and overwrought.
+
+The footsteps she had heard were those of the Cure and Jo Portugais.  The
+Cure had sent for Jo to do some last work upon a little altar, to be used
+the next day for the first time.  The carpenter and the carver in wood
+who were responsible for the work had fallen victims to white whiskey on
+the very last day of their task, and had been driven from the church by
+the Cure, who then sent for Jo.  Rosalie had not seen the light at the
+shrine, as it was on the side of the church farthest from the village.
+
+Their labour finished, the two came towards the front door, the Cure's
+lantern in his hand.  Opening the door, Jo heard the sound of footsteps
+and saw a figure flying down the road.  As the Cure came out
+abstractedly, he glanced sorrowfully towards the place where the little
+cross was used to be.  He gave a wondering cry, and almost dropped the
+lantern.
+
+"See, see, Portugais," he said, "our little cross again!"  Jo nodded.
+"So it seems, Monsieur," he said.
+
+At that instant he saw a hood lying on the ground, and as the Cure held
+up the lantern, peering at the little cross, he hastily picked it up and
+thrust it inside his coat.
+
+"Strange--very strange!" said the Cure.  "It must have been done while
+we were inside.  It was not there when we entered."
+
+"We entered by the vestry door," said Jo.
+
+"Ah, true-true," responded the Cure.
+
+"It comes as it went," said Jo.  "You can't account for some things."
+
+The Cure turned and looked at Jo curiously.  "Are you then so
+superstitious, Jo?  Nonsense; it is the work of human hands--very human
+hands," he added sadly.
+
+"There is nothing to show," said the Cure, seeing Jo's glance round.
+
+"As you see, M'sieu' le Cure."
+
+"Well, it is a mystery which time no doubt will clear up.  Meanwhile, let
+us be thankful to God," said the Cure.
+
+They parted, the Cure going through a side-gate into his own garden,
+Jo passing out of the churchyard-gate through which Rosalie had gone.
+He looked down the road towards the village.
+
+"Well!" said a voice in his ear.  Paulette Dubois stood before him.
+
+"It was you, then," he said, with a glowering look.  "What did you want
+with it?"
+
+"What do you want with the hood in your coat there?"  She threw her head
+back with a spiteful laugh.  "Whose do you think it is?" he said
+quietly.
+
+"You and the schoolmaster made verses about her once."
+
+"It was Rosalie Evanturel?" he asked, with aggravating composure.
+
+"You have the hood-look at it!  You saw her running down the road; I saw
+her come, watched her, and saw her go.  She is a thief--pretty Rosalie--
+thief and postmistress!  No doubt she takes letters too."
+
+"The ones you wait for, and that never come--eh?"  Her face darkened with
+rage and hatred.  "I will tell the world she's a thief," she sneered.
+
+"Who will believe you?"
+
+"You will."  She was hard and fierce, and looked him in the eyes
+squarely.  "You'll give evidence quick enough, if I ask you."
+
+"I wouldn't do anything you asked me to-nothing, if it was to save my
+life."
+
+"I'll prove her a thief without you.  She can't deny it."
+
+"If you try it, I'll--"  He stopped, husky and shaking.
+
+"You'll kill me, eh?  You killed him, and you didn't hang.  Oh no, you
+wouldn't kill me, Jo," she added quickly, in a changed voice.  "You've
+had enough of that kind of thing.  If I'd been you, I'd rather have hung
+--ah, sure!"  She suddenly came close to him.  "Do you hate me so bad,
+Jo?" she said anxiously.  "It's eight years--do you hate me so bad as
+then?"
+
+"You keep your tongue off Rosalie Evanturel," he said, and turned on his
+heel.
+
+She caught his arm.  "We're both bad, Jo.  Can't we be friends?" she
+said eagerly, her voice shaking.
+
+He did not reply.
+
+"Don't drive a woman too hard," she said between her teeth.
+
+"Threats!  Pah!" he rejoined.  "What do you think I'm made of?"
+
+"I'll find that out," she said, and, turning on her heel, ran down the
+road towards the Manor House.  "What had Rosalie to do with the cross?"
+Jo said to himself.  "This is her hood."  He took it out and looked at
+it.  "It's her hood--but what did she want with the cross?"
+
+He hurried on, and as he neared the post-office he saw the figure of a
+woman in the road.  At first he thought it might be Rosalie, but as he
+came nearer he saw it was not.  The woman was muttering and crying.  She
+wandered to and fro bewilderedly.  He came up, caught her by the arm, and
+looked into her face.
+
+It was old Margot Patry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT TELL
+
+"Oh, M'sieu', I am afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what, Margot?"
+
+"Of the last moment, M'sieu' le Cure."
+
+"There will be no last moment to your mind--you will not know it when it
+comes, Margot."
+
+The woman trembled.  "I am not sorry to die.  But I am afraid; it is so
+lonely, M'sieu' le Cure."
+
+"God is with us, Margot."
+
+"When we are born we do not know.  It is on the shoulders of others.
+When we die we know, and we have to answer."
+
+"Is the answering so hard, Margot?"
+
+The woman shook her head feebly and sadly, but did not speak.
+
+"You have been a good mother, Margot."  She made no sign.
+
+"You have been a good neighbour; you have done unto others as you would
+be done by."
+
+She scarcely seemed to hear.
+
+"You have been a good servant--doing your duty in season and out of
+season; honest and just and faithful."
+
+The woman's fingers twitched on the coverlet, and she moved her head
+restlessly.
+
+The Curb almost smiled, for it seemed as if Margot were finding herself
+wanting.  Yet none in Chaudiere but knew that she had lived a blameless
+life--faithful, friendly, a loving and devoted mother, whose health had
+been broken by sleepless attendance at sick-beds by night, while doing
+her daily work at the house of the late Louis Trudel.
+
+"I will answer for the way you have done your duty, Margot," said the
+Cure.  "You have been a good daughter of the Church."
+
+He paused a minute, and in the pause some one rose from a chair by the
+window and looked out on the sunset sky.  It was Charley.  The woman
+heard, and turned her eyes towards him.  "Do you wish him to go?" asked
+the Cure.
+
+"No, no--oh no, M'sieu'!" she said eagerly.  She had asked all day that
+either Rosalie or M'sieu' should be in the room with her.  It would seem
+as though she were afraid she had not courage enough to keep the secret
+of the cross without their presence.  Charley had yielded to her request,
+while he shrank from granting it.  Yet, as he said to himself, the woman
+was keeping his secret--his and Rosalie's--and she had some right to make
+demand.
+
+When the Cure asked the question of old Margot, he turned expectantly,
+and with a sense of relief.  He thought it strange that the Cure should
+wish him to remain.  The Cure, on his part, was well pleased to have him
+in the influence of a Christian death-bed.  A time must come when the
+last confidences of the dying woman could be given to no ears but his
+own, but meanwhile it was good that M'sieu' should be there.
+
+"M'sieu' le Cure," said the dying woman, "must I tell all?"
+
+"All what, Margot?"
+
+"All that is sin?"
+
+"There is no must, Margot."
+
+"If you should ask me, M'sieu'--"
+
+She paused, and the man at the window turned and looked curiously at her.
+He saw the problem in the woman's mind: had she the right to die with the
+secret of another's crime upon her mind?
+
+"The priest does not ask, Margot: it is you who confess your sins.  That
+is between you and God."
+
+The Cure spoke firmly, for he wanted the man at the window to clearly
+understand.
+
+"But if there are the sins of others, and you know, and they trouble your
+soul, M'sieu'?"
+
+"You have nothing to do with the sins of others; it is enough to repent
+of your own sins.  The priest has nothing to do with any sins but those
+confessed by the sinner to himself.  Your own sins are your sole concern
+to-night, Margot."
+
+The woman's face seemed to clear a little, and her eyes wandered to the
+man at the window with less anxiety.  Charley was wondering whether,
+after all, she would have the courage to keep her word, whether spiritual
+terror would surmount the moral attitude of honour.  He was also
+wondering how much right he had to put the strain upon the woman in her
+desperate hour.  "How long did the doctor say I could live?" the woman
+asked presently.
+
+"Till morning, perhaps, Margot."
+
+"I should like to live till sunrise," she answered, "till after
+breakfast.  Rosalie makes good tea," she added musingly.
+
+The Cure almost smiled.  "There is the Living Bread, my daughter."
+
+She nodded.  "But I should like to see the sunrise and have Rosalie bring
+me tea," she persisted.
+
+"Very well, Margot.  We will ask God for that."
+
+Her mind flew back again to the old question.
+
+"Is it wrong to keep a secret?" she asked, her face turned away from the
+man at the window.
+
+"If it is the secret of a sin, and the sin is your own--yes, Margot."
+
+"And if the sin is not your own?"
+
+"If you share the sin, and if the secret means injury to others, and a
+wrong is being done, and the law can right that wrong, then you must go
+to the law, not to your priest."
+
+The Cure's look was grave, even anxious, for he saw that the old woman's
+mind was greatly disturbed.  But her face cleared now, and stayed so.
+"It has all been a mix and a muddle," she answered; "and it hurt my poor
+head, M'sieu' le Cure, but now I think I under stand.  I am not afraid;
+I will confess."
+
+The Cure had made it clear to her that she could carry to her grave the
+secret of the little cross and the work it had done, and so keep her word
+and still not injure her chances of salvation.  She was content.  She no
+longer needed the helpful presence of M'sieu' or Rosalie.  Charley
+instinctively felt what was in her mind, and came towards the bed.
+
+"I will tell Mademoiselle Rosalie about the tea," he said to her.
+
+She looked up at him, almost smiling.  "Thank you, good M'sieu'," she
+said.
+
+"I will confess now, M'sieu' le Cure" she continued.  Charley left the
+room.
+
+Towards morning Margot waked out of a brief sleep, and found the Cure and
+his sister and others about her bed.
+
+"Is it near sunrise?" she whispered.
+
+"It is just sunrise.  See; God has been good," answered the Cure, drawing
+open the blind and letting in the first golden rays.
+
+Rosalie entered the room with a cup of tea, and came towards the bed.
+
+Old Margot looked at the girl, at the tea, and then at the Cure.
+
+"Drink the tea for me, Rosalie," she whispered.  Rosalie did as she was
+asked.
+
+She looked round feebly; her eyes were growing filmy.  "I never gave--so
+much--trouble--before," she managed to say.  "I never had--so much--
+attention....  I can keep--a secret too," she said, setting her lips
+feebly with pride.  "But I--never--had--so much--attention--before; have
+I--Rosalie?"
+
+Rosalie did not need to answer, for the woman was gone.  The crowning
+interest of her life had come all at the last moment, as it were, and she
+had gone away almost gladly and with a kind of pride.
+
+Rosalie also had a hidden pride: the secret was now her very own--hers
+and M'sieu's.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE SEIGNEUR TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME
+
+It was St. Jean Baptiste's day, and French Canada was en fete.  Every
+seigneur, every cure, every doctor, every notary--the chief figures in a
+parish--and every habitant was bent for a happy holiday, dressed in his
+best clothes, moved in his best spirits, in the sweet summer weather.
+
+Bells were ringing, flags were flying, every road and lane was filled
+with caleches and wagons, and every dog that could draw a cart pulled big
+and little people, the old and the blind and the mendicant, the happy and
+the sour, to the village, where there were to be sports and speeches,
+races upon the river, and a review of the militia, arranged by the member
+of the Legislature for the Chaudiere-half of the county.  French soldiers
+in English red coats and carrying British flags were straggling along the
+roads to join the battalion at the volunteers' camp three miles from the
+town, and singing:
+
+                   "Brigadier, respondez Pandore--
+                    Brigadier, vous avez raison."
+
+It was not less incongruous and curious when one group presently broke
+out into 'God save the Queen', and another into the 'Marseillaise', and
+another still into 'Malbrouck s'en va t'en guerre'.  At last songs and
+soldiers were absorbed in the battalion at the rendezvous, and 1the long
+dusty march to the village gave a disciplined note to the gaiety of the
+militant habitant.
+
+At high noon Chaudiere was filled to overflowing.  There were booths and
+tents everywhere--all sorts of cheap-jacks vaunted their wares, merry-go-
+rounds and swings and shooting-galleries filled the usual spaces in the
+perspective.  The Cure, M. Rossignol the Seigneur, and the Notary stood
+on the church steps viewing the scene and awaiting the approach of the
+soldier-citizens.  The Seigneur and the Cure had ceased listening to the
+babble of M. Dauphin, who seemed not to know that his audience closed its
+ears and found refuge in a "Well, well!" or "Think of that!" or an
+abstracted "You surprise me!"
+
+The Notary talked on with eager gesture and wreathing smile, shaking back
+his oiled ringlets as though they trespassed on his smooth, somewhat
+jaundiced cheeks, until it began to dawn upon him that there was no coin
+of real applause to be got at this mint.  Fortune favoured him at the
+critical juncture, for the tailor walked slowly past them, looking
+neither to right nor to left, his eyes cast upon the ground, apparently
+oblivious to all round him.  Almost opposite the church door, however,
+Charley was suddenly stopped by Filion Lacasse, who ran out from a group
+before the tavern, and, standing in front of him with outstretched hand,
+said loudly:
+
+"M'sieu', it's all right.  What you said done it, sure!  I'm a thousand
+dollars richer to-day.  You may be an infidel, but you have a head, and
+you save me money, and you give away your own, and that's good enough for
+me,"--he wrung Charley's hand,--"and I don't care who knows it--sacre!"
+
+Charley did not answer him, but calmly withdrew his hand, smiled, raised
+his hat at the lonely cheer the saddler raised, and passed on, scarce
+conscious of what had happened.  Indeed he was indifferent to it, for he
+had a matter on his mind this day which bitterly absorbed him.
+
+But the Notary was not indifferent.  "Look there, what do you think of
+that?" he asked querulously.  "I am glad to see that Lacasse treats
+Monsieur well," said the Cure.
+
+"What do you think of that, Monsieur?" repeated the Notary excitedly to
+the Seigneur.
+
+The Seigneur put his large gold-handled glass to his eye and looked
+interestedly after Charley for a moment, then answered: "Well, Dauphin,
+what?"
+
+"He's been giving Filion Lacasse advice about the old legacy business,
+and Filion's taken it; and he's got a thousand dollars; and now there's
+all that fuss.  And four months ago Filion wanted to tar and feather him
+for being just what he is to-day--an infidel--an infidel!"
+
+He was going to say something else, but he did not like the look the Cure
+turned on him, and he broke off short.
+
+"Do you regret that he gave Lacasse good advice?" asked the Cure.
+
+"It's taking bread out of other men's mouths."
+
+"It put bread into Filion's mouth.  Did you ever give Lacasse advice?
+The truth now, Dauphin!" said the Seigneur drily.
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, and sound advice too, within the law-precedent and code
+and every legal fact behind."  The Seigneur was a man of laconic speech.
+"Tut, tut, Dauphin; precedent and code and legal fact are only good when
+there's brain behind 'em.  The tailor yonder has brains."
+
+"Ah, but what does he know about the law?" answered Dauphin, with
+acrimonious voice but insinuating manner, for he loved to stand well with
+the Seigneur.
+
+"Enough for the saddler evidently," sharply rejoined the Seigneur.
+
+Dauphin was fighting for his life, as it were.  His back was to the wall.
+If this man was to be allowed to advise the habitants of Chaudiere on
+their disputes and "going to law," where would his own prestige be?
+His vanity had been deeply wounded.
+
+"It's guesswork with him.  Let him stick to his trade as I stick to mine.
+That sort of thing only does harm."
+
+"He puts a thousand dollars into the saddler's pocket: that's a positive
+good.  He may or may not take thereby ten dollars out of your pocket:
+that's a negative injury.  In this case there was no injury, for you had
+already cost Lacasse--how much had you cost him, Dauphin?" continued the
+Seigneur, with a half-malicious smile.  "I've been out of Chaudiere for
+near a year; I don't know the record--how much, eh, Dauphin?"
+
+The Notary was too offended to answer.  He shook his ringlets back
+angrily, and a scarlet spot showed on each straw-coloured cheek.
+
+"Twenty dollars is what Lacasse paid our dear Dauphin," said the Cure
+benignly, "and a very proper charge.  Lacasse probably gave Monsieur
+there quite as much, and Monsieur will give it to the first poor man he
+meets, or send it to the first sick person of whom he hears."
+
+"My own opinion is, he's playing some game here," said the Notary.
+
+"We all play games," said the Seigneur.  "His seems to give him hard work
+and little luxury.  Will you bring him to see me at the Manor, my dear
+Cure?" he added.  "He will not go.  I have asked him."
+
+"Then I shall visit him at his tailor-shop," said the Seigneur.  "I need
+a new suit."
+
+"But you always had your clothes made in Quebec, Monsieur," said the
+Notary, still carping.
+
+"We never had such a tailor," answered the Seigneur.
+
+"We'll hear more of him before we're done with him," obstinately urged
+the Notary.
+
+"It would give Dauphin the greatest pleasure if our tailor proved to be a
+murderer or a robber.  I suppose you believe that he stole our little
+cross here," the Cure added, turning to the church door, where his eye
+lingered lovingly on the relic, hanging on a pillar just inside, whither
+he had had it removed.
+
+"I'm not sure yet he hadn't something to do with it," was the stubborn
+response.
+
+"If he did, may it bring him peace at last!" said the Cure piously.
+"I have set my heart on nailing him to our blessed faith as that cross
+is fixed to the pillar yonder--'I will fasten him like a nail in a sure
+place,' says the Book.  I take it hard that my friend Dauphin will not
+help me on the way.  Suppose the man were evil, then the Church should
+try to snatch him like a brand from the burning.  But suppose that in his
+past there was no wrong necessary to be hidden in the present--and this
+I believe with all my heart; suppose that he was wronged, not wronging:
+then how much more should the Church strive to win him to the light!
+Why, man, have you no pride in Holy Church?  I am ashamed of you,
+Dauphin, with your great intelligence, your wide reading.  With our
+knowledge of the world we should be broader."
+
+The Seigneur's eyes were turned away, for there was in them at once
+humour and a suspicious moisture.  Of all men in the world he most
+admired the Cure, for his utter truth and nobility; but he could not
+help smiling at his enthusiasm--his dear Cure turned evangelist like any
+"Methody"!--and at the appeal of the Notary on the ground of knowledge
+of the world.  He was wise enough to count himself an old fogy, a
+provincial, and "a simon-pure habitant," but of the three he only had any
+knowledge of life.  As men of the world the Cure and the Notary were sad
+failures, though they stood for much in Chaudiere.  Yet this detracted
+nothing from the fine gentlemanliness of the Cure or the melodramatic
+courtesy of the Notary.
+
+Amused and touched as the Seigneur had been at the Cure's words, he
+turned now and said: "Always on the weaker side, Cure; always hoping the
+best from the worst of us."
+
+"I am only following an example at my door--you taught us all charity and
+justice," answered M. Loisel, looking meaningly at the Seigneur.  There
+was silence a little while, for all three were thinking of the woman of
+the hut, at the gate of the Seigneur's manor.
+
+On this topic M. Dauphin was not voluble.  His original kindness to the
+woman had given him many troubled hours at home, for Madame Dauphin had
+construed his human sympathy into the dark and carnal desires of the
+heart, and his truthful eloquence had made his case the worse.  A
+miserable sentimentalist, the Notary was likely to be misunderstood for
+ever, and one or two indiscretions of his extreme youth had been a weapon
+against him through the long years of a blameless married life.
+
+He heaved a sigh of sympathy with the Cure now.  "She has not come back
+yet?" he said to the Seigneur.  "No sign of her.  She locked up and
+stepped out, so my housekeeper says, about the time--"
+
+"The day of old Margot's funeral," interposed the Notary.  "She'd had a
+letter that day, a letter she'd been waiting for, and abroad she went--
+alas! the flyaway--from bad to worse, I fear--ah me!"
+
+The Seigneur turned sharply on him.  "Who told you she had a letter that
+day, for which she had been waiting?" he said.
+
+"Monsieur Evanturel."
+
+The Seigneur's face became sterner still.  "What business had he to know
+that she received a letter that day?"
+
+"He is postmaster," innocently replied the Notary.  "He is the devil!"
+said the Seigneur tartly.  "I beg your pardon, Cure; but it is
+Evanturel's business not to know what letters go to and fro in that
+office.  He should be blind and dumb, so far as we all are concerned."
+
+"Remember that Evanturel is a cripple," the Cure answered gently.  "I am
+glad, very glad it was not Rosalie."
+
+"Rosalie has more than usual sense for her sex," gruffly but kindly
+answered the Seigneur, a look of friendliness in his eyes.  "I shall talk
+to her about her father; I can't trust myself to speak to the man."
+
+"Rosalie is down there with Madame Dauphin," said the Notary, pointing.
+"Shall I ask her to come?"
+
+The Seigneur nodded.  He was magistrate and magnate, and he was the
+guarantor of the post-office, and of Rosalie and her father.  His eyes
+fixed in reverie on Rosalie; he and the Cure passively waited her
+approach.
+
+She came over, pale and a little anxious, but with a courageous look.
+She had a vague sense of trouble, and she feared it might be the little
+cross, that haunting thing of all these months.
+
+When she came near, the Cure greeted her courteously, and then, taking
+the Notary by the arm, led him away.
+
+The Seigneur and Rosalie being left alone, the girl said: "You wish to
+speak with me, Monsieur?"
+
+The Seigneur scrutinised her sharply.  Though her colour came and went,
+her look was frank and fearless.  She had had many dark hours since that
+fateful month of April.  At night, trying to sleep, she had heard the
+ghostly footsteps in the church, which had sent her flying homeward.
+Then, there was the hood.  She had waited on and on, fearing word would
+come that it had been found in the churchyard, and that she had been seen
+putting the cross back upon the church door.  As day after day passed she
+had come at length to realise that, whatever had happened to the hood,
+she was not suspected.  Yet the whole train of circumstances had a
+supernatural air, for the Cure and Jo Portugais had not made public their
+experience on the eventful night; she had been educated in a land of
+legend and superstition, and a deep impression had been made upon her
+mind, giving to her other new emotions a touch of pathos, of imagination,
+and adding character to her face.  The old Seigneur stroked his chin as
+he looked at her.  He realised that a change had come upon her, that she
+had developed in some surprising way.
+
+"What has happened--who has happened, Mademoiselle Rosalie?" he asked.
+He had suddenly made up his mind about that look in her face--he thought
+it the woman in her which answers to the call of man, not perhaps any
+particular man, but man the attractive influence, the complement.
+
+Her eyes dropped, then raised frankly to his.  "I don't know,"--adding,
+with a quick humour, for he had been very friendly with her, and joked
+with her in his dry way all her life; "do you, Monsieur?"
+
+He pulled his nose with a quick gesture habitual to him, and answered
+slowly and meaningly: "The government's a good husband and pays regular
+wages, Mademoiselle.  I'd stick to government."
+
+"I am not asking for a divorce, Monsieur."
+
+He pulled his nose again delightedly--so many people were pathetically
+in earnest in Chaudiere--even the Cure's humour was too mediaeval and
+obvious.  He had never before thought Rosalie so separate from them all.
+All at once he had a new interest in her.  His cheek flushed a little,
+his eye kindled, humour relaxed his lips.
+
+"No other husband would intrude so little," he rejoined.
+
+"True, there's little love lost between us, Monsieur."  She felt
+exhilaration in talking with him, a kind of joy in measuring word against
+word; yet a year ago she would have done no more than smile respectfully
+and give a demure reply if the Seigneur had spoken to her like this.
+
+The Seigneur noted the mixed emotions in her face and the delicate
+alertness of expression.  As a man of the world, he was inclined to
+believe that only one kind of experience can bring such looks to a
+woman's face.  He saw in her the awakening of the deeper interests of
+life, the tremulous apprehension of nascent emotions and passions which,
+at some time or other, give beauty and importance to the nature of every
+human being.  It did not occur to him that the tailor--the mysterious
+figure in the parish--might be responsible.  He was observant, but not
+imaginative; he was moved by what he saw, in a quiet, unexplainable
+manner.
+
+"The government is the best sort of husband.  From the other sort you
+would get more kisses and less ha'pence," he continued.
+
+"That might be a satisfactory balance-sheet, Monsieur."
+
+"Take care, Mademoiselle Rosalie," he rejoined, half seriously, "that you
+don't miss the ha'pence before you get the kisses."
+
+She turned pale in very fear.  What was he going to say?  Was the post-
+office to be taken from them?  She came straight to the point.
+
+"What have I done wrong, Monsieur?  I've never kept the mail-stage
+waiting; I've never left the mailbag unlocked; I've never been late in
+opening the wicket; I've never been careless, and no one's ever
+complained of a lost letter."
+
+The Seigneur saw her agitation, and was sorry for her.  He came to the
+point as she had done:
+
+"We will have you made postmistress--you alone, Rosalie Evanturel.  I've
+made up my mind to that.  But you'll promise not to get married--eh?
+Anyhow, there's no one in the parish for you to marry.  You're too well-
+born and you've been too well educated for a habitant's wife--and the
+Cure or I can't marry you."
+
+He was not taken back to see her flush deeply, and it pleased him to see
+this much life rising to his own touch, this much revelation to give his
+mind a new interest.  He had come to that age when the mind is surprised
+to find that the things that once charmed charm less, and the things once
+hated are less acutely repulsive.  He saw her embarrassment.  He did not
+know that this was the first time that she had ever thought of marriage
+since it ceased to be a dream of girlhood, and, by reason of thinking
+much on a man, had become a possibility, which, however, she had never
+confessed to herself.  Here she was faced by it now in the broad open
+day: a plain, hard statement, unrelieved by aught save the humour of the
+shrewd eyes bent upon her.
+
+She did not answer him at once.  "Do you promise not to marry so useless
+a thing as man, and to remain true to the government?" he continued.
+
+"If I wished to marry a man, I should not let the government stand in my
+way," she said, in brave confusion.
+
+"But do you wish to marry any man?" he asked abruptly, even petulantly.
+
+"I have not asked myself that question, Monsieur, and--should you ask it,
+unless--" she said, and paused with as pretty and whimsical a glance of
+merriment as could well be.
+
+He burst out laughing at the swift turn she had given her reply, and at
+the double suggestion.  Then he suddenly changed.  A curious expression
+filled his eyes.  A smile, almost beautiful, came to his lips.
+
+"'Pon my honour," he said, in a low tone, "you have me caught!  And I beg
+to say--I beg to say," he added, with a flush mounting in his own face, a
+sudden inspiration in his look, "that if you do not think me too old and
+crabbed and ugly, and can endure me, I shall be profoundly happy if you
+will marry me, Rosalie."
+
+He stood upright, holding himself very hard, for this idea had shot into
+his mind all in an instant, though, unknown to himself, it had been
+growing for years, cherished by many a kind act to her father and by a
+simple gratitude on her part.  He had spoken without feeling the
+absurdity of the proposal.  He had never married, and he was unprepared
+to make any statement on such a theme; but now, having made it somehow,
+he would stand by it, in spite of any and all criticism.  He had known
+Rosalie since her birth, her education was as good as a convent could
+secure, she was the granddaughter of a notable seigneur, and here she
+was, as fine a type of health, beauty and character as man could wish--
+and he was only fifty!  Life was getting lonelier for him every day,
+and, after all, why should he leave distant relations and the Church his
+worldly goods?  All this flashed through his mind as he waited for her
+answer.  Now it seemed to him that he had meant to say this thing for
+many years.  He had seen an awakening in her--he had suddenly been
+awakened himself.
+
+"Monsieur, Monsieur," she said in a bewildered way, "do not amuse
+yourself at my expense."
+
+"Would it be that, then?" he said, with a smile, behind which there was
+determination and self-will.  "I want you to marry me; I do with all my
+heart.  You shall have those ha'pence, and the kisses too, if so be you
+will take them--or not, as you will, Rosalie."
+
+"Monsieur," she gasped, for something caught her in the throat, and the
+tears started to her eyes, "ask me to forget that you have ever said
+those words.  Oh, Monsieur, it is not possible, it never could be
+possible!  I am only the postmaster's daughter."
+
+"You are my wife, if you will but say the word," he answered, "and I as
+proud a husband as the land holds!"
+
+"You were always kind to me, Monsieur," she rejoined, her lips trembling;
+"won't you be so still?"
+
+"I am too old?" he asked.
+
+"Oh no, it is not that," she replied.
+
+"You have as good manners as my mother had.  You need not fear comparison
+with any lady in the land.  Have I not known you all your life?  I know
+the way you have come, and your birth is as good as mine."
+
+"Ah, it is not that, Monsieur!"
+
+"I give you my word that I do not come to you because no one else would
+have me," he said with a curious simplicity.  "I never asked a woman to
+marry me--never!  You are the first.  There was talk once--but it was all
+false.  I never meant to ask any one to marry me.  But I have the wish
+now which I never had in my youth.  I thought best of myself always; now,
+I think--I think better of you than--"
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, I beg of you, no more!  I cannot; oh, I cannot--"
+
+"You--but no; I will not ask you, Mademoiselle.  If you have some one
+else in your heart, or want some one else there, that is your affair, not
+mine--undoubtedly.  I would have tried to make you happy; you would have
+had peace and comfort all your life; you could have trusted me--but there
+it is.  .  .  ."  He felt all at once that he was unfair to her, that he
+had thrust upon her too hard a problem in too troubled an hour.
+
+"I could trust you with my life, Monsieur Rossignol," she replied.  "And
+I love you in a way that a man may be loved to no one's harm or sorrow:
+it is true that!" She raised her eyes to his simply, trustingly.
+
+He looked at her steadily for a moment.  "If you change your mind--"
+
+She shook her head sadly.
+
+"Good, then," he went on, for he thought it wise not to press her now,
+though he had no intention of taking her no as final.  "I'll keep an eye
+on you.  You'll need me some day soon; I can do things that the Cure
+can't, perhaps."  His manner changed still more.  "Now to business," he
+continued.  "Your father has been talking about letters received and sent
+from the post-office.  That is punishable.  I am responsible for you
+both, and if it is reported, if the woman were to report it--you know
+the letter I mean--there would be trouble.  You do not talk.  Now I am
+going to ask the government to make you sole postmistress, with full
+responsibility.  Then you must govern your father--he hasn't as much
+sense as you."
+
+"Monsieur, we owe you so much!  I am deeply grateful, and, whatever you
+do for us, you may rely on me to do my duty."
+
+They could scarcely hear each other speak now, for the soldiers were
+coming nearer, and the fife-and-drum bands were screeching, 'Louis the
+King was a Soldier'.
+
+"Then you will keep the government as your husband?" he asked, with
+forced humour, as he saw the Cure and the Notary approaching.
+
+"It is less trouble, Seigneur," she answered, with a smile of relief.
+
+M. Rossignol turned to the Cure and the Notary.  "I have just offered
+Mademoiselle a husband she might rule in place of a government that rules
+her, and she has refused," he said in the Cure's ear, with a dry laugh.
+
+"She's a sensible girl, is Rosalie," said the Cure, not apprehending.
+
+The soldiers were now opposite the church, and riding at their head was
+the battalion Colonel, also member of the Legislature.
+
+They all moved down, and Rosalie disappeared in the crowd.  As the
+Seigneur and the Cure greeted the Colonel, the latter said:
+
+"At luncheon I'll tell you one of the bravest things ever seen.  Happened
+half-hour ago at the Red Ravine.  Man who did it wore an eye-glass--said
+he was a tailor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE COLONEL TELLS HIS STORY
+
+The Colonel had lunched very well indeed.  He had done justice to every
+dish set before him; he had made a little speech, congratulating himself
+on having such a well-trained body of men to command, and felicitating
+Chaudiere from many points of view.  He was in great good-humour with
+himself, and when the Notary asked him--it was at the Manor, with the
+soldiers resting on the grass without--about the tale of bravery he had
+promised them, he brought his fist down on the table with great intensity
+but little noise, and said:
+
+"Chaudiere may well be proud of it.  I shall refer to it in the
+Legislature on the question of roads and bridges--there ought to be a
+stone fence on that dangerous road by the Red Ravine--Have I your
+attention?"
+
+He stood up, for he was an excitable and voluble Colonel, and he loved
+oration as a cat does milk.  With a knife he drew a picture of the locale
+on the table cloth.  "Here I was riding on my sorrel, all my noble
+fellows behind, the fife and drums going as at Louisburg--that day!
+Martial ardour united to manliness and local pride--follow me?  Here we
+were, Red Ravine left, stump fences and waving fields of grain right.
+From military point of view, bad position--ravine, stump fence, brave
+soldiers in the middle, food for powder--catch it?--see?"
+
+He emptied his glass, drew a long breath, and again began, the carving-
+knife cutting a rhetorical path before him.  "I was engaged upon the
+military problem--demonstration in force, no scouts ahead, no rearguard,
+ravine on the right, stump fence on the left, red coats, fife-and-drum
+band, concealed enemy--follow me?  Observant mind always sees problems
+everywhere--unresting military genius accustoms intelligence to all
+possible contingencies--'stand what I mean?"
+
+The Seigneur took a pinch of snuff, and the Cure, whose mind was
+benevolent, listened with the gravest interest.
+
+"At the juncture when, in my mind's eye, I saw my gallant fellows
+enfiladed with a terrible fire, caught in a trap, and I, despairing,
+spurring on to die at their headhave I your attention?--just at that
+moment there appeared between the ravine and the road ahead a man.  He
+wore an eye-glass; he seemed an unconcerned spectator of our movements
+--so does the untrained, unthinking eye look out upon destiny!  Not far
+away was a wagon, in it a man.  Wagon bisecting our course from a cross-
+road--"
+
+He drew a line on the table-cloth with the carvingknife, and the Notary
+said: "Yes, yes, the concession road."
+
+"So, Messieurs.  There were we, a battalion and a fife-and-drum band;
+there was the man with the eyeglass, the indifferent spectator, yet the
+engine of fate; there was the wagon, a mottled horse, and a man driving--
+catch it?  The mottled horse took fright at our band, which at that
+instant strikes up 'The Chevalier Drew his Sabre'.  He shies from the
+road with a leap, the man falls backwards into the wagon, and the reins
+drop.  The horse dashes from the road into the open, and rushes on to the
+ravine.  What good now to stop the fifes and drums-follow me?  What can
+we, an armed force, bandoleered, knapsacked, sworded, rifled, impetuous,
+brave, what can we do before this tragedy?  The man in the wagon
+senseless, the flying horse, the ravine, death!  How futile the power of
+man--'stand what I mean?"
+
+"Why didn't your battalion shoot the horse?" said the Seigneur drily,
+taking a pinch of snuff.  "Monsieur," said the Colonel, "see the irony,
+the implacable irony of fate--we had only blank cartridge!  But see you,
+here was this one despised man with an eye-glass, a tailor--takes nine
+tailors to make a man!--between the ravine and the galloping tragedy.
+His spirit arrayed itself like an army with banners, prepared to wrestle
+with death as Jacob wrestled with his shadow all the night 'sieur le
+Cure!"
+
+The Cure bowed; the Notary shook back his oiled locks in excitement.
+
+"Awoke a whole man--nine-ninths, as in Adam--in the obscure soul of the
+tailor, and, rushing forward, he seized the mottled horse by the bridle
+as he galloped upon the chasm:  The horse dragged him on--dragged him on
+--on--on.  We, an army, so to speak, stood and watched the Tailor and the
+Tragedy!  All seemed lost, but, by the decree of fate--"
+
+"The will of God," said the Cure softly.
+
+"By the great decree, the man was able to stop the horse, not a half-
+dozen feet from the ravine.  The horse and the insensible driver were
+spared death--death.  So, Messieurs, does bravery come from unexpected
+places--see?"
+
+The Seigneur, the Cure, and even the Notary clapped their hands, and
+murmured praises of the tailor-man.  But the Colonel did not yet take his
+seat.
+
+"But now, mark the sequel," he said.  "As I galloped over, I saw the
+tailor look into the wagon, and turn away quickly.  He waited by the
+horse till I came near, and then walked off without a word.  I rode up,
+and tapped him with my sword upon the shoulder.  'A noble deed, my good
+man,' said I.  'I approve of your conduct, and I will remember it in the
+Legislature when I address the committee of the whole house on roads and
+bridges.'  What do you think was his reply to my affable words?  When I
+tapped him approvingly on the shoulder a second time, he screwed his eye-
+glass in his eye, and, with no emotion, though my own eyes were full of
+tears, he said, in a tone of affront, 'Look after the man there,
+constable,' and pointed to the wagon.  Constable--mon Dieu!  Gross
+manners even for a tailor!"
+
+"I had not thought his manners bad," said the Cure, as the Colonel sat
+down, gulped a glass of brandy-andwater, and mopped his forehead.
+
+"A most remarkable tailor," said the Seigneur, peering into his snuff-
+box.
+
+"And the driver of the mottled horse?" asked the Notary.
+
+"Knocked senseless.  One of my captains soon restored him.  He followed
+us into the village.  He is a quack-doctor.  I suppose he is now selling
+tinctures, pulling teeth, and driving away rheumatics.  He gave me his
+card.  I told him he should leave one on the tailor."
+
+With a flourish he threw a professional card upon the table, before the
+Cure.
+
+The Cure picked it up and read:
+
+                         JOHN BROWN, B.A., M.D.,
+
+          Healer of Ailments that Defy the Ordinary Skill of Ordinary
+          Medical Men.  Rheumatism, Sciatica, Headache, Toothache,
+          Asthma, Ague, Pleurisy, Gout, and all Chronic Diseases Yield
+          Instantly to the Power of his Medicines.
+
+     Dr. Brown will publicly treat the most stubborn cases, laying
+     himself open to the derision of mankind if he does not instantly
+     give relief and benefit.  His whole career has been a blessing to
+     his fellows, and his journey now through this country, fresh from
+     his studies in the Orient, is to introduce his remedies to a
+     suffering world, for the conquest of malady, not for personal
+     profit.
+
+                         JOHN BROWN, B.A., M.D.,
+
+          Specialist in Chronic Diseases and General Practitioner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST
+
+All day John Brown, ex-clergyman and quack-doctor, harangued the people
+of Chaudiere from his gaily-painted wagon.  He had the perfect gift of
+the charlatan, and he had discovered his metier.  Inclined to the
+picturesque by nature, melodramatic and empirical, his earlier career had
+been the due fruit of habit and education.  As a dabbler in mines he had
+been out of his element.  He lacked the necessary reticence, and arsenic
+had not availed him, though it had tempted Billy Wantage to forgery; and
+because Billy hid himself behind the dismal opportunity of silence, had
+ruined the name of a dead man called Charley Steele.  Since Charley's
+death John Brown had never seen Billy: he had left the town one woful
+day an hour after Billy had told him of the discovery Charley had made.
+From a far corner of the country he had read the story of Charley's
+death; of the futile trial of the river-drivers afterwards, ending in
+acquittal, and the subsequent discovery of the theft of the widows' and
+orphans' trust-moneys.
+
+On this St. Jean Baptiste's day he was thinking of anything and
+everything else but Charley Steele.  Nothing could have been a better
+advertisement for him than the perilous incident at the Red Ravine.
+Falling backwards when the horse suddenly bolted, his head had struck the
+medicine-chest, and he had lain insensible till brought back to
+consciousness by the good offices of the voluble Colonel.  He had not,
+therefore, seen Charley.  It was like him that his sense of gratitude
+to the unknown tailor should be presently lost in exploiting the interest
+he created in the parish.  His piebald horse, his white "plug" hat, his
+gaily painted wagon, his flamboyant manner, and, above all, the
+marvellous tale of his escape from death, were more exciting to the
+people of Chaudiere than the militia, the dancing-bears, the shooting-
+galleries, or the boat-races.  He could sing extremely well--had he not
+trained his own choir when he was a parson? had not Billy approved his
+comic songs?--and these comic songs, now sandwiched between his cures
+and his sales, created much laughter.  He cured headaches, toothaches,
+rheumatism, and all sorts of local ailments "with despatch."
+He miraculously juggled away pains by what he called his Pain Paint,
+and he stopped a cough by a laugh and a dose of his Golden Pectoral.
+In the exuberance of trade, which steadily increased till sundown,
+he gave no thought to the tailor, to whom, however, he had sent by a
+messenger a two-dollar bill and two bottles of Pain Paint, with the
+lordly announcement that he would call in the evening and "present his
+compliments and his thanks."  The messenger left the Pain Paint on the
+door-step of the tailor-shop, and the two dollars he promptly spent at
+the Trois Couronnes.
+
+Rosalie Evanturel rescued the bottles from the doorstep and awaited
+Charley's return to his shop, that she might take them over to him, and
+so have an excuse to speak with him; for to-day her heart and mind were
+full of him.  He had done a brave thing for the medicine-man, and had
+then fled from public gaze as a brave man should.  There was no one to
+compare with him.  Not even the Cure was his superior in ability, and
+certainly he was a greater man--though seemingly only a tailor--than M.
+Rossignol.  M. Rossignol--she flushed.  Who could have believed that the
+Seigneur would say those words to her this morning--to her, Rosalie
+Evanturel, who hadn't five hundred dollars to her name?  That she should
+be asked to be Madame Rossignol!  Confusion mingled with her simple
+pride, and she ran out into the street, to where her father sat listening
+to the medicine-man singing, in doubtful French:
+
+                   "I am a waterman bold,
+                    Oh, I'm a waterman bold:
+                    But for my lass I have great fear,
+                    Yes, in the isles I have great fear,
+                    For she is young, and I am old,
+                    And she is bien gentille!"
+
+It was night now.  The militia had departed, their Colonel roaring
+commands at them out of a little red drill-book; the older people had
+gone to their homes, but festive youth hovered round the booths and
+sideshows, the majority enjoying themselves at some expense in the
+medicine-man's encampment.
+
+As Rosalie ran towards the crowd she turned a wistful glance to the
+tailor-shop.  Not a sign of life there!  She imagined M'sieu' to be at
+Vadrome Mountain, until, glancing round the crowd at the quack-doctor's
+wagon, she saw Jo Portugais gloomily watching the travelling tinker of
+human bodies.  Evidently M'sieu' was not at Vadrome Mountain.
+
+He was not far from her.  At the side of the road, under a huge maple-
+tree with wide-spreading branches, Charley stood and watched John Brown
+performing behind the flaring oil-lights stuck on poles round his wagon,
+his hat now on, now off; now singing a comic song in English---'I found
+Y' in de Honeysuckle Paitch;' now a French chanson--'En Revenant de St.
+Alban;' now treating a stiff neck or a bent back, or giving momentary
+help to the palsy of an old man, or again making a speech.
+
+Charley was in touch again with the old life, but in a kind of fantasy
+only--a staring, high-coloured dream.  This man--John Brown--had gone
+down before his old ironical questioning, had been, indirectly, the means
+of disgracing his name.  A step forward to that wagon, a word uttered,
+a look, and he would have to face again the life he had put by for ever,
+would have to meet a hard problem and settle it--to what misery and
+tragedy, who might say?  Under this tree he was M. Mallard, the infidel
+tailor, whose life was slowly entering into the life of this place called
+Chaudiere, slowly being acted upon by habit, which, automatically
+repeated, at length becomes character.  Out in that red light, before
+that garish wagon, he would be Charley Steele, barrister, 'flaneur', and
+fop, who, according to the world, had misused a wife, misled her brother,
+robbed widows and orphans, squandered a fortune, become drunkard and
+wastrel, and at last had lost his life in a disorderly tavern at the Cote
+Dorion.  This man before him had contributed to his disgrace; but once he
+had contributed to John Brown's disgrace; and to-day he had saved John
+Brown's life.  They were even.
+
+All the night before, all this morning, he had fought a fierce battle
+with his past--with a raging thirst.  The old appetite had swept over him
+fiercely.  All day he had moved in a fevered conflict, which had lifted
+him away from the small movements of everyday life into a region where
+only were himself and one strong foe, who tirelessly strove with him.
+In his old life he had never had a struggle of any sort.  His emotions
+had been cloaked, his soul masked, there had been a film before his eyes,
+he had worn an armour of selfishness on a life which had no deep
+problems, because it had no deep feelings--a life never rising to the
+intellectual prowess for which it was fitted, save when under the
+stimulus of liquor.
+
+From the moment he had waked from a long seven months' sleep in the hut
+on Vadrome Mountain, new deep feelings had come to him as he faced
+problems of life.  Fighting had begun from that hour--a fighting which
+was putting his nature through bitter mortal exercises, yet, too, giving
+him a sense of being he had never known.  He had now the sweetness of
+earning daily bread by the work of his hands; of giving to the poor, the
+needy, and the afflicted; of knowing for the first time in his life that
+he was not alone in the world.  Out of the grey dawn of life a woman's
+voice had called to him; the look of her face had said to him: "Viens
+ici!  Viens ici!"--"Come to me!  Come to me!"
+
+But with that call there was the answer of his soul, the desolating cry
+of the dispossessed Lear-" Never--never--never--never--never!"
+
+He had not questioned himself concerning Rosalie--had dared not to do so.
+But now, as he stood under the great tree, within hand-touch of the old
+life, in imminent danger of being thrust back into it, the question of
+Rosalie came upon him with all the force of months of feeling behind it.
+Thus did he argue with himself:
+
+"Do I love her?  And if I love her, what is to be done?  Marry her, with
+a wife living?  Marry her while charged with a wretched crime?  Would
+that be love?  But suppose I never were discovered, and we might live
+here for ever, I as 'Monsieur Mallard,' in peace and quiet all the days
+of our life?  Would that be love?  .  .  .  Could there be love with a
+vital secret, like, a cloud between, out of which, at any hour, might
+spring discovery?  Could I build our life upon a silence which must be a
+lie?  Would I not have to face the question, Does any one know cause or
+just impediment why this woman should not be married to this man?  Tell
+Rosalie all, and let the law separate myself and Kathleen?  That would
+mean Billy's ruin and imprisonment, and Kathleen's shame, and it might
+not bring Rosalir.  She is a Catholic, and her Church would not listen to
+it.  Would I have the right to bring trouble into her life?  To wrong one
+woman should seem enough for one lifetime!"
+
+At that instant Rosalie, who had been on the outskirts of the crowd,
+moved into his line of vision.  The glare from the lights fell on her
+face as she stood by her father's chair, looking curiously at the quack-
+doctor who, having sold many bottles of his medicines, noy picked up a
+guitar and began singing an old dialect chanson of Saintonge:
+
+                   "Voici, the day has come
+                    When Rosette leaves her home!
+                    With fear she walks in the sun,
+                    For Raoul is ninety year,
+                    And she not twenty-one.
+                    La petit' Rosette,
+                    She is not twenty-one.
+
+                   "He takes her by the hand,
+                    And to the church they go;
+                    By parents 'twas well meant,
+                    But is Rosette content?
+                    'Tis gold and ninety year
+                    She walks in the sun with fear,
+                    La petit' Rosette,
+                    Not twenty-one as yet!"
+
+Charley's eyes, which had watched her these months past, noted the
+deepening colour of the face, the glow in the eyes, the glances of keen
+but agitated interest towards the singer.  He could not translate her
+looks; and she, on her part, had she been compelled to do so, could only
+have set down a confusion of sensations.
+
+In Rosette she saw herself, Rosalie Evanturel; in the man "de quatre-
+vingt-dix ans," who was to marry this Rosette of Saintonge, she saw M.
+Rossignol.  Disconcerting pictures of a possible life with the Seigneur
+flitted before her mind.  She beheld herself, young, fresh-cheeked, with
+life beating high and all the impulses of youth panting to use, sitting
+at the head of the seigneury table.  She saw herself in the great pew at
+Mass, stiff with dignity, old in the way of manorial pride--all laughter
+dead in her, all spring-time joy overshadowed by the grave decorum of the
+Manor, all the imagination of her dreaming spirit chilled by the presence
+of age, however kindly and quaint and cheerful.
+
+She shuddered, and dropped her eyes upon the ground, as, to the laughter
+and giggling of old and young gathered round the wagon, the medicine-man
+sang:
+
+                   "He takes her by the hand,
+                    And to her chamber fair--"
+
+Then, suddenly turning, she vanished into the night, followed by the
+feeble inquiry of her father's eyes, the anxious look in Charley's.
+
+Charley could not read her tale.  He had, however, a hot impulse to
+follow and ask her if she would vanish from the scene if the medicine-man
+should sing of Rosette and a man of thirty, not ninety, years.  The fight
+he had had all day with his craving for drink had made him feverish, and
+all his emotions--unregulated, under the command of his will only--were
+in high temperature.  A reckless feeling seized him.  He would go to
+Rosalie, look into her eyes, and tell her that he loved her, no matter
+what the penalty of fate.  He had never loved a human being, and the
+sudden impulse to cry out in the new language was driving him to follow
+the girl whose spirit for ever called to him.
+
+He made a step forward to follow her, but stopped short, recalled to
+caution and his danger by the voice of the medicine-man:
+
+"I had a friend once--good fellow, bad fellow, cleverest chap I ever
+knew.  Tremendous fop--ladies loved him--cheeks like roses--tongue like
+sulphuric acid.  Beautiful to look at.  Clothes like a fashion-plate--got
+any fashion-plates in Chaudiere? 'who's your tailor?'" he added, in the
+slang of the hour, with a loud laugh, then stopped suddenly and took off
+his hat.  "I forgot," he added, with upturned eyes and a dramatic
+seriousness, "your tailor saved my life to-day-henceforth I am the friend
+of all tailors.  Well, to continue.  My friend that was--I call him my
+friend, though he ruined me and ruined others,--didn't mean to, but he
+did just the same,--he came to a bad end.  But he was a great man while
+he lived.  And what I'm coming to is this, the song he used to sing when,
+in youthful exuberance, we went on the war-path like our young friend
+over there"--he pointed to a young habitant farmer, who was trying hard
+to preserve equilibrium--"Brown's Golden Pectoral will cure that cough,
+my friend!" he added, as the young man, gloomily ashamed of the laughter
+of the crowd, hiccoughed and turned away to the tree under which Charley
+Steele stood.  "Well," he went on, "I was going to say that my friend's
+name was Charley, and the song he used to sing when the roosters waked
+the morn was called 'Champagne Charlie.'  He was called 'Champagne
+Charlie'--till he came to a bad end."
+
+He twanged his guitar, cleared his throat, winked at Maximilian Cour the
+baker, and began:
+
+         "The way I gained my title's by a hobby which I've got
+          Of never letting others pay, however long the shot;
+          Whoever drinks at my expense is treated all the same;
+          Whoever calls himself my friend, I make him drink champagne.
+          Some epicures like Burgundy, Hock, Claret, and Moselle,
+          But Moet's vintage only satisfies this champagne swell.
+          What matter if I go to bed and head is muddled thick,
+          A bottle in the morning sets me right then very quick.
+          Champagne Charlie is my name;
+          Champagne Charlie is my name.
+          Who's the man with the heart so young,
+          Who's the man with the ginger tongue?
+          Champagne Charlie is his name!"
+
+Under the tree, Charley Steele listened to this jaunty epitaph on his old
+self.  At the first words of the coarse song there rushed on him the
+dreaded thirst.  He felt his veins beating with desire, with anger,
+disgust, and shame; for there was John Brown, to the applause of the
+crowd, imitating his old manner, his voice, his very look.  He started
+forward, but the drunken young habitant lurched sideways under the tree
+and collapsed upon the ground, a bottle of whiskey falling out of his
+pocket and rolling almost to his own feet.
+
+                    "Champagne Charlie is my name,"
+
+sang the medicine-man.  All Charley's old life surged up in him as dyked
+water suddenly bursts bounds and spreads destruction.  He had an
+uncontrollable impulse.  As a starving animal snatches at the first food
+offered it, he stooped, with a rattle in his throat, seized the bottle,
+uncorked it, put it to his lips, and drank--drank--drank.
+
+Then he turned and plunged away into the trees.  The sound of the song
+followed him.  It came to him, the last refrain, sung loudly to the
+laughter of the crowd, in imitation of his own voice as it used to be
+--it had been a different voice during this past year.  He turned with
+headlong intention, and, as the last notes of the song and the applause
+that followed it, died away, threw back his head and sang out of the
+darkness:
+
+                    "Champagne Charlie is my name--"
+
+With a shrill laugh, like the half-mad cry of an outcast soul, he flung
+away farther into the trees.
+
+There was a sudden silence.  The crowd turned with half-apprehensive
+laughter to the trees.  Upon John Brown the effect was startling.  His
+face blanched, his eyes grew large with terror, his mouth opened in
+helpless agitation.  Charley Steele was lying under the waters of the
+great river, his bones rotting there for a year, yet here was his voice
+coming out of the night, in response to his own grotesque imitation of
+the dead man.  Seeing his agitation, women turned pale, men felt their
+flesh creep, imagination gave a thrilling coldness to the air.  For a
+moment the silence was unbroken.  Then John Brown stretched out his hand
+and said, in a hoarse whisper:
+
+"It was his voice--Charley's voice, and he's been dead a year!"
+
+Within half-an-hour, in utter collapse and fright, he was being driven to
+the next parish by two young habitants whom he paid to accompany him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+OUT ON THE OLD TRAIL
+
+There was one person in the crowd surrounding the medicine-man's wagon
+who had none of that superstitious thrill which had scattered the
+habitants into little awe-stricken groups, and then by twos and threes to
+their homes; none of that fear which had reduced the quack-doctor to such
+nervous collapse that he would not spend the night in the village.  Jo
+Portugais had recognised the voice--that of Charley Steele the lawyer who
+had saved him from hanging years ago.  It was little like the voice of
+M'sieu'!  There was that in it which frightened him.  He waited until he
+had seen the quackdoctor start for the next parish, then he went slowly
+down the street.  There were people still about, so he walked on towards
+the river.  When he returned, the street was empty.  Keeping in the
+shadow of the trees, he went to Charley's house.  There was a light in a
+window.  He went to the back door and tried it.  It was not locked, and,
+without knocking, he stepped inside the kitchen.  Here was no light, and
+he passed into the hallway and on to a little room opening from the
+tailorshop.  He knocked; then, not waiting for response, opened the door
+and entered.
+
+Charley was standing before a mirror, holding a pair of scissors.  He
+turned abruptly, and said forbiddingly: "I am at my toilet!"
+
+Then, turning again to the mirror, with a shrug of the shoulders, he
+raised the shears to his beard.  Before he could use them, Jo's hand was
+on his arm.
+
+"Stop that, M'sieu'!" he said huskily.
+
+Charley had drunk nearly a whole bottle of cheap whiskey within an hour.
+He was intoxicated, but, as had ever been the case with him, his brain
+was working clearly, his hand was steady; he was in that wide dream of
+clear-seeing and clear-knowing which, in old days, had given him glimpses
+of the real life from which, in the egotism of the non-intime, he had
+been shut out.  Looking at Jo now, he was possessed by a composed
+intoxication like that in which he had moved during that last night at
+the Cote Dorion.
+
+But now, with the baleful crust of egotism gone, with every nerve of
+life exposed, with conscience struggling to its feet from the torpor of
+thirty-odd vacant years, he was as two men in one, with different lives
+and different souls, yet as inseparable in their misery as those poor
+victims of Gallic tyranny, chained back to back and thrown into the
+Seine.
+
+Jo's words, insistent and eager, suddenly roused in him some old memory,
+which stayed his hand.
+
+"Why should I stop?" he asked quietly, and smiling that smile which had
+infuriated the river-drivers at the Cote Dorion.
+
+"Are you going back, M'sieu?"
+
+"Back where?"  Charley's eyes were fixed on Jo with a penetrating
+intensity, heightened to a strange abstraction, as though he saw not Jo
+alone, but something great distances beyond.
+
+Jo did not answer this question directly.  "Some one came to-day--he is
+gone; some one may come to-morrow--and stay," he said meaningly.
+
+Charley went over to the fire and sat down on a bench, opening and
+shutting the scissors mechanically.  Jo was in the light, and Charley's
+eyes again studied him hard.
+
+His memory was industriously feeling its way into the baffling distance.
+
+"What if some one did come-and stay?" he urged quietly.
+
+"You might be recognised without the beard."
+
+"What difference would it make?"  Charley's memory was creeping close to
+the hidden door.  It was feeling-feeling for the latch.
+
+"You know best, M'sieu'."
+
+"But what do you know?"  Charley's face now had a strained look, and he
+touched his lips with his tongue.  "What John Brown knows, M'sieu'."
+
+There flashed across Charley's mind the fatal newspaper he had read on
+the day he awakened to memory again in the but on Vadrome Mountain.  He
+remembered that he had put it in the fire.  But Jo might have read it
+before it was spread upon the bench-put it there of purpose for him to
+read.  Yet what reason could Jo have for being silent, for hiding his
+secret?
+
+There was silence for a space, in which Charley's eyes were like unmoving
+sparks of steel.  He did not see Jo's face--it was in a mist--he was
+searching, searching, searching.  All at once he felt the latch of the
+hidden door under his finger; he saw a court-room, a judge and jury, and
+hundreds of excited faces, himself standing in the midst.  He saw twelve
+men file slowly into the room and take their seats-all save one, who
+stood still in his place and said: "Not guilty, your Honour!"  He saw the
+prisoner leave the box and step down a free man.  He saw himself coming
+out into the staring summer day.  He watched the prisoner come to him and
+touch his arm, and say: "Thank you, M'sieu'.  You have saved my life."
+He saw himself turn to this man:
+
+He roused from his trance, he staggered to his feet, the shears rattled
+to the floor.  Lurching forward, he caught Jo Portugais by the throat,
+and said, as he had said outside the court-room years ago:
+
+"Get out of my sight.  You're as guilty as hell!"
+
+His grip tightened--tightened on Jo's throat.  Jo did not move, though
+his face grew black.  Then, suddenly, the hands relaxed, a bluish
+paleness swept over the face, and Charley fell sidewise to the floor
+before Jo could catch him.
+
+All night, alone, the murderer struggled with death over the body of the
+lawyer who had saved his life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE SEIGNEUR GIVES A WARNING
+
+Rosalie had watched a shut door for five days--a door from which, for
+months past, had come all the light and glow of her life.  It framed a
+figure which had come to represent to her all that meant hope and soul
+and conscience-and love.  The morning after St. Jean Baptiste's day she
+had awaited the opening door, but it had remained closed.  Ensued
+watchful hours, and then from Jo Portugais she had learned that M'sieu'
+had been ill and near to death.  She had been told the weird story of the
+medicine-man and the ghostly voice, and, without reason, she took the
+incident as a warning, and associated it with the man across the way.
+She was come of a superstitious race, and she herself had heard and seen
+things of which she never had been able to speak--the footsteps in the
+church the night she had screwed the little cross to the door again; the
+tiny round white light by the door of the church; the hood which had
+vanished into the unknown.  One mystery fed another.  It seemed to her as
+if some dreadful event were forward; and all day she kept her eyes fixed
+on the tailor's door.
+
+Dead--if M'sieu' should die!  If M'sieu' should die--it needed all her
+will to prevent herself from going over and taking things in her own
+hands, being his nurse, his handmaid, his slave.  Duty--to the
+government, to her father?  Her heart cried out that her duty lay where
+all her life was eddying to one centre.  What would the world say?  She
+was not concerned for that, save for him.  What, then, would M'sieu' say?
+That gave her pause.  The Seigneur's words the day before had driven her
+back upon a tide of emotions which carried her far out upon that sea
+where reason and life's conventions are derelicts, where Love sails with
+reckless courage down the shoreless main.
+
+"If I could only be near him!" she kept saying to herself.  "It is my
+right.  I would give my life, my soul for his.  I was with him before
+when his life was in danger.  It was my hand that saved him.  It was my
+love that tended him.  It was my soul that kept his secret.  It was my
+faith that spoke for him.  It was my heart that ached for him.  It is my
+heart that aches for him now as none other in all the world can.  No one
+on earth could care as I care.  Who could there be?"  Something whispered
+in her ear, "Kathleen!"  The name haunted her, as the little cross had
+done.  Misery and anger possessed her, and she fought on with herself
+through dark hours.
+
+Thus five days had gone, until at last a wagon was brought to the door of
+the tailor-shop, and M'sieu' came out, leaning on the arm of Jo
+Portugais.  There were several people in the street at the time, and they
+kept whispering that M'sieu' had been at death's door.  He was pale and
+haggard, with dark hollows under the eyes.  Just as he got into the wagon
+the Cure came up.  They shook hands.  The Cure looked him earnestly in
+the face, his lips moved, but no one could have told what he said.  As
+the wagon started, Charley looked across to the post-office.  Rosalie was
+standing a little back from the door, but she stepped forward now.  Their
+eyes met.  Her heart beat faster, for there was a look in his eyes she
+had never seen before--a look of human helplessness, of deep anxiety.  It
+was meant for her--for herself alone.  She could not trust herself to go
+and speak to him.  She felt that she must burst into tears.  So, with a
+look of pity and pain, she watched the wagon go down the street.
+
+Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!--the Seigneur's gold-headed cane rattled on the
+front door of the tailor-shop.  It was plain to be seen his business was
+urgent.
+
+Madame Dauphin came hurrying from the postoffice, followed by Maximilian
+Cour and Filion Lacasse.  "Ah, M'sieu', the tailor will not answer.
+There's no use knocking--not a bit, M'sieu' Rossignol," said Madame.
+
+The Seigneur turned querulously upon the Notary's wife, yet with a glint
+of hard humour in his eye.  He had no love for Madame Dauphin.  He
+thought she took unfair advantages of M. Dauphin, whom also he did not
+love, but whose temperament did him credit.
+
+"How should Madame know whether or no the gentleman will answer?  Does
+Madame share the gentleman's confidence, perhaps?" he remarked.
+
+Madame did not reply at once.  She turned on the saddler and the baker.
+"I hope you'll learn a lesson," she cried triumphantly.  "I've always
+said the tailor was quite the gentleman; and now you see how your betters
+call him.  No, M'sieu', the gentleman will not answer," she added to the
+Seigneur.
+
+"He is in bed yet, Madame?"
+
+"His bed is empty there, M'sieu'," she said, impressively, and pointing.
+
+"I suppose I should trust you in this matter; I suppose you should know.
+But, Dauphin--what does Dauphin say?"
+
+The saddler laughed outright.  Maximilian Cour suddenly blushed in
+sympathy with Madame Dauphin, who now saw the drift of the Seigneur's
+remarks, and was sensibly agitated, as the Seigneur had meant her to be.
+Had she not turned Dauphin's human sympathies into a crime?  Had not the
+Notary supported the Seigneur in his friendly offices to Paulette Dubois;
+and had not Madame troubled her husband's life because of it?  Madame
+bridled up now--with discretion, for it was not her cue to offend the
+Seigneur.
+
+"All the village knows his bed's empty there, M'sieu'," she said, with
+tightening lips.
+
+"I am subtracted from the total, then?" he asked drily.
+
+"You have been away for the last five days--"
+
+"Come, now, how did you know that?"
+
+"Everybody knows it.  You went away with the Colonel and the soldiers on
+St.  Jean Baptiste's day.  Since then M'sieu' the tailor has been ill.  I
+should think Mrs. Flynn would have told you that, M'sieu'."
+
+"H'm!  Would you?  Well, Mrs. Flynn has been away too--and you didn't
+know that!  What is the matter with Monsieur Mallard?"
+
+"Some kind of fever.  On St. Jean Baptiste's day he was taken ill, and
+that animal Portugais took care of him all night--I wonder how M'sieu'
+can have the creature about!  That St. Jean Baptiste's night was an awful
+night.  Have you heard of what happened, M'sieu'?  Ghost or no ghost--"
+
+"Come, come, I want to know about the tailor, not of ghosts," impatiently
+interrupted the Seigneur.  "Tiens!  M'sieu', the tailor was ill for three
+days here, and he would let no one except the Cure and Jo Portugais near
+him.  I went myself to clean up and make some broth, but that toad of a
+Portugais shut the door in my face.  The Cure told us to go home and
+leave M'sieu' with Portugais.  He must be very sick to have that black
+sheep about him--and no doctor either."
+
+The saddler spoke up now.  "I took him a bottle of good brandy and some
+buttermilk-pop and seed cake--I would give him a saddle if he had a
+horse--he got my thousand dollars for me!  Well, he took them, but what
+do you think?  He sent them right off to the shantyman, Gugon, who has a
+broken leg.  Infidel or no, I'm on his side for sure.  And God blesses a
+cheerful giver, I'm told."
+
+It was the baker's chance, and he took it.  "I played 'The Heart Bowed
+Down'-it is English-under his window, two nights ago, and he sent word
+for me to come and play it again in the kitchen.  Ah, that is a good
+song, 'The Heart Bowed Down.'"
+
+"You'd be a better baker if you fiddled less," said Madame Dauphin,
+annoyed at being dropped out of the conversation.
+
+"The soul must be fed, Madame," rejoined the baker, with asperity.
+
+"Where is the tailor now?" said the Seigneur shortly.  "At Portugais's
+on Vadrome Mountain.  They say he looked like a ghost when he went.
+Rosalie Evanturel saw him, but she has no tongue in her head this
+morning," added Madame.
+
+The Seigneur moved away.  "Good-bye to you--I am obliged to you, Madame.
+Good-bye, Lacasse.  Come and fiddle to me some night, Cour."
+
+He bowed to the obsequious three, and then bent his steps towards the
+post-office.  They seemed about to follow him, but he stopped them with a
+look.  The men raised their bonnets-rouges, the woman bowed low, and the
+Seigneur entered the post-office door.
+
+From the shadows of the office Rosalie had watched the little group
+before the door of the tailor-shop.  She saw the Seigneur coming across
+the street.  Suddenly she flushed deeply, for there came to her mind the
+song the quack-doctor sang:
+
+                        "Voila, the day has come
+                         When Rosette leaves her home!
+                         With fear she walks in the sun,
+                         For Raoul is ninety year,
+                         And she not twenty-one."
+
+As M. Rossignol's figure darkened the doorway, she pretended to be busy
+behind the wicket, and not to see him.  He was not sure, but he thought
+it quite possible that she had seen him coming, and he put her
+embarrassment down to shyness.  Naturally the poor child was not given
+the chance every day to receive an offer of marriage from a seigneur.
+He had made up his mind that she would be sure to accept him if he asked
+her a second time.
+
+"Ah, Ma'm'selle Rosalie," he said gaily, "what have you to say that you
+should not come before a magistrate at once?"
+
+"Nothing, if Monsieur Rossignol is to be the magistrate," she replied,
+with forced lightness.
+
+"Good!"  He looked at her quizzically through his gold-handled glass.
+"I can't frighten you, I see.  Well, you must wait a little; you shall be
+sworn in postmistress in three days."  His voice lowered, became more
+serious.  "Tell me," he said, "do you know what is the matter with the
+gentleman across the way?"  Turning, he looked across to the tailor-shop,
+as though he expected "the gentleman" to appear, and he did not see her
+turn pale.  When his look fell on her again, she was self-controlled.
+
+"I do not know, Monsieur."
+
+"You have been opposite him here these months past--did you ever see
+anything not--not as it should be?"
+
+"With him, Monsieur?  Never."
+
+"It is as though the infidel behaved like a good Catholic and a
+Christian?"
+
+"There are good Catholics in Chaudiere who do not behave like
+Christians."
+
+"What would you say, for instance, about his past?"
+
+"What should I say about his past, Monsieur?  What should I know?"
+
+"You should know more than any one else in Chaudiere.  The secrets of his
+breast might well be bared to you."
+
+She started and crimsoned.  Before her eyes there came a mist obscuring
+the Seigneur, and for an instant shutting out the world.  The secrets of
+his breast--what did he mean?  Did he know that on Monsieur's breast was
+the red scar which .  .  .
+
+M. Rossignol's voice seemed coming from an infinite distance, and as it
+came, the mist slowly passed from her eyes.
+
+"You will know, Mademoiselle Rosalie," he was saying, "that while I
+suggested that the secrets of his breast might well be bared to you, I
+meant that as an honest lady and faithful postmistress they were not.  It
+was my awkward joke--a stupid gambolling by an old man who ought to know
+better."
+
+She did not answer, and he continued:
+
+"You know that you are trusted.  Pray accept my apologies."
+
+She was herself again.  "Monsieur," she said quietly; "I know nothing of
+his past.  I want to know nothing.  It does not seem to me that it is my
+business.  The world is free for a man to come and go in, if he keeps the
+law and does no ill--is it not?  But, in any case, I know nothing.  Since
+you have said so much, I shall say this, and betray no 'secrets of his
+breast'--that he has received no letter through this office since the day
+he first came from Vadrome Mountain."
+
+The Seigneur smiled.  "A wonderful tailor!  How does he carry on business
+without writing letters?"
+
+"There was a large stock of everything left by Louis Trudel, and not long
+ago a commercial traveller was here with everything."
+
+"You think he has nothing to hide, then?"
+
+"Have not we all something to hide--with or without shame?" she asked
+simply.
+
+"You have more sense than any woman in Chaudiere, Mademoiselle."
+
+She shook her head, yet she raised her eyes gratefully to him.
+
+"I put faith in what you say," he continued.  "Now listen.  My brother,
+the Abbe, chaplain to the Archbishop, is coming here.  He has heard of
+'the infidel' of our parish.  He is narrow and intolerant--the Abbe.  He
+is going to stir up trouble against the tailor.  We are a peaceful people
+here, and like to be left alone.  We are going on very well as we are.
+So I wanted to talk to Monsieur to-day.  I must make up my own mind how
+to act.  The tailor-shop is the property of the Church.  An infidel
+occupies it, so it is said; the Abbe does not like that.  I believe there
+are other curious suspicions about Monsieur: that he is a robber, or
+incendiary, or something of the sort.  The Abbe may take a stand, and the
+Cure's position will be difficult.  What is more, my brother has friends
+here, fanatics like himself.  He has been writing to them.  They are men
+capable of doing unpleasant things--the Abbe certainly is.  It is fair to
+warn the tailor.  Shall I leave it to you?  Do not frighten him.  But
+there is no doubt he should be warned--fair play, fair play!  I hear
+nothing but good of him from those whose opinions I value.  But, you see,
+every man's history in this parish and in every parish of the province is
+known.  This man, for us, has no history.  The Cure even admits there are
+some grounds for calling him an infidel, but, as you know, he would keep
+the man here, not drive him out from among us.  I have not told the Cure
+about the Abbe yet.  I wished first to talk with you.  The Abbe may come
+at any moment.  I have been away, and only find his letters to-day."
+
+"You wish me to tell Monsieur?" interrupted Rosalie, unable to hold
+silence any longer.  More than once during the Seigneur's disclosure she
+had felt that she must cry out and fiercely repel the base insinuations
+against the man she loved.
+
+"You would do it with discretion.  You are friendly with him, are you
+not?--you talk with him now and then?"
+
+She inclined her head.  "Very well, Monsieur.  I will go to Vadrome
+Mountain to-morrow," she said quietly.  Anger, apprehension, indignation,
+possessed her, but she held herself firmly.  The Seigneur was doing a
+friendly thing; and, in any case, she could have no quarrel with him.
+There was danger to the man she loved, however, and every faculty was
+alive.
+
+"That's right.  He shall have his chance to evade the Abbe if he wishes,"
+answered M. Rossignol.
+
+There was silence for a moment, in which she was scarcely conscious of
+his presence; then he leaned over the counter towards her, and spoke in a
+low voice.
+
+"What I said the other day I meant.  I do not change my mind--I am too
+old for that.  Yet I'm young enough to know that you may change yours."
+
+"I cannot change, Monsieur," she said tremblingly.
+
+"But you will change.  I knew your mother well, I know how anxious she
+was for your future.  I told her once that I should keep an eye on you
+always.  Her father was my father's good friend.  I knew you when you
+were in the cradle--a little brown-haired babe.  I watched you till you
+went to the convent.  I saw you come back to take up the duties which
+your mother laid down, alas!--"
+
+"Monsieur--!" she said choking, and with a troubled little gesture.
+
+"You must let me speak, Rosalie.  We got your father this post-office.
+It is a poor living, but it keeps a roof over your head.  You have never
+failed us you have always fulfilled our hopes.  But the best years of
+your life are going, and your education and your nature have not their
+chance.  Oh, I've not watched you all these years for nothing.  I never
+meant to ask you to marry me.  It came to me, though, all at once, and
+I know that it has been in my mind all these years--far back in my mind.
+I don't ask you for my own sake alone.  Your father may grow very ill--
+who can tell what may happen!"
+
+"I should be postmistress still," she said sadly.
+
+"As a young girl you could not have the responsibility here alone.  And
+you should not waste your life it is a fine, full spirit; let the lean,
+the poor-spirited, go singly.  You should be mated.  You can't marry any
+of the young farmers of Chaudiere.  'Tis impossible.  I can give you
+enough for any woman's needs--the world may be yours to see and use to
+your heart's content.  I can give, too"--he drew himself up proudly--"
+the unused emotions of a lifetime."  This struck him as a very fine and
+important thing to say.
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, that is not enough," she responded.  "What more can you
+want?"
+
+She looked up with a tearful smile.  "I will tell you one day, Monsieur."
+
+"What day?"
+
+"I have not picked it out in the calendar."
+
+"Fix the day, and I will wait till then.  I will not open my mouth again
+till then."
+
+"Michaelmas day, then, Monsieur," she answered mechanically and at
+haphazard, but with an urged gaiety, for a great depression was on her.
+
+"Good.  Till Michaelmas day, then!"  He pulled his long nose, laughing
+silently.  .  .  .  "I leave the tailor in your hands.  Give every man
+his chance, I say.  The Abbe is a hard man, but our hearts are soft--eh,
+eh, very soft!"  He raised his hat and turned to the door.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Always hoping the best from the worst of us
+Have not we all something to hide--with or without shame?
+In all secrets there is a kind of guilt
+Pathetically  in earnest
+Things that once charmed charm less
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT OF WAY
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 4.
+
+
+
+XXIX.     THE WILD RIDE
+XXX.      ROSALIE WARNS CHARLEY
+XXXI.     CHARLEY STANDS AT BAY
+XXXII.    JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY
+XXXIII.   THE EDGE OF LIFE
+XXXIV.    IN AMBUSH
+XXXV.     THE COMING OF MAXIMILIAN COUR AND ANOTHER
+XXXVI.    BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY
+XXXVII.   THE CHALLENGE OF PAULETTE DUBOIS
+XXXVIII.  THE CURE AND THE SEIGNEUR VISIT THE TAILOR
+XXXIX.    THE SCARLET WOMAN
+XL.       AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE WILD RIDE
+
+There had been a fierce thunder-storm in the valley of the Chaudiere.  It
+had come suddenly from the east, had shrieked over the village, levelling
+fences, carrying away small bridges, and ending in a pelting hail, which
+whitened the ground with pebbles of ice.  It had swept up to Vadrome
+Mountain, and had marched furiously through the forest, carrying down
+hundreds of trees, drowning the roars of wild animals and the crying and
+fluttering of birds.  One hour of ravage and rage, and then, spent and
+bodiless, the storm crept down the other side of the mountain and into
+the next parish, whither the affrighted quack-doctor had betaken himself.
+After, a perfect calm, a shining sun, and a sweet smell over all the
+land, which had thirstily drunk the battering showers.
+
+In the house on Vadrome Mountain the tailor of Chaudiere had watched the
+storm with sympathetic interest.  It was in accord with his own feelings.
+He had had a hard fight for months past, and had gone down in the storm
+of his emotions one night when a song called Champagne Charlie had had a
+weird and thrilling antiphonal.  There had been a subsequent debacle for
+himself, and then a revelation concerning Jo Portugais.  Ensued hours and
+days, wherein he had fought a desperate fight with the present--with
+himself and the reaction from his dangerous debauch.
+
+The battle for his life had been fought for him by this gloomy woodsman
+who henceforth represented his past, was bound to him by a measureless
+gratitude, almost a sacrament--of the damned.  Of himself he had played
+no conscious part in it till the worst was over.  On the one side was the
+Cure, patient, gentle, friendly, never pushing forward the Faith which
+the good man dreamed should give him refuge and peace; on the other side
+was the murderer, who typified unrest, secretiveness, an awful isolation,
+and a remorse which had never been put into words or acts of restitution.
+For six days the tailor-shop and the life at Chaudiere had been things
+almost apart from his consciousness.  Ever-recurring memories of Rosalie
+Evanturel were driven from his mind with a painful persistence.  In the
+shadows where his nature dwelt now he would not allow her good innocence
+and truth to enter.  His self-reproach was the more poignant because it
+was silent.
+
+Watching the tempest-swept valley, the tortured forest, where wild life
+was in panic, there came upon him the old impulse to put his thoughts
+into words, "and so be rid of them," as he was wont to say in other days.
+Taking from his pocket some slips of paper, he laid them on the table
+before him.  Three or four times he leaned over the paper to write, but
+the noise of the storm again and again drew his look to the window.  The
+tempest ceased almost as suddenly as it had come, and, as the first
+sunlight broke through the flying clouds, he mechanically lifted a sheet
+of the paper and held it up to the light.  It brought to his eyes the
+large water-mark, Kathleen!
+
+A sombre look passed over his face, he shifted in his chair, then bent
+over the paper and began to write.  Words flowed from his pen.  The lines
+of his face relaxed, his eyes lightened; he was lost in a dream.  He
+thought of the present, and he wrote:
+
+                   "Wave walls to seaward,
+                    Storm-clouds to leeward,
+                    Beaten and blown by the winds of the West;
+                    Sail we encumbered
+                    Past isles unnumbered,
+                    But never to greet the green island of Rest."
+
+He thought of Father Loisel.  He had seen the good man's lips tremble at
+some materialistic words he had once used in their many talks, and he
+wrote:
+
+                        "Lips that now tremble,
+                         Do you dissemble
+                    When you deny that the human is best?--
+                         Love, the evangel,
+                         Finds the Archangel?
+                    Is that a truth when this may be a jest?
+
+                        "Star-drifts that glimmer
+                         Dimmer and dimmer,
+                    What do ye know of my weal or my woe?
+                         Was I born under
+                         The sun or the thunder?
+                    What do I come from?  and where do I go?
+
+                        "Rest, shall it ever
+                         Come?  Is endeavour
+                    But a vain twining and twisting of cords?
+                         Is faith but treason;
+                         Reason, unreason,
+                    But a mechanical weaving of words?"
+
+He thought of Louis Trudel, in his grave, and his own questioning: "Show
+me a sign from Heaven, tailorman!" and he wrote:
+
+                        "What is the token,
+                         Ever unbroken,
+                    Swept down the spaces of querulous years,
+                         Weeping or singing
+                         That the Beginning
+                    Of all things is with us, and sees us, and hears?"
+
+He made an involuntary motion of his hand to his breast, where old Louis
+Trudel had set a sign.  So long as he lived, it must be there to read:
+a shining smooth scar of excoriation, a sacred sign of the faith he had
+never been able to accept; of which he had never, indeed, been able to
+think, so distant had been his soul, until, against his will, his heart
+had answered to the revealing call in a woman's eyes.  He felt her
+fingers touch his breast as they did that night the iron seared him; and
+out of this first intimacy of his soul he wrote:
+
+                        "What is the token?
+                         Bruised and broken,
+                    Bend I my life to a blossoming rod?
+                         Shall then the worst things
+                         Come to the first things,
+                    Finding the best of all, last of all, God?"
+
+Like the cry of his "Aphrodite," written that last afternoon of the old
+life, this plaint ended with the same restless, unceasing question.  But
+there was a difference.  There was no longer the material, distant note
+of a pagan mind; there was the intimate, spiritual note of a mind finding
+a foothold on the submerged causeway of life and time.
+
+As he folded up the paper to put it into his pocket, Jo Portugais entered
+the room.  He threw in a corner the wet bag which had protected his
+shoulders from the rain, hung his hat on a peg of the chimney-piece,
+nodded to Charley, and put a kettle on the little fire.
+
+"A big storm, M'sieu'," Jo said presently as he put some tea into a pot.
+
+"I have never seen a great storm in a forest before," answered Charley,
+and came nearer to the window through which the bright sun streamed.
+
+"It always does me good," said Jo.  "Every bird and beast is awake and
+afraid and trying to hide, and the trees fall, and the roar of it like
+the roar of the chasse-galerie on the Kimash River."
+
+"The Kimash River--where is it?"
+
+Jo shrugged his shoulders.  "Who knows!"
+
+"Is it a legend, then?"
+
+"It is a river."
+
+"And the chasse-galerie?"
+
+"That is true, M'sieu', no matter what any one thinks.  I know; I have
+seen--I have seen with my own eyes."  Jo was excited now.
+
+"I am listening."  He took a cup of tea from Portugais and drank eagerly.
+
+"The Kimash River, M'sieu', that is the river in the air.  On it is the
+chasse-galerie.  You sell your soul to the devil; you ask him to help
+you; you deny God.  You get into a canoe and call on the devil.  You are
+lifted up, canoe and all, and you rush on down rapids, over falls, on the
+Kimash River in the air.  The devil stands behind you and shouts, and you
+sing, 'V'la! l'bon vent!  V'la l'joli vent!' On and on you go, faster and
+faster, and you forget the world, and you forget yourself, and the devil
+is with you in the air--in the chasse-galerie on the Kimash River."
+
+"Jo," said Charley Steele, "do you honestly think there's a river like
+that?"
+
+'M'sieu', I know it.  I saw Ignace Latoile, who robbed a priest and got
+drunk on the communion wine--I saw him with the devil in the Black Canoe
+at the Saguenay.  I could see Ignace; I could see the devil; I could see
+the Kimash River.  I shall ride myself some day.
+
+"Ride where?"
+
+"What does it matter where?"
+
+"Why should you ride?"
+
+"Because you ride fast with the devil."
+
+"What is the good of riding fast?"
+
+"In the rush a man forget."
+
+"What does he forget, my friend?"
+
+There was a pause, in which a man with a load of crime upon his soul
+dwelt upon the words my friend, coming from the lips of one who knew the
+fulness of his iniquity.  Then he answered:
+
+"In the noise he forget that a voice is calling in his ear, 'You did It!'
+He forget what he see in his dreams.  He forget the hand that touch him
+on the arm when he walk in the woods alone, or lie down to sleep at
+night, no one near.  He forget that some one wait--wait--wait, till he
+has suffer long enough, or till, one day, he think he is happy again, and
+the Thing he did is far off like a dream--to drag him out to the death he
+did not die.  He forget that he is alone--all alone in the world, for
+ever and ever and ever."
+
+He suddenly sank upon the floor beside Charley, and a groan burst from
+his lips.  "To have no friend--ah, it is so awful!" he said.  "Never to
+see a face that look into yours, and know how bad are you, and doesn't
+mind.  For five years I have live like that.  I cannot let any one be my
+friend because I was that!  They seem to know--everything, everybody--
+what I am.  The little children when I pass them run away to hide.  I
+have wake in the night and cry out in fear, it is so lonely.  I have hear
+voices round me in the woods, and I run and run and run from them, and
+not leave them behind.  Three times I go to the jails in Quebec to see
+the prisoners behind the bars, and watch the pains on their faces, to
+understand what I escape.  Five times have I go to the courts to listen
+to murderers tried, and watch them when the Jury say Guilty!  and the
+Judge send them to death--that I might know.  Twice have I go to see
+murderers hung.  Once I was helper to the hangman, that I might hear and
+know what the man said, what he felt.  When the arms were bound, I felt
+the straps on my own; when the cap come down, I gasp for breath; when the
+bolt is shot, I feel the wrench and the choke, and shudder go through
+myself--feel the world jerk out in the dark.  When the body is bundled in
+the pit, I see myself lie still under the quick-lime with the red mark
+round my throat."
+
+Charley touched him on the shoulder.  "Jo--poor Jo, my friend!" he said.
+Jo raised his eyes, red with an unnatural fire, deep with gratitude.
+
+"As I sit at my dinner, with the sun shining and the woods green and
+glad, and all the world gay, I have see what happened all over again.
+I have see his strong hands; his bad face laugh at my words; I have see
+him raise his riding-whip and cut me across the head.  I have see him
+stagger and fall from the blows I give him with the knife--the knife
+which never was found--why, I not know, for I throw it on the ground
+beside him!  There, as I sit in the open day, a thousand times I have see
+him shiver and fall, staring, staring at me as if he see a dreadful
+thing.  Then I stand up again and strike at him--at his ghost!--as I did
+that day in the woods.  Again I see him lie in his blood, straight and
+white--so large, so handsome, so still!  I have shed tears--but what are
+tears!  Blind with tears I have call out for the devils of hell to take
+me with them.  I have call on God to give me death.  I have prayed, and I
+have cursed.  Twice I have travelled to the grave where he lies.  I have
+knelt there and have beg him to tell the truth to God, and say that he
+torture me till I kill him.  I have beg him to forgive me and to haunt me
+no more with his bad face.  But never--never--never--have I one quiet
+hour until you come, M'sieu'; nor any joy in my heart till I tell you the
+black truth--M'sieu'!  M'sieu!"
+
+He buried his face between Charley's feet, and held them with his hands.
+
+Charley laid a hand on the shaggy head as though it were that of a child.
+"Be still--be still, Jo," he said gently.
+
+Since that night of St. Jean Baptiste's festival, no word of the past,
+of the time when Charley turned aside the revanche of justice from a man
+called Joseph Nadeau, had been spoken between them.  Out of the delirium
+of his drunken trance had come Charley's recognition of the man he knew
+now as Jo Portugais.  But the recognition had been sent again into the
+obscurity whence it came, and had not been mentioned since.  To outward
+seeming they had gone on as before.  As Charley saw the knotted brows,
+the staring eyes, the clinched hands, the figure of the woodsman rigid in
+its agony of remorse, he said to himself: "What right had I to save this
+man's life?  To have paid for his crime would have been easier for him.
+I knew he was guilty.  Perhaps it was my duty to see that every
+condition, to the last shade of the law, was satisfied, but was it
+justice to the poor devil himself?  There he sits with a load on him that
+weighs him down every hour of his life.  I called him back; I gave him
+life; but I gave him memory and remorse, and the ghosts that haunt him:
+the voice in his ear, the touch on his arm, the some one that is
+'waiting--waiting--waiting!'  That is what I did, and that is what the
+brother of the Cure did for me.  He drew me back.  He knew I was a
+drunkard, but he drew me back.  I might have been a murderer like
+Portugais.  The world says I was a thief, and a thief I am until I prove
+to the world I am innocent--and wreck three lives!  How much of Jo's
+guilt is guilt?  How much remorse should a man suffer to pay the debt of
+a life?  If the law is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, how
+much hourly remorse and torture, such as Jo's, should balance the eye or
+the tooth or the life?  I wonder, now!"
+
+He leaned over, and, helping Jo to his feet, gently forced him down upon
+a bench near.  "All right, Jo, my friend," he said.  "I understand.
+We'll drink the gall together."
+
+They sat and looked at each other in silence.
+
+At length Charley leaned over and touched Jo on the shoulder.
+
+"Why did you want to save yourself?" he said.
+
+At that instant there was a knock at the door, and a voice said:
+"Monsieur!--Monsieur!"
+
+Jo sprang to his feet with a sharp exclamation, then went heavily to the
+door and threw it open.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+ROSALIE WARNS CHARLEY
+
+Charley's eyes met Rosalie's with a look the girl had never seen in them
+before.  It gave a glow to his haggard face.
+
+Rosalie turned to Jo and greeted him with a friendlier manner than was
+her wont towards him.  The nearer she was to Charley, the farther away
+from him, to her mind, was Portugais, and she became magnanimous.
+
+Jo nodded' awkwardly and left the room.  Looking after the departing
+figure, Rosalie said: "I know he has been good to you, but--but do you
+trust him, Monsieur?"
+
+"Does not everybody in Chaudiere trust him?"
+
+"There is one who does not, though perhaps that's of no consequence."
+
+"Why do you not trust him?"
+
+"I don't know.  I never knew him do a bad thing; I never heard of a bad
+thing he has done; and--he has been good to you."
+
+She paused, flushing as she felt the significance of her words, and
+continued: "Yet there is--I cannot tell what.  I feel something.  It is
+not reasonable to go upon one's feelings; but there it is, and so I do
+not trust him."
+
+"It is the way he lives, here in these lonely woods--the mystery around
+him."
+
+A change passed over her.  With the first glow of meeting the object of
+her visit had receded, though since her last interview with the Seigneur
+she had not rested a moment, in her anxiety to warn him of his danger.
+"Oh, no," she said, lifting her eyes frankly to his: "oh, no, Monsieur!
+It is not that.  There is mystery about you!"  She felt her heart beating
+hard.  It almost choked her, but she kept on bravely.  "People say
+strange and bad things about you.  No one knows"--she trembled under the
+painful inquiry of his eyes.  Then she gained courage and went on, for
+she must make it clear she trusted him, that she took him at his word,
+before she told him of the peril before him--"No one knows where you came
+from .  .  .  and it is nobody's business.  Some people do not believe in
+you.  But I believe in you--I should believe in you if every one doubted;
+for there is no feeling in me that says, 'He has done some wicked thing
+that stands-between us.'  It isn't the same as with Portugais, you see--
+naturally, it could not be the same."
+
+She seemed not to realise that she was telling more of her own heart than
+she had ever told.  It was a revelation, having its origin in an honesty
+which impelled a pure outspokenness to himself.  Reserve, of course,
+there had been elsewhere, for did not she hold a secret with him?  Had
+she not hidden things, equivocated else where?  Yet it had been at his
+wish, to protect the name of a dead man, for the repose of whose soul
+masses were now said, with expensive candles burning.  For this she had
+no repentance; she was without logic where this man's good was at stake.
+
+Charley had before him a problem, which he now knew he never could evade
+in the future.  He could solve it by none of the old intellectual means,
+but by the use of new faculties, slowly emerging from the unexplored
+fastnesses of his nature.
+
+"Why should you believe in me?" he asked, forcing himself to smile, yet
+acutely alive to the fact that a crisis was impending.  "You, like all
+down there in Chaudiere, know nothing of my past, are not sure that I
+haven't been a hundred times worse than you think poor Jo there.  I may
+have been anything.  You may be harbouring a man the law is tracking
+down."
+
+In all that befell Rosalie Evanturel thereafter, never could come such
+another great resolute moment.  There was nothing to support her in the
+crisis but her own faith.  It needed high courage to tell this man who
+had first given her dreams, then imagination, hope, and the beauty of
+doing for another's well-being rather than for her own--to tell this man
+that he was a suspected criminal.  Would he hate her?  Would his kindness
+turn to anger?  Would he despise her for even having dared to name the
+suspicion which was bringing hither an austere Abbe and officers of the
+law?
+
+"We are harbouring a man the law is tracking down," she said with an
+infinite appeal in her eyes.
+
+He did not quite understand.  He thought that perhaps she meant Jo, and
+he glanced towards the door; but she kept her eyes on him, and they told
+him that she meant himself.  He chilled, as though ether were being
+poured through his veins.
+
+Did the world know, then, that Charley Steele was alive?  Was the law
+sending its officers to seize the embezzler, the ruffian who had robbed
+widow and orphan?
+
+If it were so.  .  .  .  To go back to the world whence he came, with the
+injury he must do to others, and the punishment also that he must suffer,
+if he did not tell the truth about Billy!  And Chaudiere, which, in spite
+of all, was beginning to have a real belief in him--where was his
+contempt for the world now!  .  .  .  And Rosalie, who trusted him--
+this new element rapidly grew dominant in his thoughts-to be the common
+criminal in her eyes!
+
+His paleness gave way to a flush as like her own as could be.
+
+"You mean me?" he asked quietly.
+
+She had thought that his flush meant anger, and she was surprised at the
+quiet tone.  She nodded assent.  "For what crime?" he asked.
+
+"For stealing."
+
+His heart seemed to stand still.  Then, it had come in spite of all it
+had come.  Here was his resurrection, and the old life to face.
+
+"What did I steal?" he asked with dull apathy.  "The gold vessels from
+the Catholic Cathedral of Quebec, after--after trying to blow up
+Government House with gunpowder."
+
+His despair passed.  His face suddenly lighted.  He smiled.  It was so
+absurd.  "Really!" he said.  "When was the place blown up?"
+
+"Two days before you came here last year--it was not blown up; an attempt
+was made."
+
+"Ah, I did not know.  Why was the attempt made to blow it up?"
+
+"Some Frenchman's hatred of the English, they say."
+
+"But I am not French."
+
+"They do not know.  You speak French as perfectly as English--ah,
+Monsieur, Monsieur, I believe you are whatever you say."  Pain and appeal
+rang from her lips.
+
+"I am only an honest tailor," he answered gently.  He ruled his face to
+calmness, for he read the agony in the girl's face, and troubled as he
+was, he wished to show her that he had no fear.
+
+"It is for what you were they will arrest you," she said helplessly, and
+as though he needed to have all made clear to him.  "Oh, Monsieur," she
+continued, in a broken voice, "it would shame me so to have you made a
+prisoner in Chaudiere--before all these silly people, who turn with the
+wind.  I should not lift my head--but yes, I should lift my head!" she
+added hurriedly.  "I should tell them all they lied--every one--the
+idiots!  The Seigneur--"
+
+"Well, what of the Seigneur-Rosalie?"
+
+Her own name on his lips--the sound of it dimmed her eyes.
+
+"Monsieur Rossignol does not know you.  He neither believes nor
+disbelieves.  He said to me that if you wanted consideration, to command
+him, for in Chaudiere he had heard nothing but good of you.  If you
+stayed, he would see that you had justice--not persecution.  I saw him
+two hours ago."
+
+She said the last words shyly, for she was thinking why the Seigneur had
+spoken as he did--that he had taken her opinion of Monsieur as his guide,
+and she had not scrupled to impress him with her views.  The Seigneur was
+in danger of becoming prejudiced by his sentiments.
+
+A wave of feeling passed over Charley, a rushing wave of sympathy for
+this simple girl, who, out of a blind confidence, risked so much for him.
+Risk there certainly was, if she--if she cared for him.  It was cruelty
+not to reassure her.
+
+Touching his breast, he said gravely: "By this sign here, I am not guilty
+of the crime for which they come to seek me, Rosalie.  Nor of any other
+crime for which the law might punish me--dear, noble friend."
+
+He did so little to get such rich return.  Her eyes leaped up to brighter
+degrees of light, her face shone with a joy it had never reflected
+before, her blood rushed to her finger-tips.  She abruptly sat down in
+a chair and buried her face in her hands, trembling.  Then, lifting her
+head slowly, after a moment she spoke in a tone that told him her faith,
+her gratitude--not for reassurance, but for confidence, which is as water
+in a thirsty land to a woman.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, I thank you, I thank you from the depth of my heart; and
+my heart is deep indeed, very, very deep--I cannot find what lies lowest
+in it!  I thank you, because you trust me, because you make it so easy
+to--to be your friend; to say 'I know' when any one might doubt you.
+One has no right to speak for another till--till the other has given
+confidence, has said you may.  Ah, Monsieur, I am so happy!"
+
+In very abandonment of heart she clasped her hands and came a step nearer
+to him, but abruptly stopped still; for, realising her action, timidity
+and embarrassment rushed upon her.
+
+Charley understood, and again his impulse was to say what was in his
+heart and dare all; but resolution possessed him, and he said quickly:
+
+"Once, Rosalie, you saved me--from death perhaps.  Once your hands helped
+my pain--here."  He touched his breast.  "Your words now, and what you
+do, they still help me--here .  .  .  but in a different way.  The
+trouble is in my heart, Rosalie.  You are glad of my confidence?  Well,
+I will give you more.  .  .  .  I cannot go back to my old life.  To do
+so would injure others--some who have never injured me and some who have.
+That is why.  That is why I do not wish to be taken to Quebec now on a
+false charge.  That is all I can say.  Is it enough?"
+
+She was about to answer, but Jo Portugais entered, exclaiming.
+"M'sieu'," he cried, "men are coming with the Seigneur and Cure."
+
+Charley nodded at Jo, then turned to Rosalie.  "You need not be seen if
+you go out by the back way, Mademoiselle."  He held aside the bear-skin
+curtain of the door that led into the next room.
+
+There was a frightened look in her face.  "Do not fear for me," he
+continued.  "It will come right--somehow.  You have done more for me than
+any one has ever done or ever will do.  I will remember till the last
+moment of my life.  Good-bye."
+
+He laid a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her from the room.
+
+"God protect you!  The Blessed Virgin speak for you!  I will pray for
+you," she whispered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+CHARLEY STANDS AT BAY
+
+Charley turned quickly to the woodsman.  "Listen," he said, and he told
+Jo how things stood.
+
+"You will not hide, M'sieu'?  There is time," Jo asked.
+
+"I will not hide, Jo."
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"I'll decide when they come."
+
+There was silence for a moment, then the sound of voices on the hill-
+side.
+
+Charley's soul rose up in revolt against the danger that faced him--not
+against personal peril, but the danger of being dragged back again into
+the life he had come from, with all that it involved--the futility of
+this charge against him!  To be the victim of an error--to go to the bar
+of justice with the hand of injustice on his arm!
+
+All at once the love of this new life welled up in him, as a spring of
+water overflows its bounds.  A voice kept ringing in his ears, "I will
+pray for you."  Subconsciously his mind kept saying, "Rosalie--Rosalie--
+Rosalie!"  There was nothing now that he would not do to avert his being
+taken away upon this ridiculous charge.  Mistaken identity?  To prove
+that, he must at once prove himself--who he was, whence he came.  Tell
+the Cure, and make it a point of honour for his secret to be kept?  But
+once told, the new life would no longer stand by itself as the new life,
+cut off from all contact with the past.  Its success, its possibility,
+must lie in its absolute separateness, with obscurity behind--as though
+he had come out of nothing into this very room, on that winter morning
+when memory returned.
+
+It was clear that he must, somehow, evade the issue.  He glanced at Jo,
+whose eyes, strained and painful, were fixed upon the door.  Here was a
+man who suffered for his sake.  .  .  .  He took a step forward, as
+though with sudden resolve, but there came a knocking, and, pausing,
+he motioned Jo to open the door.  Then, turning to a shelf, he took
+something from it hastily, and kept it in his hand.
+
+Jo roused himself with an effort, and opened to the knocking.
+
+Three people entered: the Seigneur, the Cure, and the Abbe Rossignol, an
+ascetic, severe man, with a face of intolerance and inflexibility.  Two
+constables in plain clothes followed; one stolid, one alert, one English
+and one French, both with grim satisfaction in their faces--the
+successful exercise of his trade is pleasant to every craftsman.  When
+they entered, Charley was standing with his back to the fireplace, his
+eye-glass adjusted, one hand stroking his beard, the other held behind
+his back.
+
+The Cure came forward and shook hands in an eager friendly way.
+
+"My dear Monsieur," said he, "I hope that you are better."
+
+"I am quite well, thank you, Monsieur le Cure," answered Charley.
+"I shall get back to work on Monday, I hope."
+
+"Yes, yes, that is good," responded the Cure, and seemed confused.
+He turned uneasily to the Seigneur.  "You have come to see my friend
+Portugais," Charley remarked slowly, almost apologetically.  "I will take
+my leave."  He made a step forward.  The two constables did the same, and
+would have laid their hands upon his shoulder but that the Seigneur said
+tartly:
+
+"Stand off, Jack-in-boxes!"
+
+The two stood aside, and looked covertly at the Seigneur, whose temper
+seemed unusually irascible.  Charley's face showed no surprise, but he
+looked inquiringly at the Cure.
+
+"If they wish to be measured for uniforms--or manners--I will see them at
+my shop," he said.
+
+The Seigneur chuckled.  Charley stepped again towards the door.  The two
+constables stood before it.  Again he turned inquiringly, this time
+towards the Cure.  The Cure did not speak.
+
+"It is you we wish to see, tailor," said the Abbe Rossignol.
+
+Soft-tongued irony leaped to Charley's lips: "Have I, then, the honour
+of including Monsieur among my customers?  I cannot recall Monsieur's
+figure.  I think I should not have forgotten it."
+
+It was now the old Charley Steele, with the new body, the new spirit, but
+with the old skilful mind, aggravatingly polite, non-intime--the
+intolerant face of this father of souls irritated him.
+
+"I never forget a figure which has idiosyncrasy," he added, with a bland
+eye wandering over the priest's gaunt form.  It was his old way to strike
+first and heal after--"a kick and a lick," as old Paddy Wier, whom he
+once saved from prison, said of him.  It was like bygone years of another
+life to appear in defence when the law was tightening round a victim.
+The secret spring had been touched, the ancient machinery of his mind
+was working almost automatically.
+
+The illusion was considerable, for the Seigneur had taken the only arm-
+chair in the room, a little apart, as it were, filling the place of
+judge.  The priest-brother, cold and inveterate, was like the attorney
+for the crown.  The Cure was the clerk of the court, who could only
+echo the decisions of the Judge.  The constables were the machinery of
+the Law, and Jo Portugais was the unwilling witness, whose evidence would
+be the crux of the case.  The prisoner--he himself was prisoner and
+prisoner's counsel.
+
+A good struggle was forward.
+
+He had enraged the Abbe as much as he had delighted the Abbe's brother;
+for nothing gave the Seigneur such pleasure as the discomfiture of the
+Abbe Rossignol, chaplain and ordinary to the Archbishop of Quebec.  The
+genial, sympathetic nature of the Seigneur could not even be patient with
+the excessive piety of the churchman, who, in rigid righteousness, had
+thrashed him cruelly as a boy.  At Charley's words upon the Abbe's
+figure, gaunt and precise as a swaddled ramrod, he pulled his nose with a
+grunt of satisfaction.
+
+The Cure, the peace-maker, intervened.  The tailor's meaning was
+sufficiently clear: if they had come to see him personally, then it was
+natural for him to wish to know the names and stations of his guests,
+and their business.  The Seigneur was aware that the tailor did know,
+and he enjoyed the 'sang-froid' with which he was meeting the situation.
+
+"Monsieur," said the Cure, in a mollifying voice, "I have ventured to
+bring the Seigneur of Chaudiere"--the Seigneur stood up and bowed
+gravely--"and his brother, the Abbe Rossignol, who would speak with you
+on private business"--he ignored the presence of the constables.
+
+Charley bowed to the Seigneur and the Abbe, then turned inquiringly
+towards the two constables.  "Friends of my brother the Abbe," said the
+Seigneur maliciously.
+
+"Their names, Monsieur?" asked Charley.
+
+"They have numbers," answered the Seigneur whimsically--to the Cure's
+pain, for levity seemed improper at such a time.
+
+"Numbers of names are legally suspicious, numbers for names are
+suspiciously legal," rejoined Charley.  "You have pierced the disguise of
+discourtesy," said the Seigneur, and, on the instant, he made up his mind
+that whatever the tailor might have been, he was deserving of respect.
+
+"You have private business with me, Monsieur?" asked Charley of the
+Abbe.
+
+The Abbe shook his head.  "The business is not private, in one sense.
+These men have come to charge you with having broken into the cathedral
+at Quebec and stolen the gold vessels of the altar; also with having
+tried to blow up the Governor's residence."
+
+One of the constables handed Charley the warrant.  He looked at it with a
+curious smile.  It was so natural, yet so unnatural, to be thus in touch
+with the habits of far-off times.
+
+"On what information is this warrant issued?" he asked.
+
+"That is for the law to show in due course," said the priest.
+
+"Pardon me; it is for the law to show now.  I have a right to know."
+
+The constables shifted from one foot to the other, looked at each other
+meaningly, and instinctively felt their weapons.
+
+"I believe," said the Seigneur evenly, "that--" The Abbe interrupted.
+"He can have information at his trial."
+
+"Excuse me, but the warrant has my endorsement," said the Seigneur, "and,
+as the justice most concerned, I shall give proper information to the
+gentleman under suspicion."  He waved a hand at the Abbe, as at a
+fractious child, and turned courteously to Charley.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "on the tenth of August last the cathedral at Quebec
+was broken into, and the gold altar-vessels were stolen.  You are
+suspected.  The same day an attempt was made to blow up the Governor's
+residence.  You are suspected."
+
+"On what ground, Monsieur?"
+
+"You appeared in this vicinity three days afterwards with an injury to
+the head.  Now, the incendiary received a severe blow on the head from a
+servant of the Governor.  You see the connection, Monsieur?"
+
+"Where is the servant of the Governor, Monsieur?"
+
+"Dead, unfortunately.  He told the story so often, to so much
+hospitality, that he lost his footing on Mountain Street steps--you
+remember Mountain Street steps possibly, Monsieur?--and cracked his head
+on the last stone."
+
+There was silence for a moment.  If the thing had not been so serious,
+Charley must have laughed outright.  If he but disclosed his identity,
+how easy to dispose of this silly charge!  He did not reply at once, but
+looked calmly at the Abbe.  In the pause, the Seigneur added "I forgot to
+add that the man had a brown beard.  You have a brown beard, Monsieur."
+
+"I had not when I arrived here."
+
+Jo Portugais spoke.  "That is true, M'sieu'; and what is more, I know a
+newly shaved face when I see it, and M'sieu's was tanned with the sun.
+It is foolish, that!"
+
+"This is not the place for evidence," said the Abbe sharply.
+
+"Excuse me, Abbe," said his brother; "if Monsieur wishes to have a
+preliminary trial here, he may.  He is in my seigneury; he is a tenant of
+the Church here--"
+
+"It is a grave offence that an infidel, dropping down here from, who
+knows where--that an acknowledged infidel should be a tenant of the
+Church!"
+
+"The devil is a tenant of the Almighty, if creation is the Almighty's,"
+said Charley.
+
+"Satan is a prisoner," snapped the Abbe.
+
+"With large domains for exercise," retorted Charley, "and in successful
+opposition to the Church.  If it is true that the man you charge is an
+infidel, how does that warrant suspicion?"
+
+"Other thefts," answered the Abbe.  "A sacred iron cross was stolen from
+the door of the church of Chaudiere.  I have no doubt that the thief of
+the gold vessels of the cathedral was the thief of the iron cross."
+
+"It is not true," sullenly broke in Jo Portugais.
+
+"What proof have you?" said the Seigneur.  Charley waved a deprecating
+hand towards Jo.
+
+"I shall not call Portugais as evidence," he said.
+
+"You are conducting your own case?" asked the Seigneur, with a grim
+smile.
+
+"It is dangerous, I believe."
+
+"I will take my chances," answered Charley.  "Will you tell me what
+object the criminal could have in stealing the gold vessels from the
+cathedral?" he added, turning to the Abbe.
+
+"They were gold!"
+
+"And for taking the cross from the door of the church in Chaudiere?"
+
+"It was sacred, and he was an infidel, and hated it."
+
+"I do not see the logic of the argument.  He stole the vessels because
+they were valuable, and the iron cross because he was an infidel!  Now
+how do you know that the suspected criminal was an infidel, Monsieur?"
+
+"It is well known."
+
+"Has he ever said so?"
+
+"He does not deny it."
+
+"If you were charged with being an opium-eater, does it follow that you
+are one because you do not deny it?  There was a Man who was said to
+blaspheme, to have all 'the crafts and assaults of the devil'--was it His
+duty to deny it?  Suppose you were accused of being a highwayman, would
+you be less a highwayman if you denied it?  Or would you be less guilty
+if you denied it?"
+
+"That is beside the case," said the priest with acerbity.
+
+"Faith, I think it is the case itself," said the Seigneur with a
+satisfied pull of his nose.
+
+"But do you seriously suggest that only infidels rob churches?" Charley
+persisted.
+
+"I am not here to be cross-examined," answered the Abbe harshly.
+"You are charged with robbing the cathedral and trying to blow up the
+Governor's residence.  Arrest him!" he added, turning to the constables.
+
+"Stand where you are, men," sharply threatened the Seigneur.  "There are
+no lettres de cachet nowadays, Francois," he added tartly to his brother.
+
+"If it is the exclusive temptation of an infidel to rob a church, has
+infidelity also an inherent penchant for arson?  Is it a patent?  Why did
+the infidel blow up the Governor's residence?" continued Charley.
+
+"He did not blow it up, he only tried," interposed the Cure softly.
+
+"I was not aware," said Charley.  "Well, did the man who stole the patens
+from the altar--"
+
+"They were chalices," again interrupted the Cure, with a faint smile.
+
+"Ah, I was not aware!" again rejoined Charley.  "I repeat, what reason
+had the person who stole the chalices to try to blow up the Governor's
+residence?  Is it a sign of infidelity, or--"
+
+"You can answer for that yourself," angrily interposed the Abbe.  The
+strain was telling on his nerves.
+
+"It is fair to give reasons for the suspicion," urged the Seigneur
+acidly.
+
+"As I said before, Francois, this is not the fifteenth century."
+
+"He hated the English government," said the Abbe.  "I do not understand,"
+responded Charley.  "Am I then to suppose that the alleged criminal was a
+Frenchman as well as an infidel?"
+
+There was silence, and Charley continued.  "It is an unusual thing for a
+French Abbe to be so concerned for the safety of an English Protestant's
+life and housing .  .  .  the Governor is a Protestant--eh?  That is,
+indeed, a zeal almost Christian--or millennial."
+
+The Abby turned to the Seigneur.  "Are you going to interfere longer with
+the process of the law?"
+
+"I think Monsieur has not quite finished his argument," said the
+Seigneur, with a twist of the mouth.
+
+"If the man was a Frenchman, why do you suspect the tailor of Chaudiere?"
+asked Charley softly.  "Of course I understand the reason behind all: you
+have heard that the tailor is an infidel; you have protested to the good
+Cure here, and the Cure is a man who has a sense of justice, and will not
+drive a poor man from his parish by Christian persecution--without cause.
+Since certain dates coincide and impulses urge, you suspect the tailor.
+Again, according to your mind, a man who steals holy vessels must needs
+be an infidel; therefore a tailor in Chaudiere, suspected of being an
+infidel, stole the holy chalices.  It might seem a fair case for a grand
+jury of clericals.  But it breaks down in certain places.  Your criminal
+is a Frenchman; the tailor of Chaudiere is an Englishman."
+
+The Abbe's face was contracted with stubborn annoyance, though he held
+his tongue from violence.  "Do you deny that you are French?" he asked
+tartly.
+
+"I could almost endure the suspicion because of the compliment to my
+command of your charming language."
+
+"Prove that you are an Englishman.  No one knows where you came from;
+no one knows what you are.  You are a fair subject for suspicion, apart
+from the evidence shown," said the Abbe, trying now to be as polite as
+the tailor.
+
+"This is a free country.  So long as the law is obeyed, one can go where
+one wills without question, I take it."
+
+"There is a law of vagrancy."
+
+"I am a householder, a tenant of the Church, not a vagrant."
+
+"Monsieur, you can have your choice of proving these things here or in
+Quebec," said the Abbe, with angry impatience again.
+
+"I may not be compelled to prove anything.  It is the privilege of the
+law to prove the crime against me."
+
+"You are a very remarkable tailor," said the Abbe sarcastically.
+
+"I have not had the honour of making you even a cassock, I think.
+Monsieur le Cure, I believe, approves of those I make for him.
+He has a good figure, however."
+
+"You refuse to identify yourself?" asked the Abbe, with asperity.
+
+"I am not aware that you possess any right to ask me to do so."
+
+The Abbe's thin lips clipped-to like shears.  He turned again towards the
+officers.
+
+"It would relieve the situation," interposed the Seigneur, "if Monsieur
+could find it possible to grant the Abbe's demand."
+
+Charley bowed to the Seigneur.  "I do not know why I should be taken for
+a Frenchman or an infidel.  I speak French well, I presume, but I spoke
+it from the cradle.  I speak English with equally good accent," he added,
+with the glimmer of a smile; for there was a kind of exhilaration in the
+little contest, even with so much at stake.  This miserable, silly charge
+had that behind it which might open up a grave, make its dead to walk,
+fright folk from their senses, and destroy their peace for ever.  Yet he
+was cool and thinking clearly.  He measured up the Abbe in his mind,
+analysed him, found the vulnerable spot in his nature, the avenue to the
+one place lighted by a lamp of humanity.  He leaned a hand upon the ledge
+of the chimney where he stood, and said, in a low voice:
+
+"Monsieur l'Abbe, it is sometimes the misfortune of just men to be
+terribly unjust.  'For conscience sake' is another name for prejudice--
+for those antipathies which, natural to us, are, at the same time, trap-
+doors, for our just intentions.  You, Monsieur, have a radical antipathy
+to those men who are unable to see or to feel what you were privileged to
+see and feel from the time of your birth.  You know that you are right.
+Do you think that those who do not see as you do are wicked because they
+were not given what you were given?  If you are right, may they, poor
+folk! not be the victims of their blindness of heart--of the darkness
+born with them, or of the evils that overtake them?  For conscience sake,
+you would crush out evil.  To you an infidel--so called--is an evil-doer,
+a peril to the peace of God.  You drive him out from among the faithful.
+You heard that a tailor of Chaudiere was an infidel.  You did not prove
+him one, but you, for conscience sake, are trying to remove him, by
+fixing on him a crime of which he may, with slight show of reason,
+be suspected.  But I ask you, would you have taken the same deep interest
+in setting the law upon this suspected man did you not believe him to be
+an infidel?"
+
+He paused.  The Abbe made no reply.  The Cure was bending forward
+eagerly; the Seigneur sat with his hands over the top of his cane, his
+chin on his hands, never taking his eyes from him, save to glance once or
+twice at his brother.  Jo Portugais was crouched on the bench, watching.
+
+"I do not know what makes an infidel," Charley went on.  "Is it an honest
+mind, a decent life, an austerity of living as great as that of any
+priest, a neighbourliness that gives and takes in fairness--"
+
+"No, no, no," interposed the Cure eagerly.  "So you have lived here,
+Monsieur; I can vouch for that.  Charity and a good heart have gone with
+you always."
+
+"Do you mean that a man is an infidel because he cannot say, as Louis
+Trudel said to me, 'Do you believe in God?' and replies, as I replied,
+'God knows!'  Is that infidelity?  If God is God, He alone knows when the
+mind or the tongue can answer in the terms of that faith which you
+profess.  He knows the secret desires of our hearts, and what we believe,
+and what we do not believe; He knows better than we ourselves know--if
+there is a God.  Does a man conjure God, if he does not believe in God?
+'God knows!' is not a statement of infidelity.  With me it was a phrase
+--no more.  You ask me to bare my inmost soul.  I have not learned how
+to confess.  You ask me to lay bare my past, to prove my identity.  For
+conscience sake you ask that, and I for conscience sake say I will not,
+Monsieur.  You, when you enter your priestly life, put all your past
+behind you.  It is dead for ever: all its deeds and thoughts and desires,
+all its errors--sins.  I have entered on a life here which is to me as
+much a new life as your priesthood is to you.  Shall I not have the right
+to say, that may not be disinterred?  Have I not the right to say, Hands
+off?  For the past I am responsible, and for the past I will speak from
+the past; but for the deeds of the present I will speak only from the
+present.  I am not a Frenchman; I did not steal the little cross from the
+church door here, nor the golden chalices in Quebec; nor did I seek to
+injure the Governor's residence.  I have not been in Quebec for three
+years."
+
+He ceased speaking, and fixed his eyes on the Abbe, who now met his look
+fairly.
+
+"In the way of justice, there is nothing hidden that shall not be
+revealed, nor secret that shall not be made known," answered the Abbe.
+"Prove that you were not in Quebec on the day the robbery was committed."
+There was silence.  The Abbe's pertinacity was too difficult.  The
+Seigneur saw the grim look in Charley's face, and touched the Abbe on the
+arm.  "Let us walk a little outside.  Come, Cure" he added.  "It is right
+that Monsieur should have a few minutes alone.  It is a serious charge
+against him, and reflection will be good for us all."
+
+He motioned the constables from the room.  The Abby passed through the
+door into the open air, and the Cure and the Seigneur went arm in arm
+together, talking earnestly.  The Cure turned in the doorway.
+
+"Courage, Monsieur!" he said to Charley, and bowed himself out.  Jo
+Portugais followed.
+
+One officer took his place at the front door and the other at the back
+door, outside.
+
+The Abby, by himself, took to walking backward and forward under the
+trees, buried in gloomy reflection.  Jo Portugais caught his sleeve.
+
+"Come with me for a moment, M'sieu'," he said.  "It is important."
+
+The Abby followed him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY
+
+Jo Portugais had fastened down a secret with clasps heavier than iron,
+and had long stood guard over it.  But life is a wheel, and natures move
+in circles, passing the same points again and again, the points being
+distant or near to the sense as the courses of life have influenced the
+nature.  Confession was an old principle, a light in the way, a rest-
+house for Jo and all his race, by inheritance, by disposition, and by
+practice.  Again and again Jo had come round to the rest-house since one
+direful day, but had not, found his way therein.  There were passwords to
+give at the door, there was the tale of the journey to tell to the door-
+keeper.  And this tale he had not been ready to tell.  But the man who
+knew of the terrible thing he had done, who had saved him from the
+consequences of that terrible thing, was in sore trouble, and this broke
+down the gloomy guard he had kept over his dread secret.  He fought the
+matter out with himself, and, the battle ended, he touched the door-
+keeper on the arm, beckoned him to a lonely place in the trees, and knelt
+down before him.
+
+"What is it you seek?" asked the door-keeper, whose face was set and
+forbidding.
+
+"To find peace," answered the man; yet he was thinking more of another's
+peril than of his own soul.  "What have I to do with the peace of your
+soul?  Yonder is your shepherd and keeper," said the doorkeeper, pointing
+to where two men walked arm in arm under the trees.
+
+"Shall the sinner not choose the keeper of his sins?" said the man
+huskily.
+
+"Who has been the keeper all these years?  Who has given you peace?"
+
+"I have had no keeper; I have had no peace these many years."
+
+"How many years?" The Abbe's voice was low and even, and showed no
+feeling, but his eyes were keenly inquiring and intent.
+
+"Seven years."
+
+"Is the sin that held you back from the comfort of the Church a great
+one?"
+
+"The greatest, save one."
+
+"What would be the greatest?"
+
+"To curse God."
+
+"The next?"
+
+"To murder."
+
+The other's whole manner changed on the instant.  He was no longer the
+stern Churchman, the inveterate friend of Justice, the prejudiced priest,
+rigid in a pious convention, who could neither bend nor break.  The sin
+of an infidel breaker of the law, that was one thing; the crime of a son
+of the Church, which a human soul came to relate in its agony, that was
+another.  He had a crass sense of justice, but there was in him a deeper
+thing still: the revelation of the human soul, the responsibility of
+speaking to the heart which has dropped the folds of secrecy, exposing
+the skeleton of truth, grim and staring, to the eye of a secret earthly
+mentor.
+
+"If it has been hidden all these years, why do you tell it now, my son?"
+
+"It is the only way."
+
+"Why was it hidden?"
+
+"I have come to confess," answered the man bitterly.  The priest looked
+at him anxiously.  "You have spoken rightly, my son.  I am not here to
+ask, but to receive."
+
+"Forgive me, but it is my crime I would speak of now.  I choose this
+moment that another should not suffer for what he did not do."
+
+The priest thought of the man they had left in the little house, and the
+crime with which he was charged, and wondered what the sinner before him
+was going to say.
+
+"Tell your story, my son, and God give your tongue the very spirit of
+truth, that nothing be forgotten and nothing excused."
+
+There was a fleeting pause, in which the colour left the priest's face,
+and, as he opened the door of his mind--of the Church, secret and
+inviolate--he had a pain at his heart; for beneath his arrogant
+churchmanship there was a fanatical spirituality of a mediaeval kind.
+His sense of responsibility was painful and intense.  The same pain
+possessed him always, were the sin that of a child or a Borgia.
+
+As he listened to the broken tale, the forest around was vocal, the
+chipmunks scampered from tree to tree, the woodpecker's tap-tap, tap-tap,
+went on over their heads, the leaves rustled and gave forth their divine
+sweetness, as though man and nature were at peace, and there were no
+storms in sky above or soul beneath, or in the waters of life that are
+deeper than "the waters under the earth."
+
+It was only a short time, but to the door-keeper and the wayfarer it
+seemed hours, for the human soul travels far and hard and long in moments
+of pain and revelation.  The priest in his anxiety suffered as much as
+the man who did the wicked thing.  When the man had finished, the priest
+said:
+
+"Is this all?"
+
+"It is the great sin of my life."  He shuddered, and continued: "I have
+no love of life; I have no fear of death; but there is the man who saved
+me years ago, who got me freedom.  He has had great sorrow and trouble,
+and I would live for his sake--because he has no friend."
+
+"Who is the man?"
+
+The other pointed to where the little house was hidden among the trees.
+The priest almost gasped his amazement, but waited.
+
+Thereupon the woodsman told the whole truth concerning the tailor of
+Chaudiere.
+
+"To save him, I have confessed my own sin.  To you I might tell all in
+confession, and the truth about him would be buried for ever.  I might
+not confess at all unless I confessed my own sin.  You will save him,
+father?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"I will save him," was the reply of the priest.
+
+"I want to give myself to justice; but he has been ill, and he may be ill
+again, and he needs me."  He told of the tailor's besetting weakness, of
+his struggles against it, of his fall a few days before, and the cause of
+it .  .  .  told all to the man of silence.
+
+"You wish to give yourself to justice?"
+
+"I shall have no peace unless."
+
+There was something martyr-like in the man's attitude.  It appealed to
+some stern, martyr-like quality in the priest.  If the man would win
+eternal peace so, then so be it.  His grim piety approved.  He spoke now
+with the authority of divine justice.
+
+"For one year longer go on as you are, then give yourself to justice--one
+year from to-day, my son.  Is it enough?"
+
+"It is enough."
+
+"Absolvo te!" said the priest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+THE EDGE OF LIFE
+
+Meantime Charley was alone with his problem.  The net of circumstances
+seemed to have coiled inextricably round him.  Once, at a trial in court
+in other days, he had said in his ironical way: "One hasn't to fear the
+penalties of one's sins, but the damnable accident of discovery."
+
+To try to escape now, or, with the assistance of Jo Portugais,
+when en route to Quebec in charge of the constables, and find refuge and
+seclusion elsewhere?  There was nothing he might ask of Portugais which
+he would not do.  To escape--and so acknowledge a guilt not his own!
+Well, what did it matter!  Who mattered?  He knew only too well.  The
+Cure mattered--that good man who had never intruded his piety on him; who
+had been from the first a discreet friend, a gentleman,--a Christian
+gentleman, if there was such a sort of gentleman apart from all others.
+Who mattered?  The Seigneur, whom he had never seen before, yet who had
+showed that day a brusque sympathy, a gruff belief in him?  Who mattered?
+
+Above all, Rosalie mattered.  To escape, to go from Rosalie's presence by
+a dark way, as it were, like a thief in the night--was that possible?
+His escape would work upon her mind.  She would first wonder, then doubt,
+and then believe at last that he was a common criminal.  She was the one
+who mattered in that thought of escape escape to some other parish, to
+some other province, to some other country--to some other world!
+
+To some other world?  He looked at a little bottle he held in the palm of
+his hand.
+
+A hand held aside the curtain of the door entering on the next room, and
+a girl's troubled face looked in, but he did not see.
+
+Escape to some other world?  And why not, after all?  On the day his
+memory came back he had resisted the idea in this very room.  As the
+fatalist he had resisted it then.  Now how poor seemed the reasons for
+not having ended it all that day!  If his appointed time had been come,
+the river would have ended him then--that had been his argument.  Was
+that argument not belief in Somebody or Something which governed his
+going or staying?  Was it not preordination?  Was not fatalism, then,
+the cheapest sort of belief in an unchangeable Somebody or Something,
+representing purpose and law and will?  Attribute to anything power,
+and there was God, whatever His qualities, personality, or being.
+
+The little phial of laudanum was in his hand to loosen life into
+knowledge.  Was it not his duty to eliminate himself, rather than be an
+unsolvable quantity in the problem of many lives?  It was neither vulgar
+nor cowardly to pass quietly from forces making for ruin, and so avert
+ruin and secure happiness.  To go while yet there was time, and smooth
+for ever the way for others by an eternal silence--that seemed well.
+Punishment thereafter, the Cure would say.  But was it not worth while
+being punished, even should the Cure's fond belief in the noble fable be
+true, if one saved others here?  Who--God or man--had the right to take
+from him the right to destroy himself, not for fear, not through despair,
+but for others' sake?  Had he not the right to make restitution to
+Kathleen for having given her nothing but himself, whom she had learned
+to despise?  If he were God, he would say, Do justice and fear not.  And
+this was justice.  Suppose he were in a battle, with all these things
+behind him, and put himself, with daring and great results, in some
+forlorn hope--to die; and he died, ostensibly a hero for his country,
+but, in his heart of hearts, to throw his life away to save some one he
+loved, not his country, which profited by his sacrifice--suppose that
+were the case, what would the world say?
+
+"He saved others, himself he could not save"--flashed through his mind,
+possessed him.  He could save others; but it was clear he could not save
+himself.  It was so simple, so kind, and so decent.  And he would be
+buried here in quiet, unconsecrated ground, a mystery, a tailor who,
+finding he could not mend the garment of life, cast it away, and took on
+himself the mantle of eternal obscurity.  No reproaches would follow him;
+and he would not reproach himself, for Kathleen and Billy and another
+would be safe and free to live their lives.
+
+Far, far better for Rosalie!  She too would be saved--free from the peril
+of his presence.  For where could happiness come to her from him?  He
+might not love her; he might not marry her; and it were well to go now,
+while yet love was not a habit, but an awakening, a realisation of life.
+His death would settle this sad question for ever.  To her he would be a
+softening memory as time went on.
+
+The girl who had watched by the curtain stepped softly inside the room
+.  .  .  .  she divined his purpose.  He was so intent he did not hear.
+
+"I will do it," he said to himself.  "It is better to go than to stay.
+I have never done a good thing for love of any human being.  I will do
+one now."
+
+He turned towards the window through which the sunlight streamed.
+Stepping forward into the sun, he uncorked the bottle.
+
+There was a quick step behind him, and the girl's voice said clearly:
+
+"If you go, I go also."
+
+He turned swiftly, cold with amazement, the blood emptied from his heart.
+
+Rosalie stood a little distance from him, her face pale, her hands held
+hard to her side.
+
+"I understand all.  I could not go outside, I stayed there"--she pointed
+to the other room--"and I know why you would die.  You would die to save
+others."
+
+"Rosalie!" he protested in a hoarse voice, and could say nothing more.
+
+"You think that I will stay, if you go!  No, no, no--I will not.  You
+taught me how to live, and I will follow you now."
+
+He saw the strange determination of her look.  It startled him; he knew
+not what to say.  "Your father, Rosalie--"
+
+"My father will be cared for.  But who will care for you in the place
+where you are going?  You will have no friends there.  You shall not go
+alone.  You will need me--in the dark."
+
+"It is good that I go," he said.  "It would be wicked, it would be
+dreadful, for you to go."
+
+"I go if you go," she urged.  "I will lose my soul to be with you; you
+will want me--there!"
+
+There was no mistaking her intention.  Footsteps sounded outside.  The
+others were coming back.  To die here before her face?  To bring her to
+death with him?  He was sick with despair.
+
+"Go into the next room quickly," he said.  "No matter what comes, I will
+not--on my honour!"
+
+She threw him a look of gratitude, and, as the bearskin curtain dropped
+behind her, he put the phial of laudanum in his pocket.
+
+The door opened, and the Abbe Rossignol entered, followed by the
+Seigneur, the Cure, and Jo Portugais.  Charley faced them calmly, and
+waited.
+
+The Abbe's face was still cold and severe, but his voice was human as he
+said quickly: "Monsieur, I have decided to take you at your word.  I am
+assured you are not the man who committed the crime.  You probably have
+reasons for not establishing your identity."
+
+Had Charley been a prisoner in the dock, he could not have had a moment
+of deeper amazement--even if after the jury had said Guilty, a piece of
+evidence had been handed in, proving innocence, averting the death
+sentence.  A wave of excitement passed over him, leaving him cold and
+still.  In the other room a girl put her hand to her mouth to stifle a
+cry of joy.
+
+Charley bowed.  "You made a mistake, Monsieur--pray do not apologise," he
+said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+IN AMBUSH
+
+Weeks went by.  Summer was done, autumn was upon the land.  Harvest-home
+had gone, and the "fall" ploughing was forward.  The smell of the burning
+stubble, of decaying plant and fibre, was mingling with the odours of the
+orchards and the balsams of the forest.  The leafy hill-sides, far and
+near, were resplendent in scarlet and saffron and tawny red.  Over the
+decline of the year flickered the ruined fires of energy.
+
+It had been a prosperous summer in the valley.  Harvests had been reaped
+such as the country had not known for years--and for years there had been
+great harvests.  There had not been a death in the parish all summer, and
+births had occurred out of all usual proportion.
+
+When Filion Lacasse commented thereon, and mentioned the fact that even
+the Notary's wife had had the gift of twins as the crowning fulness of
+the year, Maximilian Cour, who was essentially superstitious, tapped on
+the table three times, to prevent a turn in the luck.
+
+The baker was too late, however, for the very next day the Notary was
+brought home with a nasty gunshot wound in his leg.  He had been lured
+into duck-hunting on a lake twenty miles away, in the hills, and had been
+accidentally shot on an Indian reservation, called Four Mountains, where
+the Church sometimes held a mission and presented a primitive sort of
+passion-play.  From there he had been brought home by his comrades, and
+the doctor from the next parish summoned.  The Cure assisted the doctor
+at first, but the task was difficult to him.  At the instant when the
+case was most critical the tailor of Chaudiere set his foot inside the
+Notary's door.  A moment later he relieved the Cure and helped to probe
+for shot, and care for an ugly wound.
+
+Charley had no knowledge of surgery, but his fingers were skilful, his
+eye was true, and he had intuition.  The long operation over, the rural
+physician and surgeon washed his hands and then studied Charley with
+curious admiration.
+
+"Thank you, Monsieur," he said, as he dried his hands on a towel.
+"I couldn't have done it without you.  It's a pretty good job; and you
+share the credit."
+
+Charley bowed.  "It's a good thing not to halloo till you're out of the
+woods," he said.  "Our friend there has a bad time before him--hein?"
+
+"I take you.  It is so."  The man of knives and tinctures pulled his
+side-whiskers with smug satisfaction as he looked into a small mirror on
+the wall.  "Do you chance to know if madame has any cordials or spirits?"
+he added, straightening his waistcoat and adjusting his cravat.
+
+"It is likely," answered Charley, and moved away to the window looking
+upon the street.
+
+The doctor turned in surprise.  He was used to being waited on, and he
+had expected the tailor to follow the tradition.
+
+"We might--eh?" he said suggestively.  "It is usually the custom to
+provide refreshment, but the poor woman, madame, has been greatly
+occupied with her husband, and--"
+
+"And the twins," Charley put in drily--" and a house full of work, and
+only one old crone in the kitchen to help.  Still, I have no doubt she
+has thought of the cordials too.  Women are the slaves of custom--ah,
+here they are, as I said, and--"
+
+He stopped short, for in the doorway, with a tray, stood Rosalie
+Evanturel.  The surgeon was so intent upon at once fortifying himself
+that he did not see the look which passed between Rosalie and the tailor.
+
+Rosalie had been absent for two months.  Her father had been taken
+seriously ill the day after the critical episode in the but at Vadrome
+Mountain, and she had gone with him to the hospital at Quebec, for an
+operation.  The Abbe Rossignol had undertaken to see them safely to the
+hospital, and Jo Portugais, at his own request, was permitted to go in
+attendance upon M. Evanturel.
+
+There had been a hasty leave-taking between Charley and Rosalie, but it
+was in the presence of others, and they had never spoken a word privately
+together since the day she had said to him that where he went she would
+go, in life or out of it.
+
+"You have been gone two months," Charley said now, after their touch of
+hands and voiceless greeting.  "Two months yesterday," she answered.
+
+"At sundown," he replied, in an even voice.
+
+"The Angelus was ringing," she answered calmly, though her heart was
+leaping and her hands were trembling.  The doctor, instantly busy with
+the cordial, had not noticed what they said.
+
+"Won't you join me?" he asked, offering a glass to Charley.
+
+"Spirits do not suit me," answered Charley.  "Matter of constitution,"
+rejoined the doctor, and buttoned up his coat, preparing to depart.  He
+came close to Charley.  "Now, I don't want to put upon you, Monsieur," he
+said, "but this sick man is valuable in the parish--you take me?  Well,
+it's a difficult, delicate case, and I'd be glad if I could rely on you
+for a few days.  The Cure would do, but you are young, you have a sense
+of things--take me?  Half the fees are yours if you'll keep a sharp eye
+on him--three times a day, and be with him at night a while.  Fever is
+the thing I'm afraid of--temperature--this way, please!"  He went to the
+window, and for a minute engaged Charley in whispered conversation.  "You
+take me?" he said cheerily at last, as he turned again towards Rosalie.
+
+"Quite, Monsieur," answered Charley, and drew away, for he caught the
+odour of the doctor's breath, and a cold perspiration broke out over him.
+He felt the old desire for drink sweeping through him.  "I will do what I
+can," he said.
+
+"Come, my dear," the doctor said to Rosalie.  "We will go and see your
+father."
+
+Charley's eyes had fastened on the bottles avidly.  As Rosalie turned to
+bid him good-bye, he said to her, almost hoarsely: "Take the tray back to
+Madame Dauphin--please."
+
+She flashed a glance of inquiry at him.  She was puzzled by the fire in
+his eyes.  With her soul in her face as she lifted the tray, out of the
+warm-beating life in her, she said in a low tone:
+
+"It is good to live, isn't it?"
+
+He nodded and smiled, and the trouble slowly passed from his eyes.  The
+woman in her had conquered his enemy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE COMING OF MAXIMILIAN COUR AND ANOTHER
+
+"It is good to live, isn't it?"  In the autumn weather when the air drank
+like wine, it seemed so indeed, even to Charley, who worked all day in
+his shop, his door wide open to the sunlight, and sat up half the night
+with Narcisse Dauphin, sometimes even taking a turn at the cradle of the
+twins, while madame sat beside her husband's bed.
+
+To Charley the answer to Rosalie's question lay in the fact that his eyes
+had never been so keen, his face so alive, or his step so buoyant as in
+this week of double duty.  His mind was more hopeful than it had ever
+been since the day he awoke with memory restored in the silence of a
+mountain hut.
+
+He had found the antidote to his great temptation, to the lurking,
+relentless habit which had almost killed him the night John Brown had
+sung Champagne Charlie from behind the flaring lights.  From a
+determination to fight his own fight with no material aids, he had never
+once used the antidote sent him by the Cure's brother.
+
+On St. Jean Baptiste's day his proud will had failed him; intellectual
+force, native power of mind, had broken like reeds under the weight of a
+cruel temptation.  But now a new force had entered into him.  As his
+fingers were about to reach for the spirit-bottle in the house of the
+Notary, and he had, for the first time in his life, made an appeal for
+help, a woman's voice had said, "It is good to live, isn't it?" and his
+hand was stayed.  A woman's look had stilled the strife.  Never before in
+his life had he relied on a moral or a spiritual impulse in him.  What
+of these existed in him were in unseen quantities--for which there was
+neither multiple nor measure--had been primitive and hereditary, flowing
+in him like a feeble tincture diluted to inefficacy.
+
+Rosalie had resolved him back to the original elements.  The quiet days
+he had spent in Chaudiere, the self-sacrifice he had been compelled to
+make, the human sins, such as those of Jo Portugais and Louis Trudel,
+with which he had had to do, the simplicity of the life around him--the
+uncomplicated lie and the unvarnished truth, the obvious sorrow and the
+patent joy, the childish faith, and the rude wickedness so pardonable
+because so frankly brutal--had worked upon him.  The elemental spirit of
+it all had so invaded his nature, breaking through the crust of old habit
+to the new man, that, when he fell before his temptation, and his body
+became saturated with liquor, the healthy natural being and the growing
+natural mind were overpowered by the coarse onslaught, and death had
+nearly followed.
+
+It was his first appeal to a force outside himself, to an active
+principle unfamiliar to the voluntary working of his nature, and the
+answer had been immediate and adequate.  Yet what was it?  He did not
+ask; he had not got beyond the mere experience, and the old questioning
+habit was in abeyance.  Each new and great emotion has its dominating
+moment, its supreme occasion, before taking its place in the modulated
+moral mechanism.  He was touched with helplessness.
+
+As he sat beside Narcisse Dauphin's bedside, one evening, the sick man on
+his way to recovery, there came to him the text of a sermon he had once
+heard John Brown preach: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
+lay down his life for his friend."  He had been thinking of Rosalie and
+that day at Vadrome Mountain.  She would not only have died with him, but
+she would have died for him, if need had been.  What might he give in
+return for what she gave?
+
+The Notary interrupted his thoughts.  He had lain watching Charley for a
+long time, his brow drawn down with thought.  At last he said:
+
+"Monsieur, you have been good to me."  Charley laid a hand on the sick
+man's arm.
+
+"I don't see that.  But if you won't talk, I'll believe you think so."
+
+The Notary shook his head.  "I've not been talking for an hour, I've no
+fever, and I want to say some things.  When I've said them, I'll feel
+better--voila!  I want to make the amende honorable.  I once thought
+you were this and that--I won't say what I thought you.  I said you
+interfered--giving advice to people, as you did to Filion Lacasse,
+and taking the bread out of my mouth.  I said that!"
+
+He paused, raised himself on his elbow, smoothed back his grizzled hair
+behind his ears, looked at himself in the mirror opposite with
+satisfaction, and added oracularly: "But how prone is the mind of man to
+judge amiss!  You have put bread into my mouth--no, no, Monsieur, you
+shall hear me!  As well as doing your own work, you have done my business
+since my accident as well as a lawyer could do it; and you've given every
+penny to my wife."
+
+"As for the work I've done," answered Charley, "it was nothing--you
+notaries have easy times.  You may take your turn with my shears and
+needle one day."
+
+With a dash of patronage true to his nature, "You are wonderful for a
+tailor," the Notary rejoined.  Charley laughed--seldom, if ever, had he
+laughed since coming to Chaudiere.  It was, however, a curious fact that
+he took a real pleasure in the work he did with his hands.  In making
+clothes for habitant farmers, and their sons and their sons' sons, and
+jackets for their wives and daughters, he had had the keenest pleasure
+of his life.
+
+He had taken his earnings with pride, if not with exultation.  He knew
+the Notary did not mean that he was wonderful as a tailor, but he
+answered to the suggestion.
+
+"You liked that last coat I made for you, then," he said drily;
+"I believe you wore it when you were shot.  It was the thing for your
+figure, man."
+
+The Notary looked in the large mirror opposite with sad content.  "Ah, it
+was a good figure, the first time I went to that hut at Four Mountains!"
+
+"We can't always be young.  You have a waist yet, and your chest-barrel
+gives form to a waistcoat.  Tut, tut!  Think of the twins in the way of
+vainglory and hypocrisy."
+
+"'Twins' and 'hypocrisy'; there you have struck the nail on the head,
+tailor.  There is the thing I'm going to tell you about."
+
+After a cautious glance at the door and the window, Dauphin continued in
+quick, broken sentences: "It wasn't an accident at Four Mountains--not
+quite.  It was Paulette Dubois--you know the woman that lives at the
+Seigneur's gate?  Twelve years ago she was a handsome girl.  I fell in
+love with her, but she left here.  There were two other men.  There was a
+timber-merchant,--and there was a lawyer after.  The timber-merchant was
+married; the lawyer wasn't.  She lived at first with the timber-merchant.
+He was killed--murdered in the woods."
+
+"What was the timber-merchant's name?" interrupted Charley in an even
+voice.
+
+"Turley--but that doesn't matter!" continued the Notary.  "He was
+murdered, and then the lawyer came on the scene.  He lived with her for a
+year.  She had a child by him.  One day he sent the child away to a safe
+place and told her he was going to turn over a new leaf--he was going to
+stand for Parliament, and she must go.  She wouldn't go without the
+child.  At last he said the child was dead; and showed her the
+certificate of death.  Then she came back here, and for a while, alas!
+she disgraced the parish.  But all at once she changed--she got a message
+that her child was alive.  To her it was like being born again.  It was
+at this time they were going to drive her from the parish.  But the
+Seigneur and then the Cure spoke for her, and so did I--at last."
+
+He paused and plaintively admired himself in the mirror.  He was grateful
+that he had been clean-shaved that morning, and he was content to catch
+the citrine odour of the bergamot upon his hair.
+
+New phases of the most interesting case Charley had ever defended spread
+out before him--the case which had given him his friend Jo Portugais,
+which had turned his own destiny.  Yet he could not quite trace in it the
+vital association of this vain Notary now in the confessional mood.
+
+"You behaved very well," said Charley tentatively.
+
+"Ah, you say that, knowing so little!  What will you say when you know
+all--ah!  That I should take a stand also was important.  Neither the
+Seigneur nor the Cure was married; I was.  I have been long-suffering for
+a cause.  My marital felicity has been bruised--bruised--but not broken."
+
+"There are the twins," said Charley, with a half-closed eye.
+
+"Could woman ask greater proof?" urged the Notary seriously, for the
+other's voice had been so well masked that he did not catch its satire.
+"But see my peril, and mark the ground of my interest in this poor
+wanton!  Yet a woman--a woman-frail creatures, as we know, and to be
+pitied, not made more pitiable by the stronger sex.  .  .  .  But, see
+now!  Why should I have perilled mine own conjugal peace, given ground
+for suspicion even--for I am unfortunate, unfortunate in the exterior
+with which Dame Nature has honoured me!"  Again he looked in the mirror
+with sad complacency.
+
+On these words his listener offered no comment, and he continued:
+
+"For this reason I lifted my voice for the poor wanton.  It was I who
+wrote the letter to her that her child was alive.  I did it with high
+purpose--I foresaw that she would change her ways if she thought her
+child was living.  Was I mistaken?  No.  I am an observer of human
+nature.  Intellect conquered.  'Io triumphe'.  The poor fly-away changed,
+led a new life.  Ever since then she has tried to get the man--the
+lawyer--to tell her where her child is.  He has not done so.  He has said
+the child is dead--always.  When she seemed to give up belief, then would
+come another letter to her, telling her the child was living--but not
+where.  So she would keep on writing to the man, and sometimes she would
+go away searching--searching.  To what end?  Nothing!  She had a letter
+some months ago, for she had got restless, and a young kinsman of the
+Seigneur had come to visit at the seigneury for a week, and took much
+notice of her.  There was danger.  Voila, another letter."
+
+"From you?"
+
+"Monsieur, of course!  Will you keep a secret--on your sacred honour?"
+
+"I can keep a secret without sacred honour."
+
+"Ah, yes, of course!  You have a secret of your own--pardon me, I am
+only saying what every one says.  Well, this is the secret of the woman
+Paulette Dubois.  My cousin, Robespierre Dauphin, a notary in Quebec, is
+the agent of the lawyer, the father of the child.  He pities the poor
+woman.  But he is bound in professional honour to the lawyer fellow, not
+to betray.  When visiting Robespierre once I found out the truth-by
+accident.
+
+"I told him what I intended.  He gave permission to tell the woman her
+child was alive; and, if need be for her good, to affirm it over and over
+again--no more."
+
+"And this?" said Charley, pointing to the injured leg, for he now
+associated the accident with the secret just disclosed.
+
+"Ah, you apprehend!  You have an avocat's mind--almost.  It was at Four
+Mountains.  Paulette is superstitious; so not long ago she went to live
+there alone with an old half-breed woman who has second-sight.  Monsieur,
+it is a gift unmistakably.  For as soon as the hag clapped eyes on me in
+the hut, she said: 'There is the man that wrote you the letters.'  Well--
+what!  Paulette Dubois came down on me like an avalanche--Monsieur, like
+an avalanche!  She believed the old witch; and there was I lying with an
+unconvincing manner"--he sighed--"lying requires practice, alas!  She saw
+I was lying, and in a rage snatched up my gun.  It went off by accident,
+and brought me down.  Did she relent?  Not so.  She helped to bind me up,
+and the last words she said to me were: 'You will suffer; you will have
+time to think.  I am glad.  You have kept me on the rack.  I shall only
+be sorry if you die, for then I shall not be able to torture you till you
+tell me where my child is!'  Monsieur, I lied to the last, lest she
+should come here and make a noise; but I'm not sure it wouldn't have been
+better to break faith with Robespierre, and tell the poor wanton where
+her child is.  What would you do, Monsieur?  I cannot ask the Cure or the
+Seigneur--I have reasons.  But you have the head of a lawyer--almost--and
+you have no local feelings, no personal interest--eh?"
+
+"I should tell the truth."
+
+"Your reasons, Monsieur?"
+
+"Because the lawyer is a scoundrel.  Your betrayal of his secret is not a
+thousandth part so bad as one lie told to this woman, whose very life is
+her child.  Is it a boy or a girl?"
+
+"A boy."
+
+"Good!  What harm can be done?  A left-handed boy is all right in the
+world.  Your wife has twins--then think of the woman, the one ewe lamb of
+'the poor wanton.'  If you do not tell her, you will have her here making
+a noise, as you say.  I wonder she has not been here on your door-step."
+
+"I had a letter from her to-day.  She is coming-ah, mon dieu!"
+
+"When?"
+
+There was a tap at the window.  The Notary started.  "Ah, Heaven, here
+she is!" he gasped, and drew over to the wall.
+
+A voice came from outside.  "Shall I play for you, Dauphin?  It is as
+good as medicine."
+
+The Notary recovered himself at once.  His volatile nature sprang back to
+its pose.  He could forget Paulette Dubois for the moment.
+
+"It is Maximilian Cour in the garden," he said happily.  Then he raised
+his voice.  "Play on, baker; but something for convalescence--the return
+of spring, the sweet assonance of memory."
+
+"A September air, and a gush of spring," said the baker, trying to crane
+his long neck through the window.  "Ah, there you are, Dauphin!  I shall
+give you a sleep to-night like a balmy eve."  He nodded to the tailor.
+"M'sieu', you shall judge if sentiment be dead.
+
+"I have racked my heart to play this time.  I have called it, 'The Baffled
+Quest of Love'.  I have taken the music of the song of Alsace, 'Le Jardin
+d'Amour', and I have made variations on it, keeping the last verse of the
+song in my mind.  You know the song, M'sieu':
+
+             "'Quand je vais au jardin, Jardin d'amour,
+               Je crois entendu des pas,
+               Je veux fuir, et n'ose pas.
+               Voici la fin du jour .  .  .
+               Je crains et j'hesite,
+               Mon coeur bat plus vite
+               En ce sejour .  .  .
+               Quand je vais an jardin, jardin d'amour.'"
+
+The baker sat down on a stool he had brought, and began to tune his
+fiddle.  From inside came the voice of the Notary.
+
+"Play 'The Woods are Green' first," he said.  "Then the other."
+
+The Notary possessed the one high-walled garden in the village, and
+though folk gathered outside and said that the baker was playing for
+the sick man, there was no one in the garden save the fiddler himself.
+Once or twice a lad appeared on the top of the wall, looking over, but
+vanished at once when he saw Charley's face at the window.  Long ere the
+baker had finished, the song was caught up from outside, and before the
+last notes of the violin had died away, twenty voices were singing it in
+the street, and forty feet marched away with it into the dusk.
+
+Darkness comes quickly in this land of brief twilight.  Presently
+out of the soft shadowed stillness, broken by the note of a vagrant
+whippoorwill, crept out from Maximilian Cour's old violin the music
+of 'The Baffled Quest of Love'.
+
+The baker was not a great musician, but he had a talent, a rare gift of
+pathos, and an imagination untrammelled by rigorous rules of harmony and
+construction.  Whatever there was in his sentimental bosom he poured into
+this one achievement of his life.  It brought tears to the eyes of
+Narcisse Dauphin.  It opened a gate of the garden wall, and drew inside a
+girl's face, shining with feeling.
+
+Maximilian Cour spoke for more than himself that night.  His philandering
+spirit had, at middle age, begotten a desire to house itself in a quiet
+place, where the blinds could be drawn close, and the room of life made
+ready with all the furniture of love.  So he had spoken to his violin,
+and it had answered as it had never done before.  The soul of the lean
+baker touched the heart of a man whose life had been but a baffled quest,
+and the spirit of a girl whose love was her sun by day, her moon by
+night, and the starlight of her dreams.
+
+From the shade of the window the man the girl loved watched her as she
+sank upon the ground and clasped her hands before her in abandonment to
+the music.  He watched her when the baker, at last, overcome by his own
+feelings--and ashamed of them--got up and stole swiftly out of the
+garden.  He watched her till he saw her drop her face in her hands;
+then, opening the door and stealing out, he came and laid a hand upon
+her shoulder, and she heard him say:
+
+"Rosalie!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+BARRIERS SWEPT AWAY
+
+Rosalie came to her feet, gasping with pleasure.  She had been unhappy
+ever since she had returned from Quebec, for though she had sometimes
+been brought in contact with Charley in the Notary's house since the day
+of the operation, nothing had passed between them save the necessary
+commonplaces of a sick-room, given a little extra colour, perhaps, by the
+sense of responsibility which fell upon them both, and by that importance
+which hidden sentiment gives to every motion.  The twins had been
+troublesome and ill, and Madame Dauphin had begged Rosalie to come in
+for a couple of hours every evening.  Thus the tailor and the girl who,
+by every rule of wisdom, should have been kept as far apart as the poles,
+were played into each other's hands by human kindness and damnable
+propinquity.  The man, manlike, felt no real danger, because nothing was
+said--after everything had been said for all time at the hut on Vadrome
+Mountain.  He had not realised the true situation, because of late her
+voice, like his, had been even and her hand cool and steady.  He had not
+noticed that her eyes were like hungry fires, eating up her face--eating
+away its roundness, and leaving a pathetic beauty behind.
+
+It seemed to him that because there was silence--neither the written word
+nor the speaking look--that all was well.  He was hugging the chain of
+denial to his bosom, as though to say, "This way is safety"; he was
+hiding his face from the beacon-lights of her eyes, which said: "This way
+is home."
+
+Home?  Pictures of home, of a home such as Maximilian Cour painted in his
+music, had passed before him now and then since that great day on Vadrome
+Mountain.  A simple fireside, with frugal but comfortable fare; a few
+books; the study of the fields and woods; the daily humble task over
+which he could meditate as his hands worked mechanically; the happy face
+of a happy woman near--he had thought of home; and he had put it from
+him.  No matter what the temptation, his must be, perhaps for ever, the
+bed and board unshared.  He had had his chance in the old days, and he
+had thrown it away with insolent indifference, and an unpardonable
+contempt for the opinion of the world.
+
+Now, with a blind fatuousness which had nothing to do with his old
+intellectual power, but was evidence of a primitive life of feeling, had
+vaguely imagined that because there were no clinging hands, or stolen
+looks, or any vow or promise, that all might go on as at present--upon
+the surface.  With a curious absence of his old accuracy of observation
+he was treating the immediate past--his and Rosalie's past--as if it did
+not actually exist; as if only the other and farther past was a tragedy,
+and this nearer one a dream.
+
+But the film fell from his eyes as Maximilian Cour played his 'Baffled
+Quest', with its quaint, searching pathos; and as he saw the figure of
+the girl alone in the shade of the great rose-bushes, past and present
+became one, and the whole man was lost in that one word "Rosalie!" which
+called her to her feet with outstretched hands.
+
+The tears sprang to her eyes; her face upturned to his was a mute appeal,
+a speechless 'Viens ici'.
+
+Past, present, future, duty, apprehension, consequences, suddenly fell
+away from Charley's mind like a garment slipping from the shoulders, and
+the new man, swept off his feet by the onrush of unused and ungoverned
+emotions, caught the girl to his arms with a desperate joy.
+
+"Oh, do you care, then--for me?" wept the girl, and hid her face in his
+breast.
+
+A voice came from inside the house: "Monsieur, Monsieur--ah, come, if you
+please, tailor!"
+
+The girl drew back quickly, looked up at him for one instant with a
+triumphant happy daring, then, suddenly covered with confusion, turned,
+ran to the gate, opened it, passed swiftly out, and was swallowed up in
+the dusk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+THE CHALLENGE OF PAULETTE DUBOIS
+
+"Monsieur, Monsieur!" came the voice from inside the house, querulously
+and anxiously.  Charley entered the Notary's bedroom.
+
+"Monsieur," said the Notary excitedly, "she is here--Paulette is here.
+My wife is asleep, thank God!  but old Sophie has just told me that the
+woman asks to see me.  Ah, Heaven above, what shall I do?"
+
+"Will you leave it to me?"
+
+"Yes, yes, Monsieur."
+
+"You will do exactly as I say?"
+
+"Ah, most sure."
+
+"Very well.  Keep still.  I will see her first.  Trust to me."  He turned
+and left the room.
+
+Charley found the woman in the Notary's office, which, while partly
+detached from the house, did duty as sitting-room and library.  When
+Charley entered, the room was only lighted by two candles, and Paulette's
+face was hidden by a veil, but Charley observed the tremulousness of the
+figure and the nervous decision of manner.  He had seen her before
+several times, and he had always noticed the air, half bravado, half
+shrinking, marking her walk and movements, as though two emotions were
+fighting in her.  She was now dressed in black, save for one bright red
+ribbon round her throat, incongruous and garish.
+
+When she saw Charley she started, for she had expected the servant with a
+message from the Notary--her own message had been peremptory.
+
+"I wish to see the Notary," she said defiantly.
+
+"He is not able to come to you."
+
+"What of that?"
+
+"Did you expect to go to his bedroom?"
+
+"Why not?"  She was abrupt to discourtesy.
+
+"You are neither physician, nor relative."
+
+"I have important business."
+
+"I transact his business for him, Madame."
+
+"You are a tailor."
+
+"I learned that; I am learning to be a notary."
+
+"My business is private."
+
+"I transact his private business too--that which his wife cannot do.
+Would you prefer his wife to me?  It must be either the one or the
+other."
+
+The woman started towards the door in a rage.  He stepped between.  "You
+cannot see the Notary."
+
+"I'll see his wife, then--"
+
+"That would only put the fat in the fire.  His wife would not listen to
+you.  She is quick-tempered, and she fancies she has reasons for not
+liking you."
+
+"She's a fool.  I haven't been always particular, but as for Narcisse
+Dauphin--"
+
+"He has been a good friend to you at some expense, the world says."
+
+The woman struggled with herself.  "The world lies!" she said at last.
+
+"But he doesn't.  The village was against you once.  That was when the
+Notary, with the Seigneur, was for you--it has cost him something ever
+since, I'm told.  You've never thanked him."
+
+"He has tortured me for years, the oily, smirking, lying--"
+
+"He has been your best friend," he interrupted.  "Please sit down, and
+listen to me for a moment."
+
+She hesitated, then did as he asked.
+
+"He tells me that years ago he was in love with you.  Hasn't he behaved
+better than some who said they loved you?"
+
+The woman half started up, her eyes flashing, but met a deprecating
+motion of his hand and sat down again.
+
+"He thought that if you knew your child lived, you would think better of
+life--and of yourself.  He has his good points, the Notary."
+
+"Why doesn't he tell me where my child is?"
+
+"The Notary is in bed--you shot him!  Don't you think it is doing you a
+good turn not to have you arrested?"
+
+"It was an accident."
+
+"Oh no, it wasn't!  You couldn't make a jury believe that.  And if you
+were in prison, how could you find your child?  You see, you have treated
+the Notary very badly."
+
+She was silent, and he added, slowly: "He had good reasons for not
+telling you.  It wasn't his own secret, and he hadn't come by it in a
+strictly professional way.  Your child was being well cared for, and he
+told you simply that it was alive--for your own sake.  But he has changed
+his mind at last, and--"
+
+The woman sprang from her seat.  "He will tell me--he will tell me?"
+
+"I will tell you."
+
+"Monsieur-Monsieur--ah, my God, but you are kind!  How should you know--
+what do you know?"
+
+"I give you my word that by to-morrow evening you shall know where your
+child is."
+
+For a moment she was bewildered and overcome, then a look of gratitude,
+of luminous hope, covered her face, softening the hardness of its
+contour, and she fell on her knees beside the table, dropped her head
+in her arms, and sobbed as if her heart would break.
+
+"My little lamb, my little, little lamb-my own dearest!" she sobbed.
+"I shall have you again.  I shall have you again--all my own!"
+
+He stood and watched her meditatively.  He was wondering why it was that
+grief like this had never touched him so before.  His eyes were moist.
+Though he had been many things in his life, he had never been abashed;
+but a curious timidity possessed him now.
+
+He leaned over and touched her shoulder with a kindly abruptness, a
+friendly awkwardness.  "Cheer up," he said.  "You shall have your child,
+if Dauphin can help you to it."
+
+"If he ever tries to take him from me"--she sprang to her feet, her face
+in a fury--"I will--"
+
+For an instant her overpowering passion possessed her, and she stood
+violent and wilful; then, under his fixed, exacting gaze, her rage
+ceased; she became still and grey and quiet.
+
+"I shall know to-morrow evening, Monsieur?  Where?"  Her voice was weak
+and distant.
+
+He thought for a time.  "At my house-at nine o'clock," he answered at
+last.
+
+"Monsieur," she said, in a choking voice, "if I get my child again, I
+will bless you to my dying day."
+
+"No, no; it will be Dauphin you must bless," he said, and opened the door
+for her.  As she disappeared into the dusk and silence he adjusted his
+eye-glass, and stared musingly after her, though there was nothing to see
+save the summer darkness, nothing to hear save the croak of the frogs in
+the village pond.  He was thinking of the trial of Joseph Nadeau, and of
+a woman in the gallery, who laughed.
+
+"Monsieur, Monsieur," called the voice of the Notary from the bedroom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+THE CURE AND THE SEIGNEUR VISIT THE TAILOR
+
+It had been a perfect September day.  The tailor of Chaudiere had been
+busier than usual, for winter was within hail, and careful habitants
+were renewing their simple wardrobes.  The Seigneur and the Cure arrived
+together, each to order the making of a greatcoat of the Irish frieze
+which the Seigneur kept in quantity at the Manor.  The Seigneur was in
+rare spirits.  And not without reason; for this was Michaelmas eve, and
+tomorrow would be Michaelmas day, and there was a promise to be redeemed
+on Michaelmas day!  He had high hopes of its redemption according to his
+own wishes; for he was a vain Seigneur, and he had had his way in all
+things all his life, as everybody knew.  Importunity with discretion was
+his motto, and he often vowed to the Cure that there was no other motto
+for the modern world.
+
+The Cure's visit to the tailor's shop on this particular day had unusual
+interest, for it concerned his dear ambition, the fondest aspiration of
+his life: to bring the infidel tailor (they could not but call a man an
+infidel whose soul was negative--the word agnostic had not then become
+usual) from the chains of captivity into the freedom of the Church.
+The Cure had ever clung to his fond hope; and it was due to his patient
+confidence that there were several parishioners who now carried Charley's
+name before the shrine of the blessed Virgin, and to the little calvaries
+by the road-side.  The wife of Filion Lacasse never failed to pray for
+him every day.  The thousand dollars gained by the saddler on the
+tailor's advice had made her life happier ever since, for Filion had
+become saving and prudent, and had even got her a "hired girl."  There
+were at least a half-dozen other women, including Madame Dauphin, who did
+the same.
+
+That he might listen again to the good priest on his holy hobby, inflamed
+with this passion of missionary zeal, the Seigneur, this morning, had
+thrown doubt upon the ultimate success of the Cure's efforts.
+
+"My dear Cure" said the Seigneur, "it is true, I think, what the tailor
+suggested to my brother--on my soul, I wonder the Abbe gave in, for
+a more obstinate fellow I never knew!--that a man is born with the
+disbelieving maggot in his brain, or the butterfly of belief, or
+whatever it may be called.  It's constitutional--may be criminal, but
+constitutional.  It seems to me you would stand more chance with the Jew,
+Greek, or heretic, than our infidel.  He thinks too much--for a tailor,
+or for nine tailors, or for one man."
+
+He pulled his nose, as if he had said a very good thing indeed.  They
+were walking slowly towards the village during this conversation, and the
+Cure, stopping short, brought his stick emphatically down in his palm
+several times, as he said:
+
+"Ah, you will not see!  You will not understand.  With God all things are
+possible.  Were it the devil himself in human form, I should work and
+pray and hope, as my duty is, though he should still remain the devil to
+the end.  What am I?  Nothing.  But what the Church has done, the Church
+may do.  Think of Paul and Augustine, and Constantine!"
+
+"They were classic barbarians to whom religion was but an emotion.  This
+man has a brain which must be satisfied."
+
+"I must count him as a soul to be saved through that very intelligence,
+as well as through the goodness of his daily life, which, in its charity,
+shames us all.  He gives all he earns to the sick and needy.  He lives on
+fare as poor as the poorest of our people eat; he gives up his hours of
+sleep to nurse the sick.  Dauphin might not have lived but for him.  His
+heart is good, else these things were impossible.  He could not act
+them."
+
+"But that's just it, Cure.  Doesn't he act them?  Isn't it a whim?  What
+more likely than that, tired of the flesh-pots of Egypt, he comes here to
+live in the desert--for a sensation?  We don't know."
+
+"We do know.  The man has had sorrow and the man has had sin.  Yes,
+believe me, there is none of us that suffers as this man has suffered.
+I have had many, many talks with him.  Believe me, Maurice, I speak the
+truth.  My heart bleeds for him.  I think I know the thing that drove him
+here amongst us.  It is a great temptation, which pursues him here--even
+here, where his life is so commendable.  I have seen him fighting it.
+I have seen his torture, the piteous, ignoble yielding, and the struggle,
+with more than mortal energy, to be master of himself."
+
+"It is--" the Seigneur said, then paused.
+
+"No, no; do not ask me.  He has not confessed to me, Maurice-naturally,
+nothing like that.  But I know.  I know and pity--ah, Maurice, I almost
+love.  You argue, and reason, but I know this, my friend, that something
+was left out of this man when he was made, and it is that thing that we
+must find, or he will die among us a ruined soul, and his gravestone will
+be the monument of our shame.  If he can once trust the Church, if he can
+once say, 'Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,' then his temptation
+will vanish, and I shall bring him in--I shall lead him home."
+
+For an instant the Seigneur looked at him in amazement, for this was a
+Cure he had never known.
+
+"Dear Cure, you are not your old self," he said gently.
+
+"I am not myself--yes, that is it, Maurice.  I am not the old humdrum
+Cure you knew.  The whole world is my field now.  I have sorrowed for
+sin, within the bounds of this little Chaudiere.  Now I sorrow for
+unbelief.  Through this man, through much thinking on him, I have come to
+feel the woe of all the world.  I have come to hear the footsteps of the
+Master near.  My friend, it is not a legend, not a belief now, it is a
+presence.  I owe him much, Maurice.  In bringing him home, I shall
+understand what it all means--the faith that we profess.  I shall in
+truth feel that it is all real.  You see how much I may yet owe to him--
+to this infidel tailor.  I only hope I have not betrayed him," he added
+anxiously.  "I would keep faith with him--ah, yes, indeed!"
+
+"I only remember that you have said the man suffers.  That is no
+betrayal."
+
+They entered the village in silence.  Presently, however, the sound of
+Maximilian Cour's violin, as they passed the bakery, set the Seigneur's
+tongue wagging again, and it wagged on till they came to the tailor's
+shop.
+
+"Good-day to you, Monsieur," he said, as they entered.
+
+"Have you a hot goose for me?"
+
+"I have, but I will not press it on you," replied Charley.
+
+"Should you so take my question--eh?"
+
+"Should you so take my 'anser'?"
+
+The pun was new to the Seigneur, and he turned to the Cure chuckling.
+"Think of that, Cure!  He knows the classics."  He laughed till the tears
+came into his eyes.
+
+The next few moments Charley was busy measuring the two potentates for
+greatcoats.  As it was his first work for them, it was necessary for the
+Cure to write down the Seigneur's measurements, as the tailor called them
+off, while the Seigneur did the same when the Cure was being measured.
+So intent were the three it might have been a conference of war.  The
+Seigneur ventured a distant but self-conscious smile when the measurement
+of his waist was called, for he had by two inches the advantage of the
+Cure, though they were the same age, while he was one inch better in the
+chest.  The Seigneur was proud of his figure, and, unheeding the passing
+of fashions, held to the knee-breeches and silk stockings long after they
+had disappeared from the province.  To the Cure he had often said that
+the only time he ever felt heretical was when in the presence of the
+gaitered calves of a Protestant dean.  He wore his sleeves tight and his
+stock high, as in the days when William the Sailor was king in England,
+and his long gold-topped Prince Regent cane was the very acme of dignity.
+
+The measurement done, the three studied the fashion plates--mostly five
+years old--as Von Moltke and Bismarck might have studied the field of
+Gravelotte.  The Seigneur's remarks were highly critical, till, with a
+few hasty strokes on brown paper, Charley sketched in his figure with a
+long overcoat in style much the same as his undercoat, stately and
+flowing and confined at the waist.
+
+"Admirable, most admirable!" said the Seigneur.  "The likeness is
+astonishing"--he admired the carriage of his own head in Charley's swift
+lines--"the garment in perfect taste.  Form--there is nothing like form
+and proportion in life.  It is almost a religion."
+
+"My dear friend!" said the Cure, in amazement.
+
+"I know when I am in the presence of an artist and his work.  Louis
+Trudel had rule and measure, shears and a needle.  Our friend here has
+eye and head, sense of form and creative gift.  Ah, Cure, Cure, if I were
+twenty-five, with the assistance of Monsieur, I would show the bucks in
+Fabrique Street how to dress.  What style is this called, Monsieur?" he
+suddenly asked, pointing to the drawing.
+
+"Style a la Rossignol, Seigneur," said the tailor.
+
+The Seigneur was flattered out of all reason.  He looked across at the
+post-office, where he could see Rosalie dimly moving in the shade of the
+shop.
+
+"Ah, if I had but ordered this coat sooner!" he said regretfully.
+He was thinking that to-morrow was Michaelmas day, when he was to ask
+Rosalie for her answer again, and he fancied himself appearing before
+her in the gentle cool of the evening, in this coat, lightly thrown back,
+disclosing his embroidered waistcoat, seals, and snowy linen.  "Monsieur,
+I am highly complimented, believe me," he said.  "Observe, Cure, that
+this coat is invented for me on the spot."
+
+The Cure nodded appreciatively.  "Wonderful!  Wonderful!  But do you
+not think," he added, a little wistfully--for, was he not a Frenchman,
+susceptible like all his race to the appearance of things?--"do you not
+think it might be too fashionable for me?"
+
+"Not a whit--not a whit," replied the Seigneur generously.  "Should not a
+Cure look distinguished--be dignified?  Consider the length, the line,
+the eloquence of design!  Ah, Monsieur, once again, you are an artist!
+The Cure shall wear it--indeed but he shall!  Then I shall look like him,
+and perhaps get credit for some of his perfections."
+
+"And the Cure?" said Charley.
+
+"The Cure?--the Cure?  Tiens, a little of my worldliness will do him
+good.  There are no contrasts in him.  He must wear the coat."  He waved
+his walking-stick complacently, for he was thinking that the Cure's less
+perfect figure would set off his own well as they walked together.  "May
+I have the honour to keep this as a souvenir?" he added, picking up the
+sketch.
+
+"With pleasure," answered Charley.  "You do not need it?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+The Cure looked a little disappointed, and Charley, seeing, immediately
+sketched on brown paper the priestly figure in the new-created coat,
+a la Rossignol.  On this drawing he was a little longer engaged, with the
+result that the Cure was reproduced with a singular fidelity--in face,
+figure, and expression a personality gentle yet important.
+
+"On my soul, you shall not have it!" said the Seigneur.  "But you shall
+have me, and I shall have you, lest we both grow vain by looking at
+ourselves."  He thrust the sketch of himself into the Cure's hands,
+and carefully rolled up that of his friend.
+
+The Cure was amazed at this gift of the tailor, and delighted with the
+picture of himself--his vanity was as that of a child, without guile or
+worldliness.  He was better pleased, however, to have the drawing of his
+friend by him, that vanity might not be too companionable.  He thanked
+Charley with a beaming face, and then the two friends bowed and moved
+towards the door.  Suddenly the Cure stopped.
+
+"My dear Maurice," said he, "we have forgotten the important thing."
+
+"Think of that--we two old babblers!" said the Seigneur.  He nodded for
+the Cure to begin.  "Monsieur," said the Cure to Charley, "you maybe able
+to help us in a little difficulty.  For a long time we have intended
+holding a great mission with a kind of religious drama like that
+performed at Ober-Ammergau, and called The Passion Play.  You know of it,
+Monsieur?"
+
+"Very well through reading, Monsieur."
+
+"Next Easter we propose having a Passion Play in pious imitation of
+the famous drama.  We will hold it at the Indian reservation of Four
+Mountains, thus quickening our own souls and giving a good object-lesson
+of the great History to the Indians."
+
+The Cure paused rather anxiously, but Charley did not speak.  His eyes
+were fixed inquiringly on the Cure, and he had a sudden suspicion that
+some devious means were forward to influence him.  He dismissed the
+thought, however, for this Cure was simple as man ever was made,
+straightforward as the most heretical layman might demand.
+
+The Cure, taking heart, again continued: "Now I possess an authentic
+description of the Ober-Ammergau drama, giving details of its
+presentation at different periods, and also a book of the play.  But
+there is no one in the parish who reads German, and it occurred to the
+Seigneur and myself that, understanding French so well, by chance you may
+understand German also, and would, perhaps, translate the work for us."
+
+"I read German easily and speak it fairly," Charley answered, relieved;
+"and you are welcome to my services."
+
+The Cure's pale face flushed with pleasure.  He took the little German
+book from his pocket, and handed it over.
+
+"It is not so very long," he said; "and we shall all be grateful."  Then
+an inspiration came to him; his eyes lighted.
+
+"Monsieur," he said, "you will notice that there are no illustrations in
+the book.  It is possible that you might be able to make us a few
+drawings--if we do not ask too much?  It would aid greatly in the matter
+of costume, and you might use my library--I have a fair number of
+histories."  The Cure was almost breathless, his heart thumped as he made
+the request.  After a slight pause he added, hastily: "You are always
+doing for others.  It is hardly kind to ask you; but we have some months
+to spare; there need be no haste."  Charley hastened to relieve the
+Cure's anxiety.  "Do not apologise," he said.  "I will do what I can
+when I can.  But as for drawing, Monsieur, it will be but amateurish."
+
+"Monsieur," interposed the Seigneur promptly, "if you're not an artist,
+I'm damned!"
+
+"Maurice!" murmured the Cure reproachfully.  "Can't help it, Cure.  I've
+held it in for an hour.  It had to come; so there it is exploded.  I see
+no damage either, save to my own reputation.  Monsieur," he added to
+Charley, "if I had gifts like yours, nothing would hold me.  I should put
+on more airs than Beauty Steele."
+
+It was fortunate that, at that instant, Charley's face was turned away,
+or the Seigneur would have seen it go white and startled.  Charley did
+not dare turn his head for the moment.  He could not speak.  What did
+the Seigneur know of Beauty Steele?
+
+To hide his momentary confusion, he went over to the drawer of a cupboard
+in the wall, and placed the book inside.  It gave him time to recover
+himself.  When he turned round again his face was calm, his manner
+composed.
+
+"And who, may I ask, is Beauty Steele?" he said.  "Faith I do not know,"
+answered the Seigneur, taking a pinch of snuff.  "It's years since I
+first read the phrase in a letter a scamp of a relative of mine wrote me
+from the West.  He had met a man of the name, who had a reputation as a
+clever fop, a very handsome fellow.  So I thought it a good phrase, and
+I've used it ever since on occasions.  'More airs than Beauty Steele.'
+--It has a sound; it's effective, I fancy, Monsieur?"
+
+"Decidedly effective," answered Charley quietly.  He picked up his
+shears.  "You will excuse me," he said grimly, "but I must earn my
+living.  I cannot live on my reputation."
+
+The Seigneur and the Cure lifted their hats--to the tailor.
+
+"Au revoir, Monsieur," they both said, and Charley bowed them out.
+
+The two friends turned to each other a little way up the street.
+"Something will come of this, Cure," said the Seigneur.  The Cure,
+whose face had a look of happiness, pressed his arm in reply.
+
+Inside the tailor-shop, a voice kept saying, "More airs than Beauty
+Steele!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+THE SCARLET WOMAN
+
+Since the evening in the garden when she had been drawn into Charley's
+arms, and then fled from them in joyful confusion, Rosalie had been in a
+dream.  She had not closed her eyes all night, or, if she closed them,
+they still saw beautiful things flashing by, to be succeeded by other
+beautiful things.  It was a roseate world.  To her simple nature it was
+not so important to be loved as to love.  Selfishness was as yet the
+minor part of her.  She had been giving all her life--to her mother, as a
+child; to sisters at the convent who had been kind to her; to the poor
+and the sick of the parish; to her father, who was helpless without her;
+to the tailor across the way.  In each case she had given more than she
+had got.  A nature overflowing with impulsive affection, it must spend
+itself upon others.  The maternal instinct was at the very core of her
+nature, and care for others was as much a habit as an instinct with her.
+She had love to give, and it must be given.  It had been poured like the
+rain from heaven on the just and the unjust; on animals as on human
+beings, and in so far as her nature, in the first spring--the very April
+--of its powers, could do.
+
+Till Charley had come to Chaudiere, it had all been the undisciplined
+ardour of a girl's nature.  A change had begun in the moment when she had
+tearfully thrust the oil and flour in upon his excoriated breast.  Later
+came real awakening, and a riotous outpouring of herself in sympathy, in
+observation, in a reckless kindness which must have done her harm but
+that her clear intelligence balanced her actions, and because secrecy in
+one thing helped to restrain her in all.  Yet with all the fresh overflow
+of her spirit, which, assisted by her new position as postmistress, made
+her a conspicuous and popular figure in the parish, where officialdom had
+rare honour and little labour, she had prejudices almost unworthy of her,
+due though they were to radical antipathy.  These prejudices, one against
+Jo Portugais and the other against Paulette Dubois, she had never been
+able entirely to overcome, though she had honestly tried.  On the way
+to the hospital at Quebec, however, Jo had been so careful of her father,
+so respectful when speaking of M'sieu', so regardful of her own comfort,
+that her antagonism to him was lulled.  But the strong prejudice against
+Paulette Dubois remained, casting a shadow on her bright spirit.
+
+All this day she had moved about in a mellow dream, very busy, scarcely
+thinking.  New feelings dominated her, and she was too primitive to
+analyse them and too occupied with them to realise acutely the life about
+her.  Work was an abstraction, resting rather than tiring her.
+
+Many times she had looked across at the tailor-shop, only seeing Charley
+once.  She did not wish to speak with him now, nor to be near him yet;
+she wanted this day for herself only.
+
+So it was that, soon after the Cure and the Seigneur had bade good-bye to
+Charley, she left the post-office and went quickly through the village
+to a spot by the river, where was a place called the Rest of the
+Flaxbeaters.  It was an overhanging rock which made a kind of canopy over
+a sweet spring, where, in the days when their labours sounded through the
+valley, the flaxbeaters from the level below came to eat their meals and
+to rest.
+
+This had always been a resort for her in the months when the flax-beaters
+did not use it.  Since a child she had made the place her own.  To this
+day it is called Rosalie's Dell; for are not her sorrows and joys still
+told by those who knew and loved her?  and is not the parish still
+fragrant with her name?  Has not her history become a living legend a
+thousand times told?
+
+Leaving the village behind her, Rosalie passed down the high-road till
+she came to a path that led off through a grove of scattered pines.
+There would be yet a half-hour's sun and then a short twilight, and the
+river and the woods and the Rest of the Flax-beaters would be her own;
+and she could think of the wonderful thing come upon her.  She had
+brought with her a book of English poems, and as she went through the
+grove she opened it, and in her pretty English repeated over and over to
+herself:
+
+         "My heart is thine, and soul and body render
+          Faith to thy faith; I give nor hold in thrall:
+          Take all, dear love!  thou art my life's defender;
+          Speak to my soul!  Take life and love; take all!"
+
+She was lifted up by the abandonment of the verse, by the fulness of her
+own feelings, which had only needed a touch of beauty to give it
+exaltation.  The touch had come.
+
+She went on abstractedly to the place where she had trysted with her
+thoughts only, these many years, and, sitting down, watched the sun sink
+beyond the trees, the shades of evening fall.  All that had happened
+since Charley came to the parish she went over in her mind.  She
+remembered the day he had said this, the day he had said that; she
+brought back the night--it was etched upon her mind!--when he had said
+to her, "You have saved my life, Mademoiselle!"  She recalled the time
+she put the little cross back on the church-door, the ghostly footsteps
+in the church, the light, the lost hood.  A shudder ran through her now,
+for the mystery of that hood had never been cleared up.  But the words on
+the page caught her eye again:
+
+         "My heart is thine, and soul and body render
+          Faith to thy faith .  .  ."
+
+It swallowed up the moment's agitation.  Never till this day, never till
+last night, had she dared to say to herself, He loves me.  He seemed so
+far above her--she never had thought of him as a tailor!--that she had
+given and never dared hope to receive, had lived without anticipation
+lest there should come despair.  Even that day at Vadrome Mountain she
+had not thought he meant love, when he had said to her that he would
+remember to the last.  When he had said that he would die for love's
+sake, he had not meant her, but others--some one else whom he would save
+by his death.  Kathleen, that name which had haunted her--ah, whoever
+Kathleen was, or whatever Kathleen had to do with him or his life, she
+had no reason to fear Kathleen now.  She had no reason to fear any one;
+for had she not heard his words of love as he clasped her in his arms
+last night?  Had she not fled from that enfolding, because her heart was
+so full in the hour of her triumph that she could not bear more, could
+not look longer into the eyes to which she had told her love before his
+was spoken?
+
+In the midst of her thoughts she heard footsteps.  She started up.
+Paulette Dubois suddenly appeared in the path below.  She had taken
+the river-path down from Vadrome Mountain, where she had gone to see Jo
+Portugais, who had not yet returned from Quebec.  Paulette's face was
+agitated, her manner nervous.  For nights she had not slept, and her
+approaching meeting with the tailor had made her tremble all day.
+Excited as she was, there was a wild sort of beauty in her face, and her
+figure was lithe and supple.  She dressed always a little garishly, but
+now there was only that band of colour round the throat, worn last night
+in the talk with Charley.
+
+To both women this meeting was as a personal misfortune, a mutual
+affront.  Each had a natural antipathy.  To Rosalie the invasion of her
+beloved retreat was as hateful as though the woman had purposely
+intruded.
+
+For a moment they confronted each other without speaking, then Rosalie's
+natural courtesy, her instinctive good-heartedness, overcame her
+irritation, and she said quietly:
+
+"Good-evening, Madame."
+
+"I am not Madame, and you know it," answered the woman harshly.
+
+"I am sorry.  Good-evening, Mademoiselle," rejoined Rosalie evenly.
+
+"You wanted to insult me.  You knew I wasn't Madame."
+
+Rosalie shook her head.  "How should I know?  You have not always lived
+in Chaudiere, you have lived in Montreal, and people often call you
+Madame."
+
+"You know better.  You know that letters come to me from Montreal
+addressed Mademoiselle."
+
+Rosalie turned as if to go.  "I do not recall what letters pass through
+the post-office.  I have a good memory for forgetting.  Good-evening,"
+she added, with an excess of courtesy.  Paulette read the placid scorn in
+the girl's face; she did not see and would not understand that Rosalie
+did not scorn her for what she had ever done, but for something that she
+was.
+
+"You think I am the dirt under your feet," she said, now white, now red,
+and mad with anger.  "I'm not fit to speak with you--I'm a rag for the
+dust pile!"
+
+"I have never thought so," answered Rosalie.  "I have not liked you, but
+I am sorry for you, and I never thought those things."
+
+"You lie!" was the rejoinder; and Rosalie, turning away quickly with
+trouble in her face, put her hands to her ears, and, hastening down the
+hillside, did not hear the words the woman called after her.
+
+"To-morrow every one shall know you are a thief.  Run, run, run!  You can
+hear what I say, white-face!  They shall know about the little cross
+to-morrow."
+
+She followed Rosalie at a distance, her eyes blazing.  As fate would have
+it, she met on the highroad the least scrupulous man in the parish, an
+inveterate gossip, the keeper of the general store, whose only opposition
+in business was the post-office shop.  He was the centre of the village
+tittle-tattle, and worse.  With malicious speed Paulette told him how she
+had seen Rosalie Evanturel nailing the little cross on the church door of
+a certain night.  If he wanted proof of what she said, let him ask Jo
+Portugais.
+
+Having spat out her revenge, she went on to the village, and through it
+to her house, where she prepared to visit the shop of the tailor.  Her
+sense of retaliation satisfied, Rosalie passed from her mind; her child
+only occupied it.  In another hour she would know where her child was--
+the tailor had promised that she should.  Then perhaps she would be sorry
+for the accident to the Notary; for it was an accident, in spite of
+appearances.
+
+It was dark when Paulette entered the door of the tailor's house.  When
+she came out, a half-hour later, with elation in her carriage, and tears
+of joy running down her face, she did not look about her; she did not
+care whether or not any one saw her: she was possessed with only one
+thought--her child!  She passed like a swift wind down the street, making
+for home and for her departure to the hiding-place of her child.
+
+She had not seen a figure in the shadow of a tree near by as she came
+from the tailor's door.  She had not heard a smothered cry behind her.
+She was not aware that in unspeakable agony another woman knocked softly
+at the door of the tailor's house, and, not waiting for an answer, opened
+it and entered.  It was Rosalie Evanturel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING
+
+The kitchen was empty, but light fell through the door of the shop
+opening upon the little hall between.  Rosalie crossed the hall and stood
+in the doorway of the shop, a figure of concentrated indignation,
+despair, and shame.  Leaning on his elbow Charley was bending over a book
+in the light of a candle on the bench be side him.  He was reading aloud,
+translating into English the German text of the narrative the Cure had
+given him:
+
+     "And because of this divine interposition, consequent upon their
+     faithful prayers and their oblations, they did perform these holy
+     scenes from season to season, with solemn proof of piety and godly
+     living, so that it seemed the life of the Lord our Shepherd was ever
+     present with them, as though, indeed, Ober-Ammergau were Nazareth or
+     Jerusalem.  And the hearts of all in the land did answer daily to
+     that sweet and lively faith, insomuch that even in times of war the
+     zeal of the people became an holy zeal, and their warfare noble; so
+     that they did accept both victory and defeat with equal humbleness.
+     Because there was no war in their hearts, but peace, and they did
+     fight to defend and not to acquire, they buried their foe with tears
+     and their own with singleness of heart and quiet joy, for that they
+     did rest from their labours.  In this manner was the great tragedy
+     and glory of the world made to the people a present thing,
+     transforming them to the body of the Life that hath neither spot nor
+     blemish nor .  .  ."
+
+Charley had not heard Rosalie enter, nor her footsteps in the hall.  But
+now there ran through his reading a thread of something not of himself or
+of it.  He had thrilled to the archaic but clear-hearted style of the old
+German chronicler, and the warmth he felt had passed into his voice, so
+that it became louder.
+
+As Rosalie listened to his reading, a hundred thoughts rushed through
+her mind.  Paulette Dubois, the wanton woman, had just left his doorway
+secretly, yet there he was, instantly after, calmly reading a pious book!
+Her mind was in tumult.  She could not reason, she could not rule her
+judgment.  She only knew that the woman had come from this house, and
+hurried guiltily away into the dark.  She only knew that the man the
+woman had left here was the man she loved--loved more than her life, for
+he embodied all her past; all her present--she knew that she could not
+live without him; all her future--for where he went she would go,
+whatever the fate.
+
+Her judgment had been swept from its moorings.  She had been carried on
+the wave of her heart's fever into this room, not daring to think this
+or that, not planning this or that, not accusing, not reproaching, not
+shaming herself and him by black suspicion, but blindly, madly demanding
+to see him, to look into his eyes, to hear his voice, to know him,
+whatever he was--man, lover, or devil.  She was a child-woman--a child in
+her primitive feelings that threw aside all convention, because there was
+no wrong in her heart; a woman, because she was possessed by a jealousy
+which shamed and angered her, because its very existence put him on
+trial, condemned him.  Her soul was the sport of emotions and passions
+stronger than herself, because the heritage, the instinct, of all the
+race of women, the eternal predisposition.  At the moment her will
+was not sufficient to rule them to obedience.  She was in the first
+subservience to that power which feeds the streams of human history.
+
+As she now listened to Charley reading, a sudden revulsion of feeling
+came over her.  Some note in his voice reassured her heart--if it needed
+reassuring.  The quiet force of his presence stilled the tumult in her,
+so that her eyes could see without mist, her heart beat without agony;
+but every pulse in her was throbbing, every instinct was alive.
+Presently there rushed upon her the words that had rung in her ears and
+chimed in her heart at the Rest of the Flax-beaters:
+
+         "Take all, dear love!  thou art my life's defender;
+          Speak to my soul!  Take life and love; take all."
+
+Feelings lying beneath the mad conflict of emotion which had sent her
+into this room in such unmaidenly fashion--feelings that were her deepest
+self-welled up.  Her breath came hard and broken.
+
+As Charley read on, a breathing seemed to answer his own.  It became
+quicker than his own, it pierced the stillness, it filled the room with
+feeling, it came calling to him out of the silence.  He swung round, and
+saw the girl in the doorway.
+
+"Rosalie!" he cried, and sprang to his feet.
+
+With a piteously pathetic cry, she flung herself on her knees beside the
+tailor's bench where he worked every day, and, burying her face in her
+arms as they rested on the bench, wept bitterly.
+
+"Rosalie!" he said anxiously, leaning over her.  "What is the matter?
+What has happened?"
+
+She wept more bitterly still; she made a despairing gesture.  His hand
+touched her hair; he dropped on a knee beside her.
+
+"Oh, I am so ashamed, ashamed!  I have been so wicked," she murmured.
+
+"Rosalie, what has happened?" he urged gently.  His own heart was
+beating hard, his own eyes were responding to hers.  The new feelings
+alive in him, the forces his love had awakened, which, last night, had
+kept him sleepless, and had been upon him like a dream all day--they
+were at height in him now.  He knew not how to command them.
+
+"Rosalie, dearest, tell me all!" he persisted.
+
+"I shall never--I have been--oh--you will never forgive me!" she said
+brokenly.  "I knew it wasn't true, but I couldn't help it.  I saw her--
+the woman--come from your house, and--"
+
+"Hush!  For God's sake, hush!" he broke in almost harshly.  Then a
+better understanding came upon him, and it made him gentle with her.
+
+"Ah, Rosalie, you did not think!  But--but it was natural you should wish
+to see me.  .  .  ."
+
+"But, as soon as I saw you, I knew that--that--" She broke down again and
+wept.
+
+"I will tell you about her, Rosalie--" His fingers stroked her hair, and,
+bending over her, his face was near her hands.
+
+"No, no, tell me nothing--oh, if you tell me!--"
+
+"She came to hear from me what she ought to have heard from the Notary.
+She has had great trouble--the man--her child--and I have helped her,
+told her--" His face was so near now that his breath was on her hair.
+She suddenly raised her head and clasped his face in her hands.
+
+"I knew--oh, I knew, I knew .  .  .  !" she wept, and her eyes drank
+his.
+
+"Rosalie, my life!" he cried, clasping her in his arms.
+
+The love that was in him, new-born and but half understood, poured itself
+out in broken words like her own.  For him there was no outside world; no
+past, no Kathleen, no Billy; no suspicion, or infidelity, or unfaith; no
+fear of disaster; no terrors of the future.  Life was Now to him and to
+her: nothing brooded behind, nothing lay before.  The candle spluttered
+and burnt low in the socket.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A left-handed boy is all right in the world
+Damnable propinquity
+Hugging the chain of denial to his bosom
+I have a good memory for forgetting
+Importunity with discretion was his motto
+It is good to live, isn't it?
+Know how bad are you, and doesn't mind
+Strike first and heal after--"a kick and a lick"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT OF WAY
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 5.
+
+
+
+XLI.      IT WAS MICHAELMAS DAY
+XLII.     A TRIAL AND A VERDICT
+XLIII.    JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY
+XLIV.     "WHO WAS KATHLEEN?"
+XLV.      SIX MONTHS GO BY
+XLVI.     THE FORGOTTEN MAN
+XLVII.    ONE WAS TAKEN AND THE OTHER LEFT
+XLVIII.   "WHERE THE TREE OF LIFE IS BLOOMING--"
+XLIX.     THE OPEN GATE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+IT WAS MICHAELMAS DAY
+
+Not a cloud in the sky, and, ruling all, a sweet sun, liberal in
+warmth and eager in brightness as its distance from the northern world
+decreased.  As Mrs. Flynn entered the door of the post-office she sang
+out to Maximilian Cour, with a buoyant lilt: "Oh, isn't it the fun o' the
+world to be alive!"
+
+The tailor over the way heard it, and lifted his head with a smile;
+Rosalie Evanturel, behind the postal wicket, heard it, and her face swam
+with colour.  Rosalie busied herself with the letters and papers for a
+moment before she answered Mrs. Flynn's greeting, for there were ringing
+in her ears the words she herself had said a few days before: "It is good
+to live, isn't it?"
+
+To-day it was so good to live that life seemed an endless being and
+a tireless happy doing--a gift of labour, an inspiring daytime, and
+a rejoicing sleep.  Exaltation, a painful joy, and a wide embarrassing
+wonderment possessed her.  She met Mrs. Flynn's face at the wicket with
+shining eyes and a timid smile.
+
+"Ah, there y'are, darlin'!" said Mrs. Flynn.  "And how's the dear father
+to-day?"
+
+"He seems about the same, thank you."
+
+"Ah, that's foine.  Shure, if we could always be 'about the same,' we'd
+do.  True for you, darlin', 'tis as you say.  If ould Mary Flynn could
+be always "bout the same,' the clods o' the valley would never cover her
+bones.  But there 'tis--we're here to-day, and away tomorrow.  Shure,
+though, I am not complainin'.  Not I--not Mary Flynn.  Teddy Flynn used
+to say to me, says he: 'Niver born to know distress!  Happy as worms in a
+garden av cucumbers.  Seventeen years in this country, Mary,' says he,
+'an' nivir in the pinitintiary yet.'  There y'are.  Ah, the birds do be
+singin' to-day!  'Tis good!  'Tis good, darlin'!  You'll not mind Mary
+Flynn callin' you darlin', though y'are postmistress, an' 'll be more
+than that--more than that wan day--or Mary Flynn's a fool.  Aye, more
+than that y'll be, darlin', and y're eyes like purty brown topazzes and
+y're cheeks like roses-shure, is there anny lether for Mary Flynn,
+darlin'?" she hastily added as she saw the Seigneur standing in the
+doorway.  He had evidently been listening.
+
+"Ye didn't hear what y're ould fool of a cook was sayin'," she added to
+the Seigneur, as Rosalie shook her head and answered: "No letters,
+Madame--dear."  Rosalie timidly added the dear, for there was something
+so great-hearted in Mrs. Flynn that she longed to clasp her round the
+neck, longed as she had never done in her life to lay her head upon some
+motherly breast and pour out her heart.  But it was not to be now.
+Secrecy was her duty still.
+
+"Can't ye speak to y're ould fool of a cook, sir?" Mrs. Flynn said
+again, as the Seigneur made way for her to leave the shop.
+
+"How did you guess?" he said to her in a low voice, his sharp eyes
+peering into hers.
+
+"By the looks in y're face these past weeks, and the look in hers," she
+whispered, and went on her way rejoicing.
+
+"I'll wind thim both round me finger like a wisp o' straw," she said,
+going up the road with a light step, despite her weight, till she was
+stopped by the malicious grocer-man of the village, whose tongue had been
+wagging for hours upon an unwholesome theme.
+
+Meanwhile, in the post-office, the Seigneur and Rosalie were face to
+face.
+
+"It is Michaelmas day," he said.  "May I speak with you, Mademoiselle?"
+
+She looked at the clock.  It was on the stroke of noon.  The shop always
+closed from twelve till half-past twelve.
+
+"Will you step into the parlour, Monsieur?" she said, and coming round
+the counter, locked the shop-door.  She was trembling and confused, and
+entered the little parlour shyly.  Yet her eyes met the Seigneur's
+bravely.  "Your father, how is he?" he said, offering her a chair.  The
+sunlight streaming in the window made a sort of pathway of light between
+them, while they were in the shade.
+
+"He seems no worse, and to-day he is wheeling himself about."
+
+"He is stronger, then--that's good.  Is there any fear that he must go to
+the hospital again?"
+
+She inclined her head.  "The doctor says he may have to go any moment.
+It may be his one chance.  The Cure is very kind, and says that, with
+your permission, his sister will keep the office here, if--if needed."
+
+The Seigneur nodded briskly.  "Of course, of course.  But have you not
+thought that we might secure another postmistress?"
+
+Her face clouded a little; her heart beat hard.  She knew what was
+coming.  She dreaded it, but it was better to have it over now.
+
+"We could not live without it," she said helplessly.
+
+"What we have saved is not enough.  The little my mother had must pay for
+the visits to the hospital.  I have kept it for that.  You see, I need
+the place here."
+
+"But you have thought, just the same.  Do you not know the day?" he
+asked meaningly.
+
+She was silent.
+
+"I have come to ask you to marry me--this is Michaelmas day, Rosalie."
+
+She did not speak.  He had hopes from her silence.  "If anything happened
+to your father, you could not live here alone--but a young girl!  Your
+father may be in the hospital for a long time.  You cannot afford that.
+If I were to offer you money, you would refuse.  If you marry me, all
+that I have is yours to dispose of at your will: to make others happy,
+to take you now and then from this narrow place, to see what's going on
+in the world."
+
+"I am happy here," she said falteringly.
+
+"Chaudiere is the finest place in the world," he replied proudly, and as
+a matter of fact.  "But, for the sake of knowledge, you should see what
+the rest of the world is.  It helps you to understand Chaudiere better.
+I ask you to be my wife, Rosalie."
+
+She shook her head sorrowfully.
+
+"You said before, it was not because I am old, not because I am rich, not
+because I am Seigneur, not because I am I, that you refused me."
+
+She smiled at him now.  "That is true," she said.
+
+"Then what reason can you have?  None, none.  'Pon honour, I believe you
+are afraid of marriage because it's marriage.  By my life, there's naught
+to dread.  A little giving here and taking there, and it's easy.  And
+when a woman is all that's good, to a man, it can be done without fear or
+trembling.  Even the Cure would tell you that."
+
+"Ah, I know, I know," she said, in a voice half painful, half joyous.
+"I know that it is so.  But, oh, dear Monsieur, I cannot marry you--
+never--never."
+
+He hung on bravely.  "I want to make life easy and happy for you.  I want
+the right to do so.  When trouble comes upon you--"
+
+"When it does I will turn to you--ah, yes, I would turn to you without
+fear, dear Monsieur," she said, and her heart ached within her, for a
+premonition of sorrow came upon her and filled her eyes, and made her
+heart like lead within her breast.  "I know how true a gentleman you
+are," she added.  "I could give you everything but that which is life
+to me, which is being, and soul, and the beginning and the end."
+
+The weight of the revealing hour of her life, its wonder, its agony, its
+irrevocability, was upon her.  It was giving new meanings to existence-
+primitive woman, child of nature as she was.  All morning she had longed
+to go out into the woods and bury herself among the ferns and bracken,
+and laugh and weep for very excess of feeling, downright joy and vague
+woe possessing her at once.  She looked the Seigneur in the eyes with
+consuming earnestness.
+
+"Oh, it is not because I am young," she said, in a low voice, "for I am
+old--indeed, I am very old.  It is because I cannot love you, and never
+can love you in the one great way; and I will not marry without love.  My
+heart is fixed on that.  When I marry, it will be when I love a man so
+much that I cannot live without him.  If he is so poor that each meal is
+a miracle, it will make no difference.  Oh, can't you see, can't you
+feel, what I mean, Monsieur--you who are so wise and learned, and know
+the world so well?"
+
+"Wise and learned!" he said, a little roughly, for his voice was husky
+with emotion.  "'Pon honour, I think I am a fool!  A bewildered fool,
+that knows no more of woman than my cook knows Sanscrit.  Faith, a
+hundred times less!  For Mary Flynn's got an eye to see, and, without
+telling, she knew I had a mind set on you.  But Mary Flynn thought more
+than that, for she has an idea that you've a mind set on some one,
+Rosalie.  She thought it might be me."
+
+"A woman is not so easily read as a man," she replied, half smiling, but
+with her eyes turned to the street.  A few people were gathering in front
+of the house--she wondered why.
+
+"There is some one else--that is it, Rosalie.  There is some one else.
+You shall tell me who it is.  You shall--"
+
+He stopped short, for there was a loud knocking at the shop-door, and the
+voice of M. Evanturel calling: "Rosalie!  Rosalie!  Rosalie!  Ah, come
+quickly--ah, my Rosalie!"
+
+Without a look at the Seigneur, Rosalie rushed into the shop and opened
+the front door.  Her father was deathly pale, and was trembling
+violently.
+
+"Rosalie, my bird," he cried indignantly, "they're saying you stole the
+cross from the church door."
+
+He was now wheeled inside the shop, and people gathered round, looking
+at him and Rosalie, some covertly, some as friends, some in a half-
+frightened way, as though strange things were about to happen.
+
+"Shure, 'tis a lie, or me name's not Mary Flynn--the darlin'!" said the
+Seigneur's cook, with blazing face.  "Who makes this charge?" roared an
+angry voice.  No one had seen the Seigneur enter from the little room
+beside the shop, and at the sound of the sharp voice the people fell
+back, for he was as free with his stick as his tongue.
+
+"I do," said the grocer, to whom Paulette Dubois had told her story.
+
+"Ye shall be tarred and feathered before y'are a day older," said Mary
+Flynn.
+
+Rosalie was very pale.
+
+The Seigneur was struck by this and by the strangeness of her look.
+
+"Clear the room," he said to Filion Lacasse, who was now a constable of
+the parish.
+
+"Not yet!" said a voice at the doorway.  "What is the trouble?"  It was
+the Cure, who had already heard rumours of the scandal, and had come at
+once to Rosalie.  M. Evanturel tried to speak, and could not.  But Mary
+Flynn did, with a face like a piece of scarlet bunting.  Having finished
+with a flourish, she could scarce keep her hands off the cowardly grocer.
+
+The Cure turned to Rosalie.  "It is absurd," he said.  "Forgive me," he
+added to the Seigneur.  "It is better that Rosalie should answer this
+charge.  If she gives her word of honour, I will deny communion to
+whoever slanders her hereafter."
+
+"She did it," said the grocer stubbornly.  "She can't deny it."
+
+"Answer, Rosalie," said the Cure firmly.
+
+"Excuse me; I will answer," said a voice at the door.  The tailor of
+Chaudiere made his way into the shop, through the fast-gathering crowd.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+A TRIAL AND A VERDICT
+
+"What right have you to answer for mademoiselle?" said the Seigneur,
+with a sudden rush of jealousy.  Was not he alone the protector of
+Rosalie Evanturel?  Yet here was mystery, and it was clear the tailor had
+something important to say.  M. Rossignol offered the Cure a chair,
+seated himself on a small bench, and gently drew Rosalie down beside him.
+
+"I will make this a court," said he.  "Advance, grocer."
+
+The grocer came forward smugly.
+
+"On what information do you make this charge against mademoiselle?"
+
+The grocer volubly related all that Paulette Dubois had said.  As he
+told his tale the Cure's face was a study, for the night the cross was
+restored came back to him, and the events, so far as he knew them, were
+in keeping with the grocer's narrative.  He looked at Rosalie anxiously.
+Monsieur Evanturel moaned, for he remembered he had heard Rosalie come in
+very late that night.  Yet he fixed his eyes on her in dog-like faith.
+
+"Mademoiselle will admit that this is true, I presume," said Charley.
+
+Rosalie looked at him intently, as though to read his very heart.  It was
+clear that he wished her to say yes; and what he wished was law.
+
+"It is quite true," answered Rosalie calmly, and all fear passed from
+her.
+
+"But she did not steal the cross," continued Charley, in a louder voice,
+that all might hear, for people were gathering fast.
+
+"If she didn't steal it, why was she putting it back on the church door
+in the dark?" said the grocer.  "Ah, hould y'r head, ould sand-in-the-
+sugar!" said Mrs. Flynn, her fingers aching to get into his hair.
+"Silence!" said the Seigneur severely, and looked inquiringly at
+Rosalie.  Rosalie looked at Charley.
+
+"It is not a question of why mademoiselle put the cross back," he said.
+"It is a question of who took the cross away, is it not?  Suppose it was
+not a theft.  Suppose that the person who took the relic thought to do a
+pious act--for your Church, Monsieur?"
+
+"I do not see," the Cure answered helplessly.  "It was a secret act,
+therefore suspicious at least."
+
+"'Let your good gifts be in secret, and your Heavenly Father who seeth in
+secret will reward you openly,"' answered Charley.  "That, I believe, is
+a principle you teach, Monsieur."
+
+"At one time Monsieur the tailor was thought to have taken the cross,"
+said the Seigneur suggestively.  "Perhaps Monsieur was secretly doing
+good with it?" he added.  It vexed him that there should be a secret
+between Rosalie and this man.
+
+"It had to do with me, not I with it," he answered evenly.  He must
+travel wide at first to convince their narrow brains.  "Mademoiselle did
+a kind act when she nailed that cross on the church door again--to make
+a dead man rest easier in his grave."
+
+A hush fell upon the crowd.
+
+Rosalie looked at Charley in surprise; but she saw his meaning presently
+--that what she did for him must seem to have been done for the dead
+tailor only.  Her heart beat hot with indignation, for she would, if
+she but might, cry her love gladly from the hill-tops of the world.
+
+Alight began to break upon the Cure's mind.  "Will Monsieur speak
+plainly?" he said.
+
+"I did not see Louis Trudel take the cross, but I know that he did."
+
+"Louis Trudel!  Louis Trudel!" interposed the Seigneur anxiously.  "What
+does this mean?"
+
+"Monsieur speaks the truth," interposed Rosalie.  The Cure recalled the
+death-bed of Louis Trudel, and the dying man's strange agitation.  He
+also recalled old Margot's death, and her wish to confess some one else's
+wrong-doing.  He was convinced that Charley was speaking the truth.
+
+"It is true," added Charley slowly; "but you may think none the worse of
+him when you know all.  He took the cross for temporary use, and before
+he could replace it he died."
+
+"How do you know what he meant, or did not mean?" said the Seigneur in
+perplexity.  "Did he take you into his confidence?"
+
+"The very closest," answered Charley grimly.
+
+"Yet he looked upon you as an infidel, and said hard things of you on his
+death-bed," urged the Cure anxiously.  He could not see the end of the
+tale, and he was troubled for both the dead man and the living.
+
+"That was why he took me into his confidence.  I will explain.  I have
+not the honour to have the fulness of your Christian faith, Monsieur le
+Cure.  I had asked him to show me a sign from heaven, and he showed it by
+the little iron cross."
+
+"I can't make anything of that," said the Seigneur peevishly.
+
+Rosalie sprang to her feet.  "He will not tell the whole truth,
+Messieurs, but I will.  With that little cross Louis Trudel would have
+killed Monsieur, had it not been for me."
+
+A gasp of excitement went out from those who stood by.
+
+"But for you, Rosalie?" asked the Cure.
+
+"But for me.  I saw Louis Trudel raise an iron against Monsieur that day
+in the shop.  It made me nervous--I thought he was mad.  So I watched.
+That night I saw a light in the tailor-shop late.  I thought it strange.
+I went over and peeped through the cracks of the shutters.  I saw old
+Louis at the fire with the little cross, red-hot.  I knew he meant
+trouble.  I ran into the house.  Old Margot was beside herself with fear
+--she had seen also.  I ran through the hall and saw old Louis upstairs
+with the burning cross.  I followed.  He went into Monsieur's room.  When
+I got to the door"--she paused, trembling, for she saw Charley's
+reproving eyes upon her--"I saw him with the cross--with the cross raised
+over Monsieur."
+
+"He meant to threaten me," interposed Charley quickly.
+
+"We will have the truth!" said the Seigneur, in a husky voice.
+
+"The cross came down on Monsieur's bare breast."  The grocer laughed
+vindictively.
+
+"Silence!" growled the Seigneur.
+
+"Silence!" said Filion Lacasse, and dropped his hand on the grocer's
+shoulder.  "I'll baste you with a stirrup-strap."
+
+"The rest is well known," quickly interposed Charley.  "The poor man was
+mad.  He thought it a pious act to mark an infidel with the cross."
+
+Every eye was fixed upon him.  The Cure remembered Louis Trudel's last
+words: "Look--look--I gave--him--the sign--of .  .  .  !"  Old Margot's
+words also kept ringing in his ears.  He turned to the Seigneur.
+"Monsieur," said he, "we have heard the truth.  That act of Louis Trudel
+was cruel and murderous.  May God forgive him!  I will not say that
+mademoiselle did well in keeping silent--"
+
+"God bless the darlin'!" cried Mrs. Flynn.
+
+"--but I will say that she meant to do a kind act for a man's mortal
+memory--perhaps at the expense of his soul."
+
+"For Monsieur to take his injury in silence, to keep it secret, was
+kind," said the Seigneur.  "It is what our Cure here might call bearing
+his cross manfully."
+
+"Seigneur," said the Cure reproachfully, "Seigneur, it is no subject for
+jest."
+
+"Cure, our tailor here has treated it as a jest."
+
+"Let him show his breast, if it's true," said the grocer, who, beneath
+his smirking, was a malignant soul.
+
+The Cure turned on him sharply.  Seldom had any one seen the Cure roused.
+
+"Who are you, Ba'tiste Maxime, that your base curiosity should be
+satisfied--you, whose shameless tongue clattered, whose foolish soul
+rejoiced over the scandal?  Must we all wear the facts of our lives--our
+joys, our sorrows, and our sins--for such eyes as yours to read?  Bethink
+you of the evil things that you would hide--aye, every one here!" he
+added loudly.  "Know, all of you, what goodness of heart towards a wicked
+man lay behind the secret these two have kept, that old Margot carried to
+her grave.  When you go to your homes, pray for as much human kindness in
+you as a man of no Church or faith can show.  For this child"--he turned
+to Rosalie-"honour her!  Go now--go in peace!"
+
+"One moment," said the Seigneur.  "I fine Ba'tiste Maxime twenty dollars
+for defamation of character.  The money to go for the poor."
+
+"You hear that, ould sand-in-the-sugar!" said Mrs. Flynn.  "Will you let
+me kiss ye, darlin'?" she added to Rosalie, and, waddling over, reached
+out her hands.
+
+Rosalie's eyes were wet as she warmly kissed the old Irishwoman, and
+thereupon they entered into a friendship which was without end.
+
+The Seigneur drove the crowd from the shop, and shut the door.
+
+The Cure came to Charley.  "Monsieur," said he, "I have no words.
+When I remember what agonies you suffered in those hours, how bravely you
+endured them--ah, Monsieur!" he added, with moist eyes, "I shall always
+feel that--that you are not far from the kingdom of God."
+
+A silence fell upon them, for the Cure, the Seigneur, and Rosalie, as
+they looked at Charley, thought of the scar like a red cross on his
+breast.
+
+It touched Charley with a kind of awe.  He smiled painfully.  "Shall I
+give you proof?" he said, making a motion to undo his waistcoat.
+
+"Monsieur!" said the Seigneur reprovingly, and holding out his hand.
+"Monsieur!  We are all gentlemen!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY
+
+Walking slowly, head bent, eyes unseeing, Charley was on his way to
+Vadrome Mountain, with the knowledge that Jo Portugais had returned.
+
+The hunger for companionship was on him: to touch some mind that could
+understand the deep loneliness which had settled on him since that scene
+in the postoffice.  It was the loneliness of a new and great separation.
+He had wakened to it to-day.
+
+Once before, in the hut on Vadrome Mountain, he had wakened from a grave,
+had been born again.  Last night had come still another birth, had come,
+as with Rosalie herself, knowledge, revelation, understanding.  To
+Rosalie the new vision had come with a vague pain of heart, without
+shame, and with a wonderful happiness.  Pain, shame, knowledge, and a
+happiness that passed suddenly into a despairing sorrow, had come to him.
+
+In finding love he had found conscience, and in finding conscience he was
+on his way to another great discovery.
+
+Looking to where Jo Portugais' house was set among the pines, Charley
+remembered the day--he saw the scene in his mind's eye--when Rosalie
+entered with the letter addressed "To the sick man at the house of Jo
+Portugais, at Vadrome Mountain," and he saw again her clear, unsoiled
+soul in the deep inquiring eyes.
+
+"If you but knew"--he turned and looked down at the village below--
+"if you but knew!" he said, as though to all the world.  "I have the
+sign from heaven--I know it now.  To-day I wake to know what life means,
+and I see--Rosalie!  I know now--but how?  In taking all she had to give.
+What does she get in return?  Nothing--nothing.  Because I love her,
+because the whole world is nothing beside her, nor life, nor twenty
+lives, if I had them to give, I must say to her now: 'Rosalie, it was
+love that brought you to my arms, it is love that says, Thus far and no
+farther.  Never again--never--never--never!' Yesterday I could have left
+her--died or vanished, without real hurt to her.  She would have mourned
+and broken her heart and mended it again; and I should have been only a
+memory--of mystery, of tenderness.  Then, one day she would have married,
+and no sting from my going would have remained.  She would have had
+happiness, and I neither shame nor despair.  .  .  .  To-day it is all
+too late.  We have drunk too deep-alas! too deep.  She cannot marry
+another man, for ghosts will not lie for asking, and what is mine may not
+be another's.  She cannot marry me, for what once was mine is mine still
+by ring and by book, and I should always be haunted by a torturing
+shadow.  Kathleen has the right of way, not Rosalie.  Ah, Rosalie,
+I dare not wrong you further.  Yet to marry you, even as things are,
+if that might be!  To live on here unrecognised?  I am little like my
+old self, and year after year I should grow less and less like Charley
+Steele.  .  .  .  But, no, it is not possible!"
+
+He stopped short in his thoughts, and his lips tightened in bitterness.
+
+"God in heaven, what an impasse!" he said aloud.
+
+There was a sudden crackling of twigs as a man rose up from a log by the
+wayside ahead of him.  It was Jo Portugais, who had seen him coming, and
+had waited for him.  He had heard Charley's words.
+
+"Do you call me an impasse, M'sieu'?"  Charley grasped Portugais' hand.
+
+"What has happened, M'sieu'?" Jo asked anxiously.  There was a brief
+silence, and then Charley told him of the events of the morning.
+
+"You know of the mark-here?" he asked, touching his breast.
+
+Jo nodded.  "I saw, when you were ill."
+
+"Yet you never asked!"
+
+"I studied it out--I knew old Louis Trudel.  Also, I saw ma'm'selle nail
+the cross to the church door.  Two and two together in my mind did it.
+I didn't think Paulette Dubois would tell.  I warned her."
+
+"She quarrelled with mademoiselle.  It was revenge.
+
+"She might have been less vindictive.  She had had good luck herself
+lately."
+
+"What good luck had she, M'sieu'?"
+
+Charley told Jo the story of the Notary, the woman, and the child.
+
+Jo made no comment.  They relapsed into silence.  Arriving at the house,
+they entered.  Jo lighted his pipe, and smoked steadily for a time
+without speaking.  Buried in thought, Charley stood in the doorway
+looking down at the village.  At last he turned.
+
+"Where have you been these weeks past, Jo?"
+
+"To Quebec first, M'sieu'."
+
+Charley looked curiously at Jo, for there was meaning in his tone.  "And
+where last?"
+
+"To Montreal."
+
+Charley's face became paler, his hands suddenly clinched, for he read the
+look in Jo's eyes.  He knew that Jo had been looking at people and places
+once so familiar; that he had seen--Kathleen.
+
+"Go on.  Tell me all," he said heavily.
+
+Portugais spoke in English.  The foreign language seemed to make the
+truth less naked and staring to himself.  He had a hard story to tell.
+
+"It is not to say why I go to Montreal," he began.  "But I go.  I have my
+ears open; my eyes, she is not close.  No one knows me--I am no account
+of.  Every one is forgot the man, Joseph Nadeau, who was try for his
+life.  Perhaps it is every one is forget the lawyer who save his neck--
+perhaps?  So I stand by the streetside.  I say to a man as I look up at
+sign-boards,' 'Where is that writing "M'sieu' Charles Steele," and all
+the res'?' 'He is dead long ago,' say the man to me.  'A good thing too,
+for he was the very devil.'  'I not understan',' I say.  'I tink that
+M'sieu' Steele is a dam smart man back time.'  'He was the smartes' man
+in the country, that Beauty Steele,' the man say. 'He bamboozle the jury
+hevery time.  He cut up bad though.'"
+
+Charley raised his hand with a nervous gesture of misery and impatience.
+
+"'Where have you been,' that man say--'where have you been all these
+times not to know 'bout Charley Steele, hein?'  'In the backwoods,'
+I say.  'What bring you here now?' he ask.  'I have a case,' I say.
+'What is it?' he ask.  'It is a case of a man who is punish for another
+man,' I say.  'That's the thing for Charley Steele,' he laugh.  'He was
+great man to root things out.  Can't fool Charley Steele, we use to say
+here.  But he die a bad death.'  'What was the matter with him?' I say.
+'He drink too much, he spend too much, he run after a girl at Cote
+Dorion, and the river-drivers do for him one night.  They say it was
+acciden', but is there any green on my eye?  But he die trump--jus' like
+him.  He have no fear of devil or man,' so the man say.  'But fear of
+God?' I ask.  'He was hinfidel,' he say.  'That was behin' all.  He was
+crooked all roun'. He rob the widow and horphan?'  'I think he too smart
+for that,' I speak quick.  'I suppose it was the drink,' he say.  'He
+loose his grip.' 'He was a smart man, an' he would make you all sit up,
+if he come back,' I hanswer.  'If he come back!' The man laugh queer at
+that.  'If he comeback, there would be hell.'  'How is that?' I say.
+'Look across the street,' he whisper.  'That was his wife.'"
+
+Charley choked back a cry in his throat.  Jo had no intention of cutting
+his story short.  He had an end in view.
+
+"I look across the street.  There she is--' Ah, that is a fine woman
+to see!  I have never seen but one more finer to look at--here in
+Chaudiere.' The man say: 'She marry first for money, and break her heart;
+now she marry for love.  If Beauty Steele come back-eh! sacra!  that
+would be a mess.  But he is at the bottom of the St  Lawrence--the courts
+say so, and the Church say so--and ghosts don't walk here.' 'But if that
+Beauty Steele come back alive, what would happen it?' I speak.  'His wife
+is marry, blockhead!' he say.
+
+"'But the woman is his,' I hanswer.  'Do you think she would go back to a
+thief she never love from the man she love?' he speak back.  'She is not
+marry to the other man,' I say, 'if Beauty Steele is .  .  .'  'He is
+dead as a door,' he swear.  'You see that?' he go on, nodding down the
+street.  'Well, that is Billy.'  'Who is Billy?' I ask.  'The brother of
+her,' he say.  'Charley, he spoil Billy.  Billy, he has not been the same
+since Charley's death-he is so ashame of Charley.  When he get drunk he
+talk of nothing else.  We all remember that Charley spoil him, and that
+make us sorry for him.'  'Excuse me,' I say.  'I think that Billy is a
+dam smart man.  He is smart as Charley Steele.'  'Charley was the
+smartes' man in the country,' he say again.  'I've got his practice now,
+but this town will never be the same without him.  Thief or no thief,
+I wish he is alive here.  By the Lord, I'd get drunk with him!'  He was
+all right, that man," Jo added finally.
+
+Charley's agitation was hidden.  His eyes were fixed on Jo intently.
+"That was Larry Rockwell.  Go on," he said, in a hard metallic voice.
+
+"I see--her, the next night again.  It is in the white stone house on the
+hill.  All the windows are open, an' I can hear her to sing.  I not know
+that song.  It begin, 'Oft in the stilly night'--like that."
+
+Charley stiffened.  It was the song Kathleen sang for him the night they
+became engaged.
+
+"It is a good voice-that.  I see her face, for there is a candle on the
+piano.  I come close and closter to the house.  There is big maple-trees
+--I am well hid.  A man is beside her.  He lean hover her an' put his
+hand on her shoulder.  'Sing it again, Kat'leen,' he say.  'I cannot to
+get enough.'"
+
+"Stop!" said Charley, in a strained, harsh voice.  "Not yet, M'sieu',"
+said Portugais.  "It is good for you to hear what I say."
+
+"'Come, Kat'leen!' the man say, an' he blow hout the candle.  I hear them
+walk away, an' the door shut behin' them.  Then I hear anudder voice--ah,
+that is a baby--very young baby!"
+
+Charley quickly got to his feet.  "Not another word!" he said.
+
+"Yes, yes, but there is one word more, M'sieu'," said Jo, standing up and
+facing him firmly.  "You must go back.  You are not a thief.  The woman
+is yours.  You throw your life away.  What is the man to you--or the
+man's brat of a child?  It is all waiting for you.  You mus' go back.
+You not steal the money, but that Billy--it is that Billy, I know.  You
+can forgive your wife, and take her back, or you can say to both, Go!
+You can put heverything right and begin again."
+
+Anger, wild words, seemed about to break from Charley's lips, but he
+conquered himself.
+
+The old life had been brought back to him with painful acuteness and
+vividness.  The streets of the town, the people in the street, Billy, the
+mean scoundrel, who could not leave him alone in the grave of obscurity,
+Kathleen--Fairing.  The voice of the child--with her voice--was in his
+ears.  A child!  If he had had a child, perhaps----He stopped short in
+his thinking, his face all at once flooding with colour.  For a moment he
+stood looking out of the window down towards the village.  He could see
+the post-office like a toy house among toy houses.  At last he turned to
+Jo.
+
+"Never again while I live, speak of this to me: of the past, of going
+back, or of--of anything else," he said.  "I cannot go back.  I am dead
+and shamed.  Let the dust of forgetfulness come and cover the past.  I've
+begun life again here, and here I stay, and see it out.  I shall work out
+the problem here."  He dropped a hand on the other's shoulder.  "Jo,"
+said he, "we are both shipwrecks.  Let us see how long we can float."
+
+"M'sieu', is it worth it?" said Portugais, remembering his confession to
+the Abbe, and seeing the end of it all to himself.
+
+"I don't know, Jo.  Let us wait and see how Fate will play us."
+
+"Or God, M'sieu'?"
+
+"God or Fate--who knows"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+"WHO WAS KATHLEEN?"
+
+The painful incidents of the morning weighed heavily upon Rosalie, and
+she was glad when Madame Dugal came to talk with her father, who was
+ailing and irritable, and when Mrs. Flynn drove her away with a kiss on
+either cheek, saying: "Don't come back, darlin', till there's roses in
+both cheeks, for y'r eyes are 'atin' up yer face!"
+
+She had seen Charley take the path to Vadrome Mountain, and to the
+Rest of the Flax-beaters she betook herself, in the blind hope that,
+returning, he might pass that way.  Under the influence of the fresh air
+and the quiet of the woods her spirits rose, her pulse beat faster,
+though a sense of foreboding and sorrow hovered round her.  The two-miles
+walk to her beloved retreat seemed a matter of minutes only, so busy were
+her thoughts.
+
+Her mind was one luxurious confusion, through which travelled a ghostly
+little sprite, who kept tumbling her thoughts about, sneering, smirking,
+whispering--"You dare not go to confession--dare not go to confession.
+You will never be the same again--never feel the same again--never think
+the same again; your dreams are done!  You can only love.  And what will
+this love do for you?  What do you expect to happen--you dare not go to
+confession!"
+
+Her reply had been the one iteration: "I love him--I love him--I love
+him.  We shall be together all our lives, till we are old and grey.
+I shall watch him at his work, and listen to his voice.  I shall read
+with him and walk with him, and I shall grow to think like him a little
+--in everything except religion.  In everything except that.  One day he
+will come to think like me--to believe in God."
+
+In the dreamy happiness of these thoughts the colour came to her cheeks,
+the roses of light gathered in her eyes.  In her tremulous ardour she
+scarcely realised how time passed, and her reverie deepened as the
+afternoon shadows grew and the sun made to its covert behind the hills.
+She was roused by a man's voice singing, just under the bluff where she
+sat.  To her this voice represented the battle-call, the home-call, the
+life call of the universe.  The song it sang was known to her.  It was as
+old as Rizzio.  It had come from old France with Mary, had been merged
+into English words and English music, and had voyaged to New France.
+There it had been sung by lovers in fair vales, on wide rivers, and in
+deep forests:
+
+                   "What is not mine I may not hold,
+                       (Ah, hark the hunter's horn!),
+                    And what is thine may not be sold,
+                       (My love comes through the corn!);
+                          And none shall buy
+                          And none shall sell
+                          What Love works well?"
+
+In the walk back from Vadrome Mountain, a change--a fleeting change--
+had passed over Charley's mind and mood.  The quiet of the woodland,
+the song of the birds, the tumbling brook, the smell of the rich earth,
+replenishing its strength from the gorgeous falling leaves, had soothed
+him.  Thoughts of Rosalie took a new form.  Her image possessed him,
+excluding the future, the perils that surrounded them.  He had gone
+through so much within the past twenty-four hours that the capacity for
+suffering had almost exhausted itself, and in the reaction endearing
+thoughts of Rosalie had dominion over him.  It was the reassertion of
+primitive man, the demands of the first element.  The great problem was
+still in the background.  The picture of Kathleen and the other man was
+pushed into the distance; thoughts of Billy and his infamy were thrust
+under foot--how futile to think of them!  There was Rosalie to be thought
+of, the to-day and to-morrow of the new life.
+
+Rosalie was of to-day.  How strong and womanly she had been this
+morning, the girl whose life had been bounded by this Chaudiere, with a
+metropolitan convent and hospital as her only glimpses of the busy world.
+She would fit in anywhere--in the highest places, with her grace, and her
+nobleness of mind, arcadian, passionate and beautiful.  There came upon
+him again the feeling of the evening before, when he saw her standing in
+his doorway, the night about them, jealous affection, undying love, in
+her eyes.  It quickened his steps imperceptibly.  He passed a stream, and
+glanced down into a dark pool involuntarily.  It reflected himself
+clearly.  He stopped short.  "Is this you, Beauty Steele?" he said, and
+he caught his brown beard in his hand.  "Beauty Steele had brains and no
+heart.  You have heart, and your wits have gone wool-gathering.  No
+matter!
+
+                    What is not mine I may not hold,
+                    (Ah, hark the hunter's horn!)'"
+
+he sang, and came quickly along the stream where the flax-beaters worked
+in harvest-time, then up the hill, then--Rosalie.
+
+She started to her feet.  "I knew you would come--I knew you would!" she
+said.
+
+"You have been waiting here for me?" he asked breathless, taking her
+hand.
+
+"I felt you would come.  I made you," she added smiling, and, eagerly
+answering the look in his eyes, threw her arms round his neck.  In that
+moment's joy a fresh realisation of their fate came upon him with dire
+force, and a bitter protest went up from his heart, that he and she
+should be sacrificed.
+
+Yet the impasse was there, and what could remove it--what clear the way?
+
+He looked down at the girl whose head was buried in happy peace on his
+shoulder.  She clung to him, as though in him was everlasting protection
+from the sprite that kept whispering: "You dare not go to confession--
+your dreams are done--you can only love."  But she had no fear now.
+
+As he looked down at her a swift change passed over him, and, almost for
+the first time since he was a little child, his eyes filled with tears.
+He hastily brushed them away, and drew her down on the seat beside him.
+He was wondering how he should tell her that they must not meet like
+this, that they must be apart.  No matter what had happened, no matter
+what love there was, it was better that they should die--that he should
+die--than that they should meet like this.  There was only one end to
+secret meetings, and discovery was inevitable.  Then, with discovery,
+shame to her.  For he must either marry her--how could he marry her?
+--or die.  For him to die would but increase her misery.
+
+The time had passed when it could be of any use.  It passed that day in
+the hut on Vadrome Mountain when she said that if he died, she would die
+with him--"Where you are going you will be alone.  There will be no one
+to care for you, no one but me."  Last night it passed for ever.  She had
+put her life into his hands; henceforth, there could never be a question
+of giving or taking, of withdrawing or advancing, for all was
+irrevocable, sealed with the great seal.  Yet she must be saved.
+But how?
+
+She suddenly looked up at him.  "I can ask you anything I want now, can't
+I?" she said.
+
+"Anything, Rosalie."
+
+"You know that when I ask, it is because I want to know what you know, so
+that I may feel as you feel.  You know that, don't you?
+
+"I know it when you tell me, wonderful Rosalie."  What a revelation it
+was, this transmuting power, which could change mortal dross into the
+coin of immortal wealth!
+
+"I want to ask you," she said, "who was Kathleen?"  His blood seemed to
+go cold in his veins, and he sat without answering, shocked and dismayed.
+What could she know of Kathleen?
+
+"Can't you tell me?" she asked anxiously yet fearfully.  He looked so
+strange that she thought she had offended him.  "Please don't mind
+telling me.  I should understand everything--everything.  Was it some one
+you loved--once?"  It was hard for her to say it, but she said it
+bravely.
+
+"No.  I never loved any one in all the world, Rosalie--not till I loved
+you."
+
+She gave a happy sigh.  "Oh, it is wonderful!" she said.  "It is
+wonderful and good!  Did you--did you love me from the very first?"
+
+"I think I did, though I didn't know it from the very first," he answered
+slowly.  His heart beat hard, for he could not guess how she should know
+of Kathleen.  It was absurdly impossible that she should know.  "But many
+have loved you!" she said proudly.  "They have not shown it," he
+answered grimly; then added quickly, and with aching anxiety: "When did
+you hear of--of Kathleen?"
+
+"Oh, you are such a blind huntsman!" she laughed.  "Don't you know where
+my little fox was hiding?  Why, in the shop, when you held the note-paper
+up to the light, and looked startled, and bought all the paper we had
+that was water-marked Kathleen.  Do you think that was clever of me?  I
+don't."
+
+"I think it was very clever," he said.
+
+"Then she-Kathleen--doesn't really matter?" she asked eagerly.  "Of
+course she can't, if you don't love her.  But does she love you?  Did she
+ever love you?"  "Never in her life."
+
+"So of course it doesn't matter," she rejoined.  "Hush!" she added
+rapidly.  "I see some one coming in the trees yonder.  It may be some one
+for me.  Father knows I come here sometimes.  Go quickly and hide behind
+the rocks, please.  I'll stay and see who it is.  Please go--dearest."
+
+He kissed her, and, keeping out of sight, got to a place of safety a few
+hundred feet away.
+
+He saw the new-comer run to Rosalie, speak to her, saw Rosalie half turn
+in his own direction, then go hastily down the hillside with the
+messenger.
+
+"It is her father!" he exclaimed, and followed at a distance.  At the
+village he learned that M. Evanturel had had another seizure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+SIX MONTHS GO BY
+
+Spring again--budding trees and flowing sap; the earth banks removed from
+the houses, and outside windows discarded; the ice tumbling and crunching
+in the river; the dormant farmer raising his head to the energy and
+delight of April.
+
+The winter had been long and hard.  Never had there been severer frost or
+deeper snow, and seldom had big game been so plentiful.  In the snug warm
+stables the cattle munched and chewed the cud; the idle, long-haired
+horses grew as spirited in the keen air as in summer they were sluggish
+with hard work; and the farm-hands were abroad in the dark of the early
+mornings with lanterns, to feed the stock and take them out to water,
+singing cheerfully.  All morning spread the clamour of the flail and the
+fanning-mill, the swish of the knife through the turnips and the beets,
+and the sound of the saw and the axe, as the youngest man of the family,
+muffled to the nose, sawed the wood into lengths or split the knots.
+
+Night brought the cutting and stringing of apples, the shelling of the
+Indian corn, the making of rag carpets.  On Saturday came the going to
+market with grain, or pork, or beef, or fowls frozen like stones; the
+gossip in the market-place.  Then again sounded jingling sleigh-bells as,
+on the return road, the habitant made for home, a glass of white whiskey
+inside him, and black-eyed children in the doorway, swarming like bees at
+the mouth of a hive.
+
+This particular winter in Chaudiere had been full of excitement and
+expectation.  At Easter-time there was to be the great Passion Play,
+after the manner of that known as The Passion Play of Ober-Ammergau.  Not
+one in a hundred habitants had ever heard of Ober-Ammergau, but they had
+all shared in picturesque processions of the Stations of the Cross to
+some calvaire; and many had taken part in dramatic scenes arranged from
+the life of Christ.  Drama of a crude kind was deep in them; it showed in
+gesture, speech, and temperament.
+
+In all the preparations Maximilian Cour was a conspicuous and useful
+official.  Gifted with the dramatic temperament to a degree rare in so
+humble a man, he it was who really educated the people of Chaudiere in
+the details of the Passion Play to be produced by the good Catholics of
+the parish and the Indians of the reservation.  He had gone to the Cure
+every day, and the Cure had talked with him, and then had sent him to the
+tailor, who had, during the past six months, withdrawn more and more from
+the life about him, practically living with shut door.  No one ventured
+in unless on business, or were in need, or wished advice.  These he never
+turned empty away.
+
+Besides Portugais, Maximilian Cour was the one man received constantly
+by the tailor.  With patience and insight Charley taught the baker, by
+drawings and careful explanations, the outlines of the representation,
+and the baker grew proud of the association, though Charley's face used
+to haunt him in his sleep.  Excitable, eager, there was an elemental
+adaptability in the baker, as easily leading to Avernus as to Elysium.
+This appealed to Charley, realising, as he did, that Maximilian Cour was
+a reputable citizen by mere accident.  The baker's life had run in a
+sentimental groove of religious duty; that same sentimentality would,
+in other circumstances, have forced him with equal ardour into the broad
+primrose path.
+
+In the evening hours and on Sunday Charley had worked at his drawings for
+the scenery and costumes of the Play, and completed his translation of
+the German text, but there had been days when he could not put pen to
+paper.  Life to him now was one aching emptiness--since that day at the
+Rest of the Flax-beaters Rosalie had been absent.  On the very morning
+after their meeting by the river she had gone away with her father to the
+great hospital at Montreal--not Quebec this time, on the advice of the
+Seigneur--as the one chance of prolonging his life.  There had come but
+one letter from her since that hour when he saw her in the Seigneur's
+coach with her father, moving away in the still autumn air, a piteous
+appeal in her eyes.  The good-bye look she gave him then was with him day
+and night.
+
+She had written him one letter, and he had written one in reply, and no
+more.  Though he was wholly reckless for himself, for her he was prudent
+now--there was nothing else to do.  To save her--if he could but save her
+from himself!  If he might only put back the clock!
+
+In his letter to her he had simply said that it were wiser not to write,
+since the acting postmistress, the Cure's sister, would note the exchange
+of letters, and this would arouse suspicion.  He could not see what was
+best to do, what was right to do.  To wait seemed the only thing, and his
+one letter ended with the words: Rosalie, my life is lived only in the
+thought of you.  There is no hour but I think of you, no moment but you
+are with me.  The greatest proof of love that man can give, I will give
+to you, in the hour fate wills--for us.  But now, we must wait--we must
+wait, Rosalie.  Do not write to me, but know that if I could go to you I
+would go; if I could say to you, Come, I would say it.  If the giving of
+my life would save you any pain or sorrow, I would give it.
+
+Sitting on his bench at work, it seemed to Charley that sometimes she was
+near him, and more than once he turned quickly round as though she were,
+in very truth, standing beside him.  He thought of her continually, and
+often with an unbearable pain.  He figured her in his mind as pale and
+distressed, and always her eyes had the piteous terror of that last look
+as she went away over the hills.
+
+But the weeks had worn on, then the Seigneur, who had been to Montreal,
+came back with the news that Rosalie was looking as beautiful as a
+picture.  "Grown a woman in beauty and in stature; comely--comely as a
+lady in a Watteau picture, my dear messieurs!" he had said to the Cure,
+standing in the tailor's shop.
+
+Replying, the Cure had said: "She is in good hands, with good people,
+recommended to me by an abbe there; yet I am not wholly happy about her.
+When her trouble comes to her"--Charley's needle slipped and pierced his
+finger to the bone--"when her father goes, as he must, I fear, there will
+be no familiar face; she will hear no familiar voice."
+
+"Faith, there you are wrong, my dear Cure" answered the Seigneur;
+"there'll be a face yonder she likes very well indeed, and a voice she's
+fond of too."
+
+Charley's back was on them at that moment, of which he was glad, for his
+face was haggard with anxiety, and it seemed hours before the Cure said:
+"Whom do you mean, Maurice?" and hours before the Seigneur replied:
+"Mrs. Flynn, of course.  I'm sending her tomorrow."
+
+Mrs. Flynn had gone, and Charley had, in one sense, been made no happier
+by that, for it seemed to him that Rosalie would rather that strangers'
+eyes were on her than the inquisitively friendly eye of Mary Flynn.
+
+Weeks had grown into months, and no news came--none save that which the
+Cure let fall, or was brought by the irresponsible Notary, who heard all
+gossip.  Only the Cure's scant news were authentic, however, and Charley
+never saw the good priest but he had a secret hope of hearing him say
+that Rosalie was coming back.  Yet when she came back, what would, or
+could, he do?  There was always the crime for which he or Billy must be
+punished.  Concerning this crime his heart was growing harder--for
+Rosalie's sake.  But there was Kathleen--and Rosalie was now in the
+city where she lived, and they might meet!  There was one solution--
+if Kathleen should die!  It sickened him that he could think of that with
+a sense of relief, almost of hope.  If Kathleen should die, then he would
+be free to marry Rosalie--into what?  He still could only marry her into
+the peril and menace of the law?  Again, even if Kathleen did not stand
+in the way, neither the Cure nor any other priest would marry him to her
+without his antecedents being certified.  A Protestant minister would,
+perhaps, but would Rosalie give up her faith?  Following him without the
+blessing of the Church, she would trample under foot every dear tradition
+of her life, win the scorn of all of her religion, and destroy her own
+peace; for the faith of her fathers was as the breath of her nostrils.
+What cruelty to her!
+
+But was it, after all, even true that he had but to call and she would
+come?  In truth it well might be that she had learned to despise him;
+to feel how dastardly he had been to take her love, given in blind
+simplicity, bestowed like the song of the bird upon the listening fields
+--to take the plenteous fulness of her life, and give nothing in return
+save the empty hand, the hopeless hour, the secret sorrow.
+
+Nothing could quench his misery.  The physical part of him craved without
+ceasing for something to allay his distress.  Again and again he fought
+his old enemy with desperate resolve.  To fall again, to touch liquor
+once more, was to end all for ever.  He fought on tenaciously and
+gloomily, with little of the pride of life, with nothing of the old
+stubborn self-will, but with a new-awakened sense.  He had found
+conscience at last--and more.
+
+The months went by and still M. Evanturel lingered on, and Rosalie did
+not come.  The strain became too great at last.  In the week preceding
+Easter, when all the parish was busy at Four Mountains, making costumes,
+rehearsing, building, putting up seats, cutting down trees, and erecting
+crosses and calvaries, Charley disclosed to Jo a new intention.
+
+In the earlier part of the winter Jo and he had met two or three times
+a week, but now Jo had come to help him with his work in the shop--two
+silent, devoted companions.  They understood each other, and in that
+understanding were life and death.  For never did Jo forget that a year
+from the day he had confessed his sins he meant to give himself up to
+justice.  This caused him no sleepless nights.  He thought more of
+Charley than of himself, and every month now he went to confession, and
+every day he said his prayers.  He was at his prayers when Charley went
+to tell him of his purpose.  Charley had often seen Jo on his knees of
+late, and he had wondered, but not with the old pagan mind.  "Jo," he
+said, "I am going away--to Montreal."
+
+"To Montreal!" exclaimed Jo huskily.  "You are going back--to stay?"
+
+"Not that.  I am going--to see--Rosalie Evanturel."  Jo was troubled but
+not dumfounded.  It had slowly crept into his mind that Charley loved the
+girl, though he had no real ground for suspicion.  His will, however, had
+been so long the slave of the other man's that he had far-off reflections
+of his thoughts.  He made no reply in words, but nodded his head.
+
+"I want you to stay here, Jo.  If I don't come back, and--and she does,
+stand by her, Jo.  I can trust you."  "You will come back, M'sieu'--but
+you will come back, then?" Jo asked heavily.
+
+"If I can, Jo--if I can," he answered.
+
+Long after he had gone, Jo wandered up and down among the trees on the
+river-road, up which Charley had disappeared with Jo's dogs and sled.
+He kept shaking his head mournfully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+THE FORGOTTEN MAN
+
+It was Easter morning, and the good sunrise of a perfect spring made
+radiant the high hill above the town.  Rosy-fingered morn touched with
+magic colour the masts and scattered sails of the ships upon the great
+river, and spires and towers quivered with rainbow light.  The city was
+waking cheerfully, though the only active life was in the pealing bells
+and on the deep flowing rivers.  The streets were empty yet, save for an
+assiduous priest or the cart of a milkman.  Here and there a window
+opened and a drowsy head was thrust into the eager air.  These saw a
+bearded countryman with his team of six dogs and his little cart going
+slowly up the street.  It was plain the man had come a long distance--
+from the mountains in the east or south, no doubt, where horses were few,
+and dogs, canoes, and oxen the means of transportation.
+
+As the man moved slowly through the streets, his dogs still gallantly
+full of life after their hard journey, he did not stare about him after
+the manner of countrymen.  His movements had intelligence and freedom.
+He was an unusual figure for a woodsman or river-man--he did not wear
+ear-rings or a waist-sash as did the river-men, and he did not turn in
+his toes like a woodsman.  Yet he was plainly a man from the far
+mountains.
+
+The man with the dogs did not heed the few curious looks turned his way,
+but held his head down as though walking in familiar places.  Now and
+then he spoke to his dogs, and once he stopped before a newspaper office,
+which had a placard bearing these lines:
+
+The Coming Passion Play In the Chaudiere Valley.
+
+He looked at it mechanically, for, though he was concerned in the Passion
+Play and the Chaudiere Valley, it was an abstraction to him at this
+moment.  His mind was absorbed by other things.
+
+Though he looked neither to right nor to left, he was deeply affected by
+all round him.
+
+At last he came to a certain street, where he and his dogs travelled
+more quickly.  It opened into a square, where bells were booming in
+the steeple of a church.  Shops and offices in the street were shut,
+but a saloon-door was open, and over the doorway was the legend: Jean
+Jolicoeur, Licensed to sell Wine, Beer, and other Spirituous and
+Fermented Liquors.
+
+Nearly opposite was a lawyer's office, with a new-painted sign.  It had
+once read, in plain black letters, Charles Steele, Barrister, etc.; now
+it read, in gold letters and many flourishes of the sign-painter's art,
+Rockwell and Tremblay, Barristers, Attorneys, etc.
+
+Here the man looked up with trouble in his eyes.  He could see dimly the
+desk and the window beside which he had sat for so many years, and on the
+wall a map of the city glowed with the incoming sun.
+
+He moved on, passing the saloon with the open door.  The landlord, in his
+shirt-sleeves, was standing in the doorway.  He nodded, then came out to
+the edge of the board-walk.
+
+"Come a long way, M'sieu'?" he asked.
+
+"Four days' journey," answered the man gruffly through his beard, looking
+the landlord in the eyes.  If this landlord, who in the past had seen him
+so often and so closely, did not recognise him, surely no one else would.
+It was, however, a curious recurrence of habit that, as he looked at the
+landlord, he instinctively felt for his eye-glass, which he had discarded
+when he left Chaudiere.  For an instant there was an involuntary arrest
+of Jean Jolicoeur's look, as though memory had been roused, but this
+swiftly passed, and he said:
+
+"Fine dogs, them!  We never get that kind hereabouts now, M'sieu'.  Ever
+been to the city before?"
+
+"I've never been far from home before," answered the Forgotten Man.
+
+"You'd better keep your eyes open, my friend, though you've got a sharp
+pair in your head--sharp as Beauty Steele's almost.  There's rascals in
+the river-side drinking-places that don't let the left hand know what the
+right does."
+
+"My dogs and I never trust anybody," said the Forgotten Man, as one of
+the dogs snarled at the landlord's touch.  "So I can take care of myself,
+even if I haven't eyes as sharp as Beauty Steele's, whoever he is."
+
+The landlord laughed.  "Beauty's only skin-deep, they say.  Charley
+Steele was a lawyer; his office was over there"--he pointed across the
+street.  "He went wrong.  He come here too often--that wasn't my fault.
+He had an eye like a hawk, and you couldn't read it.  Now I can read your
+eye like a book.  There's a bit of spring in 'em, M'sieu'.  His eyes were
+hard winter-ice five feet deep and no fishing under--froze to the bed.
+He had a tongue like a cross-cut saw.  He's at the bottom of the St.
+Lawrence, leaving a bad job behind him.
+
+"Have a drink--hein?"  He jerked a finger backwards to the saloon door.
+"It's Sunday, but stolen waters are sweet, sure!"
+
+The Forgotten Man shook his head.  "I don't drink, thank you."
+
+"It'd do you good.  You're dead beat.  You've been travelling hard--eh?"
+
+"I've come a long way, and travelled all night."
+
+"Going on?"
+
+"I am going back to-morrow."
+
+"On business?"
+
+Charley nodded--he glanced involuntarily at the sign across the street.
+
+Jean Jolicoeur saw the look.  "Lawyer's business, p'r'aps?"
+
+"A lawyer's business--yes."
+
+"Ah, if Charley Steele was here!"
+
+"I have as good a lawyer as--"
+
+The landlord laughed scornfully.  "They're not made.  He'd legislate the
+devil out of the Pit.  Where are you going to stay, M'sieu'?"
+
+"Somewhere cheap--along the river," answered the Forgotten Man.
+
+Jolicoeur's good-natured face became serious.  "I'll tell you a place--
+it's honest.  It's the next street, a few hundred yards down, on the
+left.  There's a wooden fish over the door.  It's called The Black Bass
+--that hotel.  Say I sent you.  Good luck to you, countryman!  Ah, la;
+la, there's the second bell--I must be getting to Mass!"  With a nod he
+turned and went into the house.
+
+The Forgotten Man passed slowly up the street, into the side street,
+and followed it till he came to The Black Bass, and turned into the small
+stable-yard.  A stable-man was stirring.  He at once put his dogs into
+a little pen set apart for them, saw them fed from the kitchen, and,
+betaking himself to a little room behind the bar of the hotel, ordered
+breakfast.  The place was empty, save for the servant--the household were
+at Mass.  He looked round the room abstractedly.  He was thinking of a
+crippled man in a hospital, of a girl from a village in the Chaudiere
+Valley.  He thought with a shiver of a white house on the hill.  He
+thought of himself as he had never done before in his life.  Passing
+along the street, he had realised that he had no moral claim upon
+anything or anybody within these precincts of his past life.  The place
+was a tomb to him.
+
+As he sat in the little back parlour of The Black Bass, eating his frugal
+breakfast of eggs and bread and milk, the meaning of it all slowly dawned
+upon him.  Through his intellect he had known something of humanity, but
+he had never known men.  He had thought of men in the mass, and despised
+them because of their multitudinous duplication, and their typical
+weaknesses; but he had never known one man or one woman from the subtler,
+surer divination of the heart.  His intellect had made servants and lures
+of his emotions and his heart, for even his every case in court had been
+won by easy and selfish command of all those feelings in mankind which
+make possible personal understanding.
+
+In this little back parlour it came to him with sudden force how, long
+ago, he had cut himself off from any claim upon his fellows--not only by
+his conduct, but by his merciless inhuman intelligence working upon the
+merciful human life about him.  He never remembered to have had any real
+feeling till on that day with Kathleen--the day he died.  The bitter
+complaint of a woman he had wronged cruelly, by having married her, had
+wrung from him his own first wail of life, in the one cry "Kathleen!"
+
+As he sat eating his simple meal his pulses were beating painfully.
+Every nerve in his body seemed to pluck at the angry flesh.  There
+flashed across his mind in sympathetic sensation a picture.  It was the
+axe-factory on the river, before which he used to stand as a boy, and
+watch the men naked to the waist, with huge hairy arms and streaming
+faces, toiling in the red glare, the trip-hammers endlessly pounding upon
+the glowing metal.  In old days it had suggested pictures of gods and
+demi-gods toiling in the workshops of the primeval world.  So the whole
+machinery of being seemed to be toiling in the light of an awakened
+conscience, to the making of a man.  It seemed to him that all his life
+was being crowded into these hours.  His past was here--its posing, its
+folly, its pitiful uselessness, and its shame.  Kathleen and Billy were
+here, with all the problems that involved them.  Rosalie was here, with
+the great, the last problem.
+
+"Nothing matters but that--but Rosalie," he said to himself as he turned
+to look out of the window at the wrangling dogs gnawing bones.  "Here she
+is in the midst of all I once knew, and I know that I am no more a part
+of it than she is.  She and Kathleen may have met face to face in these
+streets--who can tell!  The world is large, but there's a sort of
+whipper-in of Fate, who drives the people wearing the same livery into
+one corner in the end.  If they met"--he rose and walked hastily up and
+down--"what then?  I have a feeling that Rosalie would recognise her as
+plainly as though the word Kathleen were stitched on her breast."
+
+There was a clock on the wall.  He looked at it.  "It will not be safe to
+go out until evening.  Then I can go to the hospital, and watch her
+coming out."  He realised with satisfaction that many people coming from
+Mass must pass the inn.  There was a chance of his seeing Rosalie, if she
+had gone to early Mass.  This street lay in her way from the hospital.
+"One look--ah, one look!"  For this one look he had come.  For this, and
+to secure that which would save Rosalie from want always, if anything
+should happen to him.  This too had been greatly on his mind.  There was
+a way to give her what was his very own, which would rob no one and serve
+her well indeed.
+
+Looking at his face in the mirror over the mantel, he said to himself
+
+"I might have had ten thousand friends, yet I have a thousand enemies,
+who grin at the memory of the drunken fop down among the eels and the
+cat-fish.  Every chance was with me then.  I come back here, and--and
+Jolicoeur tells me the brutal truth.  But if I had had ambition"--a wave
+of the feeling of the old life passed over him--"if I had had ambition as
+I was then, I should have been a monster.  It was all so paltry that, in
+sheer disgust, I should have kicked every ladder down that helped me up.
+I should have sacrificed everything to myself."
+
+He stopped short and stared, for, in the mirror, he saw a girl passing
+through the stable-yard towards the quarrelling dogs in the kennel.  He
+clapped his hand to his mouth to stop a cry.  It was Rosalie.
+
+He did not turn round but looked at her in the mirror, as though it were
+the last look he might give on earth.
+
+He could hear her voice speaking to the dogs: "Ah, my friends, ah, my
+dears!  I know you every one.  Jo Portugais is here.  I know your bark,
+you, Harpy, and you, Lazybones, and you, Cloud and London!  I know you
+every one.  I heard you as I came from Mass, beauty dears.  Ah, you know
+me, sweethearts?  Ah, God bless you for coming!  You have come to bring
+us home; you have come to fetch us home--father and me."  The paws of one
+of the dogs was on her shoulder, and his nose was in her hair.
+
+Charley heard her words, for the window was open, and he listened and
+watched now with an infinite relief in his look.  Her face was half
+turned towards him.  It was pale-very pale and sad.  It was Rosalie as of
+old--thank God, as of old!--but more beautiful in the touching sadness,
+the far-off longing, of her look.
+
+"I must go and see your master," she said to the dogs.  "Down--down,
+Lazybones!"
+
+There was no time to lose--he must not meet her ere.  He went into the
+outer hall hastily.  The servant was passing through.  "If any one asks
+for Jo Portugais," he said, "say that I'll be back to-morrow morning--I'm
+going across the river to-day."
+
+"Certainly, M'sieu'," said the girl, and smiled because of the piece of
+silver he put in her hand.
+
+As he heard the side door open he stepped through the front doorway into
+the street, and disappeared round a corner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+ONE WAS TAKEN AND THE OTHER LEFT
+
+Rosalie carried to the hospital that afternoon a lighter heart than she
+had known for many a day.  The sight of Jo Portugais' dogs had roused her
+out of the apathy which had been growing on her in this patient but
+hopeless watching beside her father.  She had always a smile and a
+cheerful word for the poor man.  A settled sorrow hung upon her face,
+however, taking away its colour, but giving it a sweet gravity which made
+her slave more than one young doctor of the hospital, for whom, however,
+she showed no more than a friendly frankness, free from self-
+consciousness.  For hours she would sit in reverie beside her sleeping
+father, her heart "over the water to Charley."  As in a trance, she could
+see him sitting at his bench, bent over his work, now and again lifting
+up his head to look across to the post-office, where another hand than
+hers sorted letters now.
+
+Day by day her father weakened and faded away.  All that was possible to
+medical skill had been done.  As the money left by her mother dwindled,
+she had no anxiety, for she knew that the life she so tenderly cherished
+would not outlast the gold which lengthened out the tenuous chain of
+being.  This last illness of her father's had been the salvation of her
+mind, the saving of her health.  Maybe it had been the saving of her
+soul; for at times a curious contempt of life came upon her--she who had
+loved it so eagerly and fully.  There descended on her then the bitter
+conviction that never again would she see the man she loved.  Then not
+even Mrs. Flynn could call back "the fun o' the world" to her step and
+her tongue and her eye.  At first there had been a timid shrinking, but
+soon her father and herself were brighter and better for the old
+Irishwoman's presence, and she began to take comfort in Mrs. Flynn.
+
+Mrs. Flynn gave hopefulness to whatever life she touched, and Rosalie,
+buoyant and hopeful enough by nature, responded to the living warmth and
+the religion of life in the Irishwoman's heart.
+
+"'Tis worth the doin', ivery bit of it, darlin', the bither an' the
+swate, the hard an' the aisy, the rough an' the smooth, the good an' the
+bad," said Mrs. Flynn to her this very Easter morning.  "Even the avil is
+worth doin', if so be 'twas not mint, an' the good is in yer heart in the
+ind, an' ye do be turnip' to the Almoighty, repentin' an' glad to be
+aloive: provin' to Him 'twas worth while makin' the world an' you, to
+want, an' worry, an' work, an' play, an' pick the flowers, an' bleed o'
+the thorns, an' dhrink the sun, an' ate the dust, an' be lovin' all the
+way!  Ah, that's it, darlin'," persisted Mrs. Flynn, "'tis lovin' all the
+way makes it aisier.  There's manny kinds o' love.  There's lad an' lass,
+there's maid an' man.  An' that last is spring, an' all the birds
+singin', an' shtorms now an' thin, an' siparations, an' misthrust, an'
+God in hivin bein' that aisy wid ye for bein' fools an' children, an'
+bringin' ye thegither in the ind, if so be ye do be lovin' as man an'
+maid should love, wid all yer heart.  Thin there's the love o' man an'
+wife.  Shure, that's the love that lasts, if it shtarts right.  Shure,
+it doesn't always shtart wid the sun shinin.'  'Will ye marry me?' says
+Teddy Flynn to me.  'I will,' says I.  'Then I'll come back from Canaday
+to futch ye,' says he, wid a tear in his eye.
+
+"'For what's a man in ould Ireland that has a head for annything but
+puttaties!  There's land free in Canaday, an' I'm goin' to make a home
+for ye, Mary,' says he, wavin' a piece of paper in the air.  'Are ye,
+thin?' says I.  He goes away that night, an' the next mornin' I have a
+lether from him, sayin' he's shtartin' that day for Canaday.  He hadn't
+the heart to tell me to me face.  Fwaht do I do thin?  I begs, borrers,
+an' stales, an' I reached that ship wan minnit before she sailed.  There
+was no praste aboord, but we was married six weeks afther at Quebec.  And
+thegither we lived wid ups an' downs--but no ups an' downs to the love of
+us for twenty years, blessed be God for all His mercies!"
+
+Rosalie had listened with eyes that hungrily watched every expression,
+ears that weighed eagerly every inflection; for she was hearing the story
+of another's love, and it did not seem strange to her that a woman, old,
+red-faced, and fat, should be telling it.
+
+Yet there were times when she wept till she was exhausted; when all her
+girlhood was drowned in the overflow of her eyes; when there was a sense
+of irrevocable loss upon her.  Then it was, in her fear of soul and
+pitiful loneliness, that her lover--the man she would have died for--
+seemed to have deserted her.  Then it was that a sudden hatred against
+him rose up in her--to be swept away as swiftly as it came by the memory
+of his broken tale of love, his passionate words: "I have never loved any
+one but you in all my life, Rosalie."  And also, there was that letter
+from Chaudiere, which said that in the hour when the greatest proof of
+his love must be given he would give it.  Reading the letter again,
+hatred, doubt, even sorrow, passed from her, and her imagination pictured
+the hour when, disguise and secrecy ended, he would step forward before
+all the world and say: "I take Rosalie Evanturel to be my wife."  Despite
+the gusts of emotion that swayed her at times, in the deepest part of her
+being she trusted him completely.
+
+When she reached the hospital this Sunday afternoon her step was quick,
+her smile bright--though she had not been to confession as was her duty
+on Easter day.  The impulse towards it had been great, but her secret was
+not her own, and the passionate desire to give relief to her full heart
+was overborne by thought of the man.  Her soul was her own, but this
+secret of their love was his as well as hers.  She knew that she was the
+only just judge between.
+
+Soon after she entered the ward, the chief surgeon said that all that
+could be done for her father had now been done, and that as M. Evanturel
+constantly asked to be taken back to Chaudiere (he never said to die,
+though they knew what was in his mind), he might now make the journey,
+partly by river, partly by land.  It seemed to the delighted and excited
+Rosalie that Jo Portugais had been sent to her as a surprise, and that
+his team of dogs was to take her father back.
+
+She sat by her father's bed this beautiful, wonderful Sunday afternoon,
+and talked cheerfully, and laughed a little, and told M. Evanturel of the
+dogs, and together they looked out of the window to the far-off hills, in
+their golden purple, beyond which, in the valley of the Chaudiere, was
+their little home.  With her father's hand in hers the girl dreamed
+dreams again, and it seemed to her that she was the very Rosalie
+Evanturel of old, whose thoughts were bounded by a river and a hill,
+a post-office and a church, a catechism and a few score of books.  Here
+in the crowded city she had come to be a woman who, bitterly shaken in
+soul, knew life's sufferings; who had, during the past few months, read
+with avidity history, poetry, romance, fiction, and the drama, English
+and French; for in every one she found something that said: "You have
+felt that."  In these long months she had learned more than she had known
+or learned in all her previous life.
+
+As she sat looking out into the eastern sky she became conscious of
+voices, and of a group of people who came slowly down the ward, sometimes
+speaking to the sick and crippled.  It was not a general visitors' day,
+but one reserved for the few to come and say a kindly word to the
+suffering, to bring some flowers and distribute books.  Rosalie had
+always been absent at this hour before, for she shrank from strangers;
+but to-day she had stayed on unthinking.  It mattered nothing to her who
+came and went.  Her heart was over the hills, and the only tie she had
+here was with this poor cripple whose hand she held.  If she did not
+resent the visit of these kindly strangers, she resolutely held herself
+apart from the object of their visit with a sense of distance and cold
+dignity.  If she had given Charley something of herself, she had in turn
+taken something from him, something unlike her old self, delicately non-
+intime.  Knowledge of life had rationalised her emotions to a definite
+degree, had given her the pride of self-repression.  She had had need of
+it in these surroundings, where her beauty drew not a little dangerous
+attention, which she had held at arm's-length--her great love for one man
+made her invulnerable.
+
+Now, as the visitors came near, she did not turn towards them, but still
+sat, her chin on her hand, looking out across the hills, in resolute
+abstraction.  She felt her father's fingers press hers, as if to draw her
+attention, for he, weak man, was ever ready to open his hand and heart to
+any friendly soul.  She took no notice, but held his hand firmly, as
+though to say that she had no wish to see.
+
+She was conscious now that they were beside her father's bed.  She hoped
+that they would pass.  But no, the feet stopped, there was whispering,
+and then she heard a voice say, "Rather rude!" then another, "Not
+wanted, that's plain!"--the first a woman's, the second a man's.  Then
+another voice, clear and cold, and well modulated, said to her father:
+"They tell me you have been here a long time, and have had much pain.
+You will be glad to go, I am sure."
+
+Something in the voice startled her.  Some familiar sound or inflection
+struck upon her ear with a far-off note, some lost tone she knew.  Of
+what, of whom, did this voice remind her?  She turned round quickly and
+caught two cold blue eyes looking at her.  The face was older than her
+own, handsome and still, and happy in a placid sort of way.  Few gusts of
+passion or of pain had passed across that face.  The figure was shapely
+to the newest fashion, the bonnet was perfect, the hand which held two
+books was prettily gloved.  Polite charity was written in her manner and
+consecrated every motion.  On the instant, Rosalie resented this fine
+epitome of convention, this dutiful charity-monger, herself the centre of
+an admiring quartet.  She saw the whispering, she noted the well-bred
+disguise of interest, and she met the visitor's gaze with cold courtesy.
+The other read the look in her face, and a slightly pacifying smile
+gathered at her lips.
+
+"We are glad to hear that your father is better.  He has been ill a long
+time?"
+
+Rosalie started again, for the voice perplexed her--rather, not the
+voice, but the inflection, the deliberation.
+
+She bowed, and set her lips, but, chancing to glance at her father, she
+saw that he was troubled by her manner.  Flashing a look of love at him,
+she adjusted the pillow under his head, and said to her questioner in a
+low voice: "He is better now, thank you."
+
+Encouraged, the other rejoined: "May I leave one or two books for him to
+read--or for you to read to him?"  Then added hastily, for she saw a
+curious look in Rosalie's eyes: "We can have mutual friends in books,
+though we cannot be friends with each other.  Books are the go-betweens
+of humanity."
+
+Rosalie's heart leapt, she flushed, then grew slightly pale, for
+it was not tone or inflection alone that disturbed her now, but words
+themselves.  A voice from over the hills seemed to say these things to
+her.  A haunting voice from over the hills had said them to her--these
+very words.
+
+"Friends need no go-betweens," she said quietly, "and enemies should not
+use them."
+
+She heard a voice say, "By Jove!" in a tone of surprise, as though it
+were wonderful the girl from Chaudiere should have her wits about her.
+So Rosalie interpreted it.
+
+"Have you many friends here?" asked the cold voice, meant to be kindly
+and pacific.  It was schooled to composure, because it gave advantage in
+life's intercourse, not from any inner urbanity.
+
+"Some need many friends, some but a few.  I come from a country where one
+only needs a few."
+
+"Where is your country, I wonder?" said the cold echo of another voice.
+
+Charley had passed out of Kathleen's life--he was dead to her, his memory
+scorned and buried.  She loved the man to whom she supposed she was
+married; she was only too glad to let the dust of death and time cover
+every trace of Charley from her gaze; she would have rooted out every
+particle of association: yet his influence on her had been so great that
+she had unconsciously absorbed some of his idiosyncrasies--in the tone of
+his voice, in his manner of speaking.  To-day she had even repeated
+phrases he had used.
+
+"Beyond the hills," said Rosalie, turning away.
+
+"Is it not strange?" said the voice.  "That is the title of one of the
+books I have just brought--'Beyond the Hills'.  It is by an English
+writer.  This other book is French.  May I leave them?"
+
+Rosalie inclined her head.  It would.  make her own position less
+dignified if she refused them.  "Books are always welcome to my father,"
+she said.
+
+There was an instant's pause, as though the fashionable lady would offer
+her hand; but their eyes met, and they only bowed.  The lady moved on
+with a smile, leaving a perfume of heliotrope behind her.
+
+"Where is your country, I wonder?"--the voice of the lady rang in
+Rosalie's ears.  As she sat at the window again, long after the visitors
+had disappeared, the words, "I wonder--I wonder--I wonder!" kept beating
+in her brain.  It was absurd that this woman should remind her of the
+tailor of Chaudiere.
+
+Suddenly she was roused by her father's voice.  "This is beautiful--ah,
+but beautiful, Rosalie!"
+
+She turned towards him.  He was reading the book in his hand--'Beyond the
+Hills'.  "Listen," he said, and he read, in English: "'Compensation is
+the other name for God.  How often is it that those whom disease or
+accident has robbed of active life find greater inner rejoicing and a
+larger spiritual itinerary!  It would seem that withdrawal from the ruder
+activities gives a clearer seeing.  Also for these, so often, is granted
+a greater love, which comes of the consecration of other lives to theirs.
+And these too have their reward, for they are less encompassed by the
+vanities of the world, having the joy of self-sacrifice.'"  He looked at
+Rosalie with an unnatural brightness in his eyes, and she smiled at him
+now and stroked his hand.
+
+"It has been all compensation to me," he said, after a moment.  "You have
+been a good daughter to me, Rosalie."
+
+She shook her head and smiled.  "Good fathers think they have good
+daughters," she answered, choking back a sob.
+
+He closed the book and let it lie upon the coverlet.  "I will sleep now,"
+he said, and turned on his side.  She arranged his pillow, and adjusted
+the bedclothes to his comfort.
+
+"Good-night," he said, as, with a faint hand, he drew her head down and
+kissed her.  "Good girl!  Goodnight!"
+
+She patted his hand.  "It is not night yet, father."
+
+He was already half asleep.  "Good-night!" he said again, and fell into
+a deep sleep.
+
+She sat down by the window, in her hand the book he had laid down.  A
+hundred thoughts were busy in her brain--of her father; of the woman who
+had just left; of her lover over the hills.  The woman's voice came to
+her again--a far-off mockery.  She opened the book mechanically and
+turned over the pages.  Presently her eyes were riveted to a page.
+On it was written the word Kathleen.
+
+For a moment she sat transfixed.  The word Kathleen and the haunting
+voice became one, and her mind ran back to the day when she had said to
+Charley: "Who is Kathleen?"
+
+She sprang to her feet.  What should she do?  Follow the woman?  Find out
+who and what she was?  Go to the young surgeon who had accompanied them,
+ask him who she was, and so learn the clue to the mystery concerning her
+lover?
+
+In the midst of her confusion she became sharply conscious of two things:
+the approach of Mrs. Flynn, and her father's heavy breathing.  Dropping
+the book, she leaned over her father's bed and looked closely at him.
+Then she turned to the frightened and anxious Mrs. Flynn.
+
+"Go for the priest," she said.  "He is dying."
+
+"I'll send some one.  I'm stayin' here by you, darlin'," said the old
+woman, and hurried to the room of the young surgeon for a messenger.
+
+As the sun went down, the cripple went out upon a long journey alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+"WHERE THE TREE OF LIFE IS BLOOMING--"
+
+As Charley walked the bank of the great river by the city where his old
+life lay dead, he struggled with the new life which--long or short--must
+henceforth belong to the village of the woman he loved.  .  .  .  But as
+he fought with himself in the long night-watch it was borne in upon him
+that though he had been shown the Promised Land, he might never find
+there a habitation and a home.  The hymn he had mockingly sung the night
+he had been done to death at the Cote Dorion sang in his senses now, an
+ever-present mockery:
+
+               "On the other side of Jordan,
+               In the sweet fields of Eden,
+               Where the tree of life is blooming,
+                    There is rest for you.
+               There is rest for the weary,
+               There is rest for the weary,
+               There is rest for the weary,
+                    There is rest for you."
+
+In the uttermost corner of his intelligence he felt with sure prescience
+that, however befalling, the end of all was not far off.  In the exercise
+of new faculties, which had more to do with the soul than with reason, he
+now believed what he could not see, and recognised what was not proved.
+Labour of the hand, trouble, sorrow, and perplexity, charity and
+humanity, had cleared and simplified his life, had sweetened his
+intelligence, and taken the place of ambition.  He saw life now through
+the lens of personal duty, which required that the thing nearest to one's
+hand should be done first.
+
+But as foreboding pressed upon him there came the thought of what should
+come after--to Rosalie.  His thoughts took a practical form--her good was
+uppermost in his mind.  All Rosalie had to live on was her salary as
+postmistress, for it was in every one's knowledge that the little else
+she had was being sacrificed to her father's illness.  Suppose, then,
+that through illness or accident she lost her position, what could she
+do?  He might leave her what he had--but what had he?  Enough to keep her
+for a year or two--no more.  All his earnings had gone to the poor and
+the suffering of Chaudiere.
+
+There was one way.  It had suggested itself to him so often in Chaudiere,
+and had been one of the two reasons for bringing him here.  There were
+his dead mother's pearls and one thousand dollars in notes behind a
+secret panel in the white house on the hill, in this very city where he
+was.  The pearls were worth over ten thousand dollars--in all, there
+would be eleven thousand, enough to secure Rosalie from poverty.  What
+should Kathleen do with his mother's pearls, even if they were found by
+her?  What should she do with his money did she not loathe his memory?
+Had not all his debts been paid?  These pearls and this money were all
+his own.
+
+But to get them.  To go now to the white house on the hill; to face that
+old life even for an hour, a knocking at the door of a haunted house--he
+shrank from the thought.  He would have to enter the place like a thief
+in the night.
+
+Yet for Rosalie he must take the risk--he must go.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+THE OPEN GATE
+
+It was a still night, and the moon, delicately bright, gave forth that
+radiance which makes spiritual to the eye the coarsest thing.  Inside the
+white house on the hill all was dark.  Sleep had settled on it long
+before midnight, for, on the morrow, its master and mistress hoped to
+make a journey to the valley of the Chaudiere, where the Passion Play was
+being performed by habitants and Indians.  The desire to see the play had
+become an infatuation in the minds of the two, eager for some interest to
+relieve the monotony of a happy life.
+
+But as all slept, a figure in the dress of a habitant moved through the
+passages of the house stealthily, yet with an assurance unusual in the
+thief or housebreaker.  In the darkest passages his step was sure, and
+his hand fastened on latch or door-knob with perfect precision.  He came
+at last into a large hallway flooded by the moon, pale, watchful, his
+beard frosted by the light.  In the stillness of his tread and the
+composed sorrow of his face he seemed like one long dead who "revisits
+the glimpses of the moon."
+
+At last he entered a room the door of which stood wide open.  In this
+room had been begotten, or had had exercise, whatever of him was worth
+approving in the days before he died.  It was a place of books and
+statues and tapestry, and the dark oak was nobly smutched of Time.  This
+sombre oaken wall had been handed down through four generations from the
+man's great-grandfather: the breath of generations had steeped it in
+human association.
+
+Entering, he turned for an instant with clinched hands to look at another
+door across the hall.  Behind that door were two people who despised his
+memory, who conspired to forget his very name.  This house was the
+woman's, for he had given it to her the day he died.  But that she could
+live there with all the old associations, with memories that, however
+bitter, however shaming, had a sort of sacredness, struck into his soul
+with a harrowing pain.  There she was whom he had spared--himself; whose
+happiness had lain in his hands, and he had given it to her.  Yet her
+very existence robbed himself of happiness, and made sorrowful a life
+dearer than his own.
+
+Kathleen lay asleep in that room--he fancied he could hear her breathing;
+and, by the hospital on the hill, up beyond the point of pines, in a
+little cottage which he could see from the great window, lay Rosalie with
+sleepless eyes and wan cheeks, longing for morning and the stir of life
+to help her to forget.
+
+For Rosalie he had come to this house once more.  For her sake he was
+revisiting this torture-chamber, from which he knew he must go again,
+blanched and shaken, as a man goes from a tomb where his dead lie
+unforgiving.
+
+He shut his teeth, went swiftly across the room, and beside a great
+carved oak table touched a hidden spring in the side of it.  The spring
+snapped; the panel creaked a little and drew back.  It seemed to him that
+the noise he made must be heard in every part of the house, so sensitive
+was his ear, so deep was the silence on which the sounds had broken.  He
+turned round to the doorway to listen before he put his hand within the
+secret place.
+
+There was no sound.  He turned his attention to the table.  Drawing forth
+two packets with a gasp of relief, he put them in his pocket, and, with
+extreme care, proceeded to close the panel.  By rubbing the edges of the
+wood with grease from a candle on the table, he was able to readjust the
+panel in silence.  But, as the spring came home, he became suddenly
+conscious of a presence in the room.  A shiver passed through him.  He
+turned round-softly, quickly.  He was in the shadow and near great
+window-curtains, and his fingers instinctively clutched them as he saw a
+figure in white at the door of the room.  Slowly, strangely deliberate,
+the figure moved further into the room.
+
+Charley's breath stopped.  He felt his face flush, and a strange weakness
+came on him.  There before him stood Kathleen.
+
+She was in her night-gown, and she stood still, as though listening; yet,
+as Charley looked closer, he realised that it was an unconscious, passive
+listening, and that she did not know he was there.
+
+Her mind only was listening.  She was asleep.  Was it possible that his
+very presence in the house had touched some old note of memory, which,
+automatically responding, had carried her from her bed in this
+somnambulistic trance?  That subtle telegraphy between our subconscious
+selves which we cannot reduce to a law, yet alarming us at times,
+announced to Kathleen's mind, independent of the waking senses, the
+presence once familiar to this house for so many years.  In her sleep
+she had involuntarily responded to the call of Charley's approach.
+
+Once, in the past, the night her uncle died, she had walked in her sleep,
+and the memory of this flashed upon Charley now.  Silently he came closer
+to her.  The moonlight shone on her face.  He could see plainly she was
+asleep.  His position was painful and perilous.  If she waked, the shock
+to herself would be great; if she waked and saw him, what disaster might
+not occur!
+
+Yet he had no agitation now, only clearness of mind and a curious sense
+of confusion that he should see her en dishabille--the old fastidious
+sense mingling with the feeling that she was now a stranger to him, and
+that, waking, she would fly embarrassed from his presence, as he was
+ready to fly from hers.  He was about to steal to the door and escape
+before she waked, but she turned round, moved through the doorway, and
+glided down the hall.  He followed silently.
+
+She moved to the staircase, then slowly down it, and through a passage to
+a morning-room, where, opening a pair of French windows, she passed out
+onto the lawn.  He followed, not more than a dozen paces behind her.
+His safety lay in getting outside, where he could easily hide among the
+bushes, should someone else appear and an alarm be raised.
+
+She crossed the lawn swiftly, a white, ghostlike figure.  In the middle
+of the lawn she stopped short once as if in doubt what to do--as a
+thought-reader pauses in his search for the mental scent again, ere he
+rushes upon the object of his search with the certainty of instinct.
+
+Presently she moved on, going directly towards a gate that opened out on
+the cliff above the river.  In Charley's day this gate had been often
+used, for it gave upon four steep wooden steps leading to a narrow shelf
+of rock below.  From the edge of this cliff a rope-ladder dropped fifty
+feet to the river.  For years he had used this rope-ladder to get down to
+his boat, and often, when they were first married, Kathleen used to come
+and watch him descend, and sometimes, just at the very first, would
+descend also.  As he stole into the grounds this evening he had noticed,
+however, that the rope-ladder was gone, and that new steps were being
+built.  He had also mechanically observed that the gate was open.
+
+For an instant he watched her slowly moving towards the gate.  At first
+he did not realise the situation.  Suddenly her danger flashed upon him.
+Passing through the gateway, she must fall over the cliff.
+
+Her life was in his hands.
+
+He could rush forward swiftly and close the gate, then, raising an alarm,
+get away before he was seen; or--he could escape now.
+
+What had he to do with her?  A weird, painful suggestion crept into his
+brain: he was not responsible for her, and he was responsible for a woman
+up there by the hospital, whose home was the valley of the Chaudiere!
+
+If Kathleen were gone, what barrier would there be between him and
+Rosalie?  What had he to do with this strange disposition of events?
+Kathleen was never absent from her church twice on Sundays; she was
+devoted to work of all sorts for the church on week-days--where was her
+intervening personal Providence?  If Providence permitted her to die?--
+well, she had had two years of happiness with the man she loved, at some
+expense to himself--was it not fair that Rosalie should have her share?
+Had he the right to call upon Rosalie for constant self-sacrifice, when,
+by shutting his eyes now, by being dead to Kathleen and her need, as he
+was dead to the world he once knew, the way would be clear to marry
+Rosalie?
+
+Dead--he was dead to the world and to Kathleen!  Should his ghost
+interpose between her and the death now within two-score feet of her?
+Who could know?  It was grim, it was awful, but was it not a wild kind of
+justice?  Who could blame?  It was the old Charley Steele, the Charley
+Steele of the court-room, who argued back humanity and the inherent
+rightness of things.
+
+But it was only a moment's pause.  The thoughts flashed by like the
+lightning impressions of a dream, and a voice said in his ear, the voice
+of the new Charley with a conscience:
+
+"Save her--save her!"
+
+Even as he was conscious of another presence on the lawn, he rushed
+forward noiselessly.  Stealing between Kathleen and the gate-she was
+within five feet of it he closed and locked it.  Then, with a quick
+glance at her sleeping face-it was engraven on his memory ever after like
+a dead face in a coffin--he ran along the fence among the shrubbery.  A
+man not fifty feet away called to him.
+
+"Hush--she is asleep!" Charley whispered, and disappeared.
+
+It was Fairing himself who saw this deed which saved Kathleen's life.
+Awaking, and not finding her, he had glanced towards the window, and had
+seen her on the lawn.  He had rushed down to her, in time to see her
+saved by a strange bearded man in habitant dress.  His one glance at the
+man's face, as it turned towards him, produced an extraordinary effect
+upon his mind, not soon to be dispelled--a haunting, ghostlike
+apparition, which kept reminding him of something or somebody, he could
+not tell what or whom.  The whispering voice and the breathless words,
+"Hush--she is asleep!" repeated themselves over and over again in his
+brain, as, taking Kathleen's hand, he led her, unresisting, and still
+sleeping, back to her room.  In agitated thankfulness he resolved not to
+speak of the event to Kathleen, or to any one else, lest it should come
+to her ears and frighten her.
+
+He would, however, keep a sharp lookout for the man who had saved her
+life, and would reward him duly.  The face of the bearded habitant came
+between him and his sleep.
+
+Meanwhile this disturber of a woman's dreams and a man's sleep was
+hurrying to an inn in the town by the waterside, where he met another
+habitant with a team of dogs--Jo Portugais.  Jo had not been able to bear
+the misery of suspense and anxiety, and had come seeking him.  There was
+little speech between them.
+
+"You have not been found out, M'sieu'?" was Jo's anxious question.
+
+"No, no, but I have had a bad night, Jo.  Get the dogs together."
+
+A little later, as Charley made ready to go back to Chaudiere, Jo said:
+
+"You look as if you'd had a black dream, M'sieu'."  With the river
+rustling by, and the trees stirring in the first breath of dawn, Charley
+told Jo what had happened.
+
+For a moment the murderer did not speak or stir, for a struggle was going
+on in his breast also; then he stooped quickly, caught his companion's
+hand, and kissed it.
+
+"I could not have done it, M'sieu'," he said hoarsely.  They parted, Jo
+to remain behind as they had agreed, to be near Rosalie if needed;
+Charley to return to the valley of the Chaudiere.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Good fathers think they have good daughters
+Shure, if we could always be 'about the same,' we'd do
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT OF WAY
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 6.
+
+
+
+L.        THE PASSION PLAY AT CHAUDIERE
+LI.       FACE TO FACE
+LII.      THE COMING OF BILLY
+LIII.     THE SEIGNEUR AND THE CURE HAVE A SUSPICION
+LIV.      M. ROSSIGNOL SLIPS THE LEASH
+LV.       ROSALIE PLAYS A PART
+LVI.      MRS. FLYNN SPEAKS
+LVII.     A BURNING FIERY FURNACE
+LVIII.    WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL
+LIX.      IN WHICH CHARLEY MEETS A STRANGER
+LX.       THE HAND AT THE DOOR
+LXI.      THE CURE SPEAKS
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+THE PASSION PLAY AT CHAUDIERE
+
+For the first time in its history Chaudiere was becoming notable in the
+eyes of the outside world.
+
+"We'll have more girth after this," said Filion Lacasse the saddler to
+the wife of the Notary, as, in front of the post-office, they stood
+watching a little cavalcade of habitants going up the road towards Four
+Mountains to rehearse the Passion Play.
+
+"If Dauphin's advice had been taken long ago, we'd have had a hotel at
+Four Mountains, and the city folk would be coming here for the summer,"
+said Madame Dauphin, with a superior air.
+
+"Pish!" said a voice behind them.  It was the Seigneur's groom, with a
+straw in his mouth.  He had a gloomy mind.
+
+"There isn't a house but has two or three boarders.  I've got three,"
+said Filion Lacasse.  "They come tomorrow."
+
+"We'll have ten at the Manor.  But no good will come of it," said the
+groom.
+
+"No good!  Look at the infidel tailor!" said Madame Dauphin.  "He
+translated all the writing.  He drew all the dresses, and made a hundred
+pictures--there they are at the Cure's house."
+
+"He should have played Judas," said the groom malevolently.  "That'd be
+right for him."
+
+"Perhaps you don't like the Passion Play," said Madame Dauphin
+disdainfully.
+
+"We ain't through with it yet," said the death's-head groom.
+
+"It is a pious and holy mission," said Madame Dauphin.  "Even that Jo
+Portugais worked night and day till he went away to Montreal, and he
+always goes to Mass now.  He's to take Pontius Pilate when he comes back.
+Then look at Virginie Morrissette, that put her brother's eyes out
+quarrelling--she's to play Mary Magdalene."
+
+"I could fit the parts better," said the groom.
+
+"Of course.  You'd have played St. John," said the saddler--" or, maybe,
+Christus himself!"
+
+"I'd have Paulette Dubois play Mary the sinner."
+
+"Magdalene repented, and knelt at the foot of the cross.  She was sorry
+and sinned no more," said the Notary's wife in querulous reprimand.
+
+"Well, Paulette does all that," said the stolid, dark-visaged groom.
+
+Filion Lacasse's ears pricked up.  "How do you know--she hasn't come
+back?"
+
+"Hasn't she, though!  And with her child too--last night."
+
+"Her child!"  Madame Dauphin was scandalised and amazed.
+
+The groom nodded.  "And doesn't care who knows it.  Seven years old, and
+as fine a child as ever was!"
+
+"Narcisse--Narcisse!" called Madame Dauphin to her husband, who was
+coming up the street.  She hastily repeated the groom's news to him.
+
+The Notary stuck his hand between the buttons of his waistcoat.  "Well,
+well, my dear Madame," he said consequentially, "it is quite true."
+
+"What do you know about it--whose child is it?" she asked, with curdling
+scorn.
+
+"'Sh-'sh!" said the Notary.  Then, with an oratorical wave of his free
+hand: "The Church opens her arms to all--even to her who sinned much
+because she loved much, who, through woful years, searched the world for
+her child and found it not--hidden away, as it was, by the duplicity of
+sinful man"--and so on through tangled sentences, setting forth in broken
+terms Paulette Dubois's life.
+
+"How do you know all about it?" asked the saddler.  "I've known it for
+years," said the Notary grandly--stoutly too, for he would freely risk
+his wife's anger that the vain-glory of the moment might be enlarged.
+
+"And you keep it even from madame!" said the saddler, with a smile too
+broad to be sarcastic.  "Tiens!  if I did that, my wife'd pick my eyes
+out with a bradawl."
+
+"It was a professional secret," said the Notary, with a desperate resolve
+to hold his position.
+
+"I'm going home, Dauphin--are you coming?" questioned his wife, with an
+air.
+
+"You will remain, and hear what I've got to say.  This Paulette Dubois--
+she should play Mary Magdalene, for--"
+
+"Look--look, what's that?" said the saddler.  He pointed to a wagon
+coming slowly up the road.  In front of it a team of dogs drew a cart.
+It carried some thing covered with black.  "It's a funeral!  There's the
+coffin.  It's on Jo Portugais' little cart," added Filion Lacasse.
+
+"Ah, God be merciful, it's Rosalie Evanturel and Mrs. Flynn!  And M'sieu'
+Evanturel in the coffin!" said Madame Dauphin, running to the door of
+the postoffice to call the Cure's sister.
+
+"There'll be use enough for the baker's Dead March now," remarked M.
+Dauphin sadly, buttoning up his coat, taking off his hat, and going
+forward to greet Rosalie.  As he did so, Charley appeared in the doorway
+of his shop.
+
+"Look, Monsieur," said the Notary.  "This is the way Rosalie Evanturel
+comes home with her father."
+
+"I will go for the Cure" Charley answered, turning white.  He leaned
+against the doorway for a moment to steady himself, then hurried up the
+street.  He did not dare meet Rosalie, or go near her yet.  For her sake
+it was better not.
+
+"That tailor infidel has a heart.  His eyes were leaking," said the
+Notary to Filion Lacasse, and went on to meet the mournful cavalcade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+FACE TO FACE
+
+"If I could only understand!"--this was Rosalie's constant cry in these
+weeks wherein she lay ill and prostrate after her father's burial.  Once
+and once only had she met Charley alone, though she knew that he was
+keeping watch over her.  She had first seen him the day her father was
+buried, standing apart from the people, his face sorrowful, his eyes
+heavy, his figure bowed.
+
+The occasion of their meeting alone was the first night of her return,
+when the Notary and Charley had kept watch beside her father's body.
+
+She had gone into the little hallway, and had looked into the room of
+death.  The Notary was sound asleep in his arm-chair, but Charley sat
+silent and moveless, his eyes gazing straight before him.  She murmured
+his name, and though it was only to herself, not even a whisper, he got
+up quickly and came to the hall, where she stood grief-stricken, yet with
+a smile of welcome, of forgiveness, of confidence.  As she put out her
+hand to him, and his swallowed it, she could not but say to him--so
+contrary is the heart of woman, so does she demand a Yes by asserting a
+No, and hunger for the eternal assurance--she could not but say:
+
+"You do not love me--now."
+
+It was but a whisper, so faint and breathless that only the heart of love
+could hear it.  There was no answer in words, for some one was stirring
+beyond Rosalie in the dark, and a great figure heaved through the kitchen
+doorway, but his hand crushed hers in his own; his heart said to her, "My
+love is an undying light; it will not change for time or tears"--the
+words they had read together in a little snuff-coloured book on the
+counter in the shop one summer day a year ago.  The words flashed into
+his mind, and they were carried to hers.  Her fingers pressed his, and
+then Charley said, over her shoulder, to the approaching Mrs. Flynn: "Do
+not let her come again, Madame.  She should get some sleep," and he put
+her hand in Mrs. Flynn's.  "Be good to her, as you know how, Mrs. Flynn,"
+he added gently.
+
+He had won the heart of Mrs. Flynn that moment, and it may be she had a
+conviction or an inspiration, for she said, in a softer voice than she
+was wont to use to any one save Rosalie:
+
+"I'll do by her as you'd do by your own, sir," and tenderly drew Rosalie
+to her own room.
+
+Such had been their first meeting after her return.  Afterwards she was
+taken ill, and the torture of his heart drove him out into the night, to
+walk the road and creep round her house like a sentinel, Mrs. Flynn's
+words ringing in his ears to reproach him--"I'll do by her as you would
+do by your own, sir."  Night after night it was the same, and Rosalie
+heard his footsteps and listened and was less sorrowful, because she knew
+that she was ever in his thoughts.  But one day Mrs. Flynn came to him in
+his shop.
+
+"She's wantin' a word with ye on business," she said, and gestured
+towards the little house across the way.  "'Tis few words ye do be
+shpakin' to annybody, but if y' have kind words to shpake and good things
+to say, y' naidn't be bitin' yer tongue," she added in response to his
+nod, and left him.
+
+Charley looked after her with a troubled face.  On the instant it seemed
+to him that Mrs. Flynn knew all.  But his second thought told him that it
+was only an instinct on her part that there was something between them--
+the beginning of love, maybe.
+
+In another half-hour he was beside Rosalie's chair.  "Perhaps you are
+angry," she said, as he came towards her where she sat in the great arm-
+chair.  She did not give him time to answer, but hurried on.  "I wanted
+to tell you that I have heard you every night outside, and that I have
+been glad, and sorry too--so sorry for us both."
+
+"Rosalie!  Rosalie" he said hoarsely, and dropped on a knee beside her
+chair, and took her hand and kissed it.  He did not dare do more.
+
+"I wanted to say to you," she said, dropping a hand on his shoulder,
+"that I do not blame you for anything--not for anything.  Yet I want you
+to be sorry too.  I want you to feel as sorry for me as I feel sorry for
+you."
+
+"I am the worst man and you the best woman in the world."
+
+She leaned over him with tears in her eyes.  "Hush!" she said.  "I want
+to help you--Charles.  You are wise.  You know ten thousand things more
+than I; but I know one thing you do not understand."
+
+"You know and do whatever is good," he said brokenly.
+
+"Oh, no, no, no!  But I know one thing, because I have been taught, and
+because it was born with me.  Perhaps much was habit with me in the past,
+but now I know that one thing is true.  It is God."
+
+She paused.  "I have learned so much since--since then."
+
+He looked up with a groan, and put a finger on her lips.  "You are
+feeling bitterly sorry for me," she said.  "But you must let me speak--
+that is all I ask.  It is all love asks.  I cannot bear that you should
+not share my thoughts.  That is the thing that has hurt--hurt so all
+these months, these long hard months, when I could not see you, and did
+not know why I could not.  Don't shake so, please!  Hear me to the end,
+and we shall both be the better after.  I felt it all so cruelly, because
+I did not--and I do not--understand.  I rebelled, but not against you.
+I rebelled against myself, against what you called Fate.  Fate is one's
+self, what one brings on one's self.  But I had faith in you--always--
+always, even when I thought I hated you."
+
+"Ah, hate me!  Hate me!  It is your loving that cuts me to the quick," he
+said.  "You have the magnanimity of God."
+
+Her eyes leapt up.  "'Of God'--you believe in God!" she said eagerly.
+"God is God to you?  He is the one thing that has come out of all this to
+me."  She reached out her hand and took her Bible from a table.  "Read
+that to yourself," she said, and, opening the Book, pointed to a passage.
+He read it:
+
+     And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in
+     the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the
+     presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
+
+     And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art
+     thou?
+
+     And he said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid,
+     because I was naked; and I hid myself.
+
+     And He said, Who told thee that thou wart naked?  Hast thou eaten of
+     the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
+
+Closing the Book, Charley said: "I understand--I see."
+
+"Will you say a prayer with me?" she urged.  "It is all I ask.  It is
+the only--the only thing I want to hurt you, because it may make you
+happier in the end.  What keeps us apart, I do not know.  But if you will
+say one prayer with me, I will keep on trusting, I will never complain,
+and I will wait--wait."
+
+He kissed both her hands, but the look in his eyes was that of a man
+being broken on the wheel.  She slipped to the floor, her rosary in her
+fingers.  "Let us pray," she said simply, and in a voice as clear as a
+child's, but with the anguish of a woman's struggling heart behind.
+
+He did not move.  She looked at him, caught his hands in both of hers,
+and cried: "But you will not deny me this!  Haven't I the right to ask
+it?  Haven't I a right to ask of you a thousand times as much?"
+
+"You have the right to ask all that is mine to give life, honour, my body
+in pieces inch by inch, the last that I can call my own.  But, Rosalie,
+this is not mine to give!  How can I pray, unless I believe!"
+
+"You do--oh, you do believe in God," she cried passionately.
+
+"Rosalie--my life," he urged, hoarse misery in his voice, "the only thing
+I have to give you is the bare soul of a truthful man--I am that now at
+least.  You have made me so.  If I deceived the whole world, if I was as
+the thief upon the cross, I should still be truthful to you.  You open
+your heart to me--let me open mine to you, to see it as it is.  Once
+my soul was like a watch, cased and carried in the pocket of life,
+uncertain, untrue, because it was a soul made, not born.  I must look at
+the hands to know the time, and because it varied, because the working
+did not answer to the absolute, I said: 'The soul is a lie.'  You--you
+have changed all that, Rosalie.  My soul now is like a dial to the sun.
+But the clouds are there above, and I do not know what time it is in
+life.  When the clouds break--if they ever break--and the sun shines, the
+dial will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth--"
+
+He paused, confused, for he had repeated the words of a witness taking
+the oath in court.
+
+"'So help me God!"' she finished the oath for him.  Then, with a sudden
+change of manner, she came to her feet with a spring.  She did not quite
+understand.  She was, however, dimly conscious of the power she had over
+his chivalrous mind: the power of the weak over the strong--the tyranny
+of the defended over the defender.  She was a woman tortured beyond
+bearing; and she was fighting for her very life, mad with anguish as she
+struggled.
+
+"I do not understand you," she cried, with flashing eyes.  "One minute
+you say you do not believe in anything, and the next you say, 'So help me
+God!'"
+
+"Ah, no, you said that, Rosalie," he interposed gently.
+
+"You said I was as magnanimous as God.  You were laughing at me then,
+mocking me, whose only fault is that I loved and trusted you.  In the
+wickedness of your heart you robbed me of happiness, you--"
+
+"Don't--don't!  Rosalie!  Rosalie!" he exclaimed in shrinking protest.
+
+That she had spoken to him as her deepest heart abhorred only increased
+her agitated denunciation.  "Yes, yes, in your mad selfishness, you did
+not care for the poor girl who forgot all, lost all, and now--" She
+stopped short at the sight of his white, awe stricken face.  His eye-
+glass seemed like a frost of death over an eye that looked upon some
+shocking scene of woe.  Yet he appeared not to see, for his fingers
+fumbled on his waistcoat for the monocle--fumbled--vaguely, helplessly.
+It was the realisation of a soul cast into the outer darkness.  Her
+abrupt silence came upon him like the last engulfing wave to a drowning
+man--the final assurance of the end, in which there is quiet and the
+deadly smother.
+
+"Now--I know-the truth!" he said, in a curious even tone, different from
+any she had ever heard from him.  It was the old Charley Steele who
+spoke, the Charley Steele in whom the intellect was supreme once more.
+The judicial spirit, the inveterate intelligence which put justice before
+all, was alive in him, almost rejoicing in its regained governance.  The
+new Charley was as dead as the old had been of late, and this clarifying
+moment left the grim impression behind that the old law was not obsolete.
+He felt that in the abandonment of her indignation she had mercilessly
+told the truth; and the irreducible quality of mind in him which in the
+old days made for justice, approved.  There was a new element now,
+however--that conscience which never possessed him fully until the day he
+saw Rosalie go travelling over the hills with her crippled father.  That
+picture of the girl against the twilight, her figure silhouetted in the
+clear air, had come to him in sleeping and waking dreams, the type and
+sign of an everlasting melancholy.  As he looked at her blindly now, he
+saw, not herself, but that melancholy figure.  Out of the distance his
+own voice said again:
+
+"Now--I know-the truth!"
+
+She had struck with a violence she did not intend, which, she knew, must
+rend her own heart in the future, which put in the dice-box the last
+hopes she had.  But she could not have helped it--she could not have
+stayed the words, though a suspended sword were to fall with the saying.
+It was the cry of tradition and religion, and every home-bred, convent-
+nurtured habit, the instinct of heredity, the wail of woman, for whom
+destiny, or man, or nature, has arranged the disproportionate share of
+life's penalties.  It was the impotent rebellion against the first curse,
+that man in his punishment should earn his bread by the sweat of his
+brow--which he might do with joy--while the woman must work out her
+ordained sentence "in sorrow all the days of her life."
+
+In her bitter words was the inherent revolt of the race of woman.  But
+now she suddenly felt that she had flung him an infinite distance from
+her; that she had struck at the thing she most cherished--his belief that
+she loved him; that even if she had told the truth--and she felt she had
+not--it was not the truth she wished him most to feel.
+
+For an instant she stood looking at him, shocked and confounded, then her
+changeless love rushed back on her, the maternal and protective spirit
+welled up, and with a passionate cry she threw herself in the chair again
+in very weakness, with outstretched hands, saying:
+
+"Forgive me--oh, forgive me!  I did not mean it--oh, forgive your
+Rosalie!"
+
+Stooping over her, he answered:
+
+"It is good for me to know the whole truth.  What hurts you may give me
+will pass--for life must end, and my life cannot be long enough to pay
+the price of the hurts I have given you.  I could bear a thousand--one
+for every hour--if they could bring back the light to your eye, the joy
+to your heart.  Could prayer, do you think, make me sorrier than I am?
+I have hurt what I would have spared from hurt at the cost of my life--
+and all the lives in all the world!" he added fiercely.
+
+"Forgive me--oh, forgive your Rosalie!" she pleaded.  "I did not know
+what I was saying--I was mad."
+
+"It was all so sane and true," he said, like one who, on the brink of
+death, finds a satisfaction in speaking the perfect truth.  "I am glad to
+hear the truth--I have been such a liar."
+
+She looked up startled, her tears blinding her.  "You have not deceived
+me?" she asked bitterly.  "Oh, you have not deceived me--you have loved
+me, have you not?"  It was that which mattered, that only.  Moveless and
+eager, she looked--looked at him, waiting, as it were, for sentence.
+
+"I never lied to you, Rosalie--never!" he answered, and he touched her
+hand.
+
+She gave a moan of relief at his words.  "Oh, then, oh, then .  .  .  "
+she said, in a low voice, and the tears in her eyes dried away.
+
+"I meant that until I knew you, I kept deceiving myself and others all my
+life--"
+
+"But without knowing it?" she said eagerly.
+
+"Perhaps, without quite knowing it."
+
+"Until you knew me?" she asked, in quick, quivering tones.
+
+"Till I knew you," he answered.
+
+"Then I have done you good--not ill?" she asked, with painful
+breathlessness.
+
+"The only good there may be in me is you, and you only," he said, and he
+choked something rising in his throat, seeing the greatness of her heart,
+her dear desire to have entered into his life to his own good.  He would
+have said that there was no good in him at all, but that he wished to
+comfort her.
+
+A little cry of joy broke from her lips.  "Oh, that--that!" she cried,
+with happy tears.  "Won't you kiss me now?" she added softly.
+
+He clasped her in his arms, and though his eyes were dry, his heart wept
+tears of blood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+THE COMING OF BILLY
+
+Chaudiere had made--and lost--a reputation.  The Passion Play in the
+valley had become known to a whole country--to the Cure's and the
+Seigneur's unavailing regret.  They had meant to revive the great story
+for their own people and the Indians--a homely, beautiful object-lesson,
+in an Eden--like innocence and quiet and repose; but behold the world had
+invaded them!  The vanity of the Notary had undone them.  He had written
+to the great papers of the province, telling of the advent of the play,
+and pilgrimages had been organised, and excursions had been made to the
+spot, where a simple people had achieved a crude but noble picture of the
+life and death of the Hero of Christendom.  The Cure viewed with
+consternation the invasion of their quiet.  It was no longer his own
+Chaudiere; and when, on a Sunday, his dear people were jostled from the
+church to make room for strangers, his gentle eloquence seemed to forsake
+him, he spoke haltingly, and his intoning of the Mass lacked the old
+soothing simplicity.
+
+"Ah, my dear Seigneur!" he said, on the Sunday before the playing was to
+end, "we have overshot the mark."
+
+The Seigneur nodded and turned his head away.  "There is an English play
+which says, 'I have shot mine arrow o'er the house and hurt my brother.'
+That's it--that's it!  We began with religion, and we end with greed,
+and pride, and notoriety."
+
+"What do we want of fame!  The price is too high, Maurice.  Fame is not
+good for the hearts and minds of simple folk."
+
+"It will soon be over."
+
+"I dread a sordid reaction."
+
+The Seigneur stood thinking for a moment.  "I have an idea," he said at
+last.  "Let us have these last days to ourselves.  The mission ends next
+Saturday at five o'clock.  We will announce that all strangers must leave
+the valley by Wednesday night.  Then, during those last three days, while
+yet the influence of the play is on them, you can lead your own people
+back to the old quiet feelings."
+
+"My dear Maurice--it is worthy of you!  It is the way.  We will announce
+it to-day.  And see now.  .  .  .  For those three days we will change
+the principals; lest those who have taken the parts so long have lost the
+pious awe which should be upon them.  We will put new people in their
+places.  I will announce it at vespers presently.  I have in my mind who
+should play the Christ, and St. John, and St. Peter--the men are not hard
+to find; but for Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalene--"
+
+The eyes of the two men suddenly met, a look of understanding passed
+between them.
+
+"Will she do it?" said the Seigneur.
+
+The Cure nodded.  "Paulette Dubois has heard the word, 'Go and sin no
+more'; she will obey."
+
+Walking through the village as they talked, the Cure shrank back
+painfully several times, for voices of strangers, singing festive songs,
+rolled out upon the road.  "Who can they be?" he said distressfully.
+
+Without a word the Seigneur went to the door of the inn whence the sounds
+proceeded, and, without knocking, entered.  A moment afterwards the
+voices stopped, but broke out again, quieted, then once more broke out,
+and presently the Seigneur issued from the door, white with anger, three
+strangers behind him.  All were intoxicated.
+
+One was violent.  It was Billy Wantage, whom the years had not improved.
+He had arrived that day with two companions--an excursion of curiosity
+as an excuse for a "spree."
+
+"What's the matter with you, old stick-in-the-mud?" he shouted.  "Mass
+is over, isn't it?  Can't we have a little guzzle between prayers?"
+
+By this time a crowd had gathered, among them Filion Lacasse.  At a
+motion from the Seigneur, and a whisper that went round quickly, a dozen
+habitants swiftly sprang on the three men, pinioned their arms, and
+carrying them bodily to the pump by the tavern, held them under it, one
+by one, till each was soaked and sober.  Then their horses and wagon were
+brought, and they were given five minutes to leave the village.
+
+With a devilish look in his eye, and drenched and furious, Billy was
+disposed to resist the command, but the faces around him were determined,
+and, muttering curses, the three drove away towards the next parish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+THE SEIGNEUR AND THE CURE HAVE A SUSPICION
+
+Presently the Seigneur and the Cure stood before the door of the tailor-
+shop.  The Cure was about to knock, when the Seigneur laid a hand upon
+his arm.
+
+"There is no use; he has been gone several days," he said.
+
+"Gone--gone!" said the Cure.
+
+"I came to see him yesterday, and not finding him, I asked at the post-
+office."  M. Rossignol's voice lowered.  "He told Mrs. Flynn he was going
+into the hills, so Rosalie says."
+
+The Cure's face fell.  "He went away also just before the play began.
+I almost fear that--that we get no nearer.  His mind prompts him to do
+good and not evil, and yet--and yet.  .  .  .  I have dreamed a good
+dream, Maurice, but I sometimes fear I have dreamed in vain."
+
+"Wait-wait!"
+
+M. Loisel looked towards the post-office musingly.  "I have thought
+sometimes that what man's prayers may not accomplish a woman's love might
+do.  If--but, alas, what do we know of his past!  Nothing.  What do we
+know of his future?  Nothing.  What do we know of the human heart?
+Nothing--nothing!"
+
+The Seigneur was astounded.  The Cure's meaning was plain.  "What do you
+mean?" he asked, almost gruffly.
+
+"She--Rosalie--has changed--changed."  In his heart he dwelt sorrowfully
+upon the fact that she had not been to confession to him for many, many
+months.
+
+"Since her father's death--since her illness?"
+
+"Since she went to Montreal seven months ago.  Even while she was so ill
+these past weeks, she never asked for me; and when I came .  .  .  Ah, if
+it is that her heart has gone out to the man, and his does not respond!"
+
+"A good thing, too!" said the other gloomily.  "We don't know where he
+came from, and we do know that he is a pagan."
+
+"Yet there she sits now, hour after hour, day after day--so changed."
+
+"She has lost her father," urged M. Rossignol anxiously.
+
+"I know the grief of children--this is not such a grief.  There is
+something more.  But I cannot ask. If she were a sinner--but she is
+without fault.  Have we not watched her grow up here, mirthful, brave,
+pure-souled--"
+
+"Fitted for any station," interposed the Seigneur huskily.  Presently he
+laid a hand upon the Cure's arm.  "Shall I ask her again?" he said,
+breathing hard.  "Do you think she has found out her mistake?"
+
+The Cure was so taken aback that at first he could not speak.  When he
+realised, however, he could scarce suppress a smile at the other's simple
+vanity.  But he mastered himself, and said: "It is not that, Maurice.  It
+is not you."
+
+"How did you know I had asked her?" asked his friend querulously.
+
+"You have just told me."
+
+M. Rossignol felt a kind of reproval in the Cure's tone.  It made him a
+little nervous.  "I'm an old fool, but she needed some one," he
+protested.  "At least I am a gentleman, and she would not be thrown
+away."
+
+"Dear Maurice!" said the Cure, and linked his arm in the other's.  "In
+all respects save one, it would have been to her advantage.  But youth is
+the only comrade for youth.  All else is evasion of life's laws."
+
+The Seigneur pressed his arm.  "I thought you less worldly-wise than
+myself; I find you more," he said.
+
+"Not worldly-wise.  Life is deeper than the world or worldly wisdom.
+Come, we will both go and see Rosalie."
+
+M. Rossignol suddenly stopped at the post-office door, and half turned
+towards the tailor-shop.  "He is young.  Suppose that he drew her love
+his way, but gave her nothing in return, and--"
+
+"If it were so"--the Cure paused, and his face darkened--"if it were so,
+he should leave her forever; and so my dream would end."
+
+"And Rosalie?"
+
+"Rosalie would forget.  To remember, youth must see and touch and be
+near, else it wears itself out in excess of feeling.  Youth feels more
+deeply than age, but it must bear daily witness."
+
+"Upon my honour, Cure, you shall write your little philosophies for the
+world," said M. Rossignol, and then knocked at the door.
+
+"I will go in alone, Maurice," the Cure urged.  "Good-you are right,"
+answered the other.  "I will go write the proclamation denying strangers
+the valley after Wednesday.  I will enforce it, too," he added, with
+vigour, and, turning, walked up the street, as Mrs. Flynn admitted the
+Cure to the post-office.
+
+A half-hour later M. Loisel again appeared at the post-office door, a
+pale, beautiful face at his shoulder.
+
+He had not been brave enough to say what was on his mind.  But as he bade
+her good-bye, he plucked up needful courage.
+
+"Forgive me, Rosalie," he said, "but I have sometimes thought that you
+have more griefs than one.  I have thought"--he paused, then went on
+bravely--"that there might be--there might be unwelcomed love, or love
+deceived."
+
+A mist came before her eyes, but she quietly and firmly answered: "I have
+never been deceived in love, Monsieur Loisel."
+
+"There, there!" he hurriedly and gently rejoined.  "Do not be hurt, my
+child.  I only want to help you."  A moment afterwards he was gone.
+
+As the door closed behind him, she drew herself proudly up.
+
+"I have never been deceived," she said aloud.  "I love him--love him--love
+him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+M. ROSSIGNOL SLIPS THE LEASH
+
+It was the last day of the Passion Play, and the great dramatic mission
+was drawing to a close.  The confidence of the Cure and the Seigneur was
+restored.  The prohibition against strangers had had its effect, and for
+three whole days the valley had been at rest again.  Apparently there was
+not a stranger within its borders, save the Seigneur's brother, the Abbe
+Rossignol, who had come to see the moving spectacle.
+
+The Abbe, on his arrival, had made inquiries concerning the tailor of
+Chaudiere and Jo Portugais, as persistently about the one as the other.
+Their secrets had been kept inviolate by him.
+
+It was disconcerting to hear the tales people told of the tailor's
+charity and wisdom.  It was all dangerous, for what was, accidentally,
+no evil in this particular instance, might be the greatest disaster in
+another case.  Principle was at stake.  He heard in stern silence the
+Cure's happy statement that Jo Portugais had returned to the bosom of the
+Church, and attended Mass regularly.
+
+"So it may be, my dear Abbe," said M. Loisel, "that the friendship
+between him and our 'infidel' has been the means of helping Portugais.
+I hope their friendship will go on unbroken for years and years."
+
+"I have no idea that it will," said the Abbe grimly.  "That rope of
+friendship may snap untimely."
+
+"Upon my soul, you croak like a raven!" testily broke in M. Rossignol,
+who was present.  "I didn't know there was so much in common between you
+and my surly-jowled groom.  He gets his pleasure out of croaking.  'Wait,
+wait, you'll see--you'll see!  Death, death, death--every man must die!
+The devil has you by the hair--death--death--death!'  Bah!  I'm heartily
+sick of croakers.  I suppose, like my grunting groom, you'll say about
+the Passion Play, 'No good will come of it--wait--wait--wait!'  Bah!"
+
+"It may not be an unmixed good," answered the ascetic.
+
+"Well, and is there any such thing on earth as an unmixed good?  The play
+yesterday was worth a thousand sermons.  It was meant to serve Holy
+Church, and it will serve it.  Was there ever anything more real--and
+touching--than Paulette Dubois as Mary Magdalene yesterday?"
+
+"I do not approve of such reality.  For that woman to play the part is to
+destroy the impersonality of the scene."
+
+"You would demand that the Christus should be a good man, and the St.
+John blameless--why shouldn't the Magdalene be a repentant woman?"
+
+"It might impress the people more, if the best woman in your parish were
+to play the part.  The fall of virtue, the ruin of innocence, would be
+vividly brought home.  It does good to make the innocent feel the terror
+and shame of sin.  That is the price the good pay for the fall of man--
+sorrow and shame for those who sin."  The Seigneur, rising quickly from
+the table, and kicking his chair back, said angrily: "Damn your
+theories!"  Then, seeing the frozen look on his brother's face,
+continued, more excitedly: "Yes, damn, damn, damn your theories!  You
+always took the crass view.  I beg your pardon, Cure--I beg your pardon."
+
+He then went to the window, threw it open, and called to his groom.
+
+"Hi, there, coffin-face," he said, "bring round the horses--the quietest
+one in the stable for my brother--you hear?  He can't ride," he added
+maliciously.
+
+This was his fiercest stroke, for the Abbe's secret vanity was the belief
+that he looked well on a horse, and rode handsomely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+ROSALIE PLAYS A PART
+
+From a tree upon a little hill rang out a bell--a deep-toned bell, bought
+by the parish years before for the missions held at this very spot.
+Every day it rang for an instant at the beginning of each of the five
+acts.  It also tolled slowly when the curtain rose upon the scene of the
+Crucifixion.  In this act no one spoke save the abased Magdalene, who
+knelt at the foot of the cross, and on whose hair red drops fell when the
+Roman soldier pierced the side of the figure on the cross.  This had been
+the Cure's idea.  The Magdalene should speak for mankind, for the
+continuing world.  She should speak for the broken and contrite heart in
+all ages, should be the first-fruits of the sacrifice, a flower of the
+desert earth, bedewed by the blood of the Prince of Peace.
+
+So, in the long nights of the late winter and early spring, the Cure had
+thought and thought upon what the woman should say from the foot of the
+cross.  At last he put into her mouth that which told the whole story of
+redemption and deliverance, so far as his heart could conceive it--the
+prayer for all sorts and conditions of men and the general thanksgiving
+of humanity.
+
+During the last three days Paulette Dubois had taken the part of Mary
+Magdalene.  As Jo Portugais had confessed to the Abbe that notable day in
+the woods at Vadrome Mountain, so she had confessed to the Cure after so
+many years of agony--and the one confession fitted into the other: Jo had
+once loved her, she had treated him vilely, then a man had wronged her,
+and Jo had avenged her--this was the tale in brief.  She it was who
+laughed in the gallery of the court-room the day that Joseph Nadeau was
+acquitted.
+
+It had pained and shocked the Cure more than any he had ever heard, but
+he urged for her no penalty as Portugais had set for himself with the
+austere approval of the Abbe.  Paulette's presence as the Magdalene had
+had a deep effect upon the people, so that she shared with Mary the
+Mother the painfully real interest of the vast audience.
+
+Five times had the bell rung out in the perfect spring air, upon which
+the balm of the forest and the refreshment of the ardent sun were poured.
+The quick anger of M. Rossignol had passed away long before the Cure, the
+Abbe, and himself had reached the lake and the great plateau.  Between
+the acts the two brothers walked up and down together, at peace once
+more, and there was a suspicious moisture in the Seigneur's eyes.  The
+demeanour of the people had been so humble and rapt that the place and
+the plateau and the valley seemed alone in creation with the lofty drama
+of the ages.
+
+The Cure's eyes shone when he saw on a little knoll in the trees, apart
+from the worshippers and spectators, Charley and Jo Portugais.  His cup
+of content was now full.  He had felt convinced that if the tailor had
+but been within these bounds during the past three days, a work were
+begun which should end only at the altar of their parish church.  To-day
+the play became to him the engine of God for the saving of a man's soul.
+Not long before the last great tableau was to appear he went to his own
+little tent near the hut where the actors prepared to go upon the stage.
+As he entered, some one came quickly forward from the shadow of the trees
+and touched him on the arm.
+
+"Rosalie!" he cried in amazement, for she wore the costume of Mary
+Magdalene.
+
+"It is I, not Paulette, who will appear," she said, a deep light in her
+eyes.
+
+"You, Rosalie?" he asked dumfounded.  "You are distrait.  Trouble and
+sorrow have put this in your mind.  You must not do it."
+
+"Yes, I am going there," she said, pointing towards the great stage.
+"Paulette has given me these to wear"--she touched the robe--"and I only
+ask your blessing now.  Oh, believe, believe me, I can speak for those
+who are innocent and those who are guilty; for those who pray and those
+who cannot pray; for those who confess and those who dare not!  I can
+speak the words out of my heart with gladness and agony, Monsieur," she
+urged, in a voice vibrating with feeling.
+
+A luminous look came into the Cure's face.  A thought leapt up in his
+heart.  Who could tell!--this pure girl, speaking for the whole sinful,
+unbelieving, and believing world, might be the one last conquering
+argument to the man.
+
+He could not read the agony of spirit which had driven Rosalie to this
+--to confess through the words of Mary Magdalene her own woe, to say it
+out to all the world, and to receive, as did Paulette Dubois, every day
+after the curtain came down, absolution and blessing.  She longed for the
+old remembered peace.
+
+The Cure could not read the struggle between her love for a man and the
+ineradicable habit of her soul; but he raised his hand, made the sacred
+gesture over leer, and said: "Go, my child, and God be with you."
+
+He could not see her for tears as she hurried away to where Paulette
+Dubois awaited her--the two at peace now.  At the hands of the lately
+despised and injurious woman Rosalie was made ready to play the part in
+the last act, none knowing save the few who appeared in the final
+tableau, and they at the last moment only.
+
+The bell began to toll.
+
+A thousand people fell upon their knees, and with fascinated yet abashed
+and awe-struck eyes saw the great tableau of Christendom: the three
+crosses against the evening sky, the Figure in the centre, the Roman
+populace, the trembling Jews, the pathetic groups of disciples.  A cloud
+passed across the sky, the illusion grew, and hearts quivered in piteous
+sympathy.  There was no music now--not a sound save the sob of some
+overwrought woman.  The woe of an oppressed world absorbed them.  Even
+the stolid Indians, as Roman soldiers, shrank awe-stricken from the
+sacred tragedy.  Now the eyes of all were upon the central Figure, then
+they shifted for a moment to John the Beloved, standing with the Mother.
+
+"Pauvre Mere!  Pauvre Christ!" said a weeping woman aloud.
+
+A Roman soldier raised a spear and pierced the side of the Hero of the
+World.  Blood flowed, and hundreds gasped.  Then there was silence--a
+strange hush as of a prelude to some great event.
+
+"It is finished.  Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit," said the
+Figure.
+
+The hush was broken by such a sound as one hears in a forest when a wind
+quivers over the earth, flutters the leaves, and then sinks away--neither
+having come nor gone, but only lived and died.
+
+Again there was silence, and then all eyes were fixed upon the figure at
+the foot of the cross-Mary the Magdalene.
+
+Day after day they had seen this figure rise, come forward a step, and
+speak the epilogue to this moving miracle-drama.  For the last three days
+Paulette Dubois had turned a sorrowful face upon them, and with one hand
+upraised had spoken the prayer, the prophecy, the thanksgiving, the
+appeal of humanity and the ages.  They looked to see the same figure now,
+and waited.  But as the Magdalene turned, there was a great stir in the
+multitude, for the face bent upon them was that of Rosalie Evanturel.
+Awe and wonder moved the people.
+
+Apart from the crowd, under a clump of trees, knelt a woodsman from
+Vadrome Mountain, and the tailor of Chaudiere stood beside him.
+
+When Charley, touched by the heavy scene, saw the figure of the Magdalene
+rise, he felt a curious thrill of fascination.  When she turned, and he
+saw the face of Rosalie, the blood rushed to his face; then his heart
+seemed to stand still.  Pain and shame travelled to the farthest recesses
+of his nature.  Jo Portugais rose to his feet with a startled
+exclamation.
+
+Rosalie began to speak.  "This is the day of which the hours shall never
+cease--in it there shall be no night.  He whom ye have crucified hath
+saved you from the wrath to come.  He hath saved others, Himself He would
+not save.  Even for such as I, who have secretly opened, who have
+secretly entered, the doors of sin--"
+
+With a gasp of horror and a mad desire to take her away from the sight of
+this gaping, fascinated crowd, Charley made to rush forward, but Jo
+Portugais held him back.
+
+"Be still.  You will ruin her, M'sieu'!" said Jo.
+
+"--even for such as I am," the beautiful voice went on, "hath He died.
+And in the ages to come, women such as I, and all women who sorrow, and
+all men who err and are deceived, and all the helpless world, will know
+that this was the Friend of the human soul."  Not a gesture, not a
+movement, only that slight, pathetic figure, with pale, agonised face,
+and eyes that looked--looked--looked beyond them, over their heads to the
+darkening east, the clouded light of evening behind her.  Her voice rang
+out now valiant and clear, now searching and piteous, yet reaching to
+where the farthermost person knelt, and was lost upon the lake and in the
+spreading trees.
+
+"What ye have done may never be undone; what He hath said shall never be
+unsaid.  His is the Word which shall unite all languages, when ye that
+are Romans shall be no more Romans, and ye that are Jews shall still be
+Jews, reproached and alone.  No longer shall men faint in the glare--the
+shadow of the Cross shall screen them.  No more shall woman bear her
+black sorrows, alone; the Light of the World shall cheer her."
+
+As she spoke, the cloud drew back from the sunset, and the saffron glow
+behind lighted the cross, and shone upon her hair, casting her face in a
+gracious shadow.  Her voice rose higher.  "I, the Magdalene, am the
+first-fruits of this sacrifice: from the foot of the cross I come.
+I have sinned more than all.  I have shamed all women.  But I have
+confessed my sin, and He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and
+to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
+
+Her voice now became lower, but clear and even, pathetically exulting:
+
+"O world, forgive, as He hath forgiven you!  Fall, dark curtain, and hide
+this pain, and rise again upon forgiven sin and a redeemed people!"
+
+She stood still, with her eyes upraised, and the curtain came slowly
+down.
+
+For a long time no one in all the gathered multitude stirred.  Far over
+under the trees a man sat upon the ground, his head upon his arms, and
+his arms upon his knees, in a misery unmeasurable.  Beside him stood a
+woodsman, who knew of no word to say that might comfort him.
+
+A girl, in the garb of the Magdalene, entered the tent of the Cure, and,
+speaking no word, knelt and received absolution of her sins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+MRS. FLYNN SPEAKS
+
+CHARLEY left Jo Portugais behind, and went home alone.  He watched at a
+window till he saw Rosalie return.  As she passed quickly down the street
+with Mrs. Flynn to her own door, he observed that her face was happier
+than he had seen it for many a day.  Her step was lighter, there was a
+freedom in her air, a sense of confidence in her carriage.
+
+She bore herself as one who had done a thing which relaxed a painful
+tension.  There was a curious glow in her eyes and face, and this became
+deeper as, showing himself at the door, she saw him, smiled, and stood
+still.  He came across the street and took her hand.
+
+"You have been away," she said softly.  "For a few days," he answered.
+
+"Far?"
+
+"At Vadrome Mountain."
+
+"You have missed these last days of the Passion Play," she said, a shadow
+in her eyes.
+
+"I was present to-day," he answered.
+
+She turned away her head quickly, for the look in his eyes told her more
+than any words could have done, and Mrs. Flynn said:
+
+"'Tis a day for everlastin' mimory, sir.  For the part she played this
+day, the darlin', only such as she could play!  'Tis the innocent takin'
+the shame o' the guilty, and the tears do be comin' to me eyes.  'Tis not
+ould Widdy Flynn's eyes alone that's wet this day, but hearts do be
+weepin' for the love o' God."
+
+Rosalie suddenly opened the door, and, without another look at Charley,
+entered the house.
+
+"'Tis one in a million!" said Mrs. Flynn, in a confidential tone, for
+she had a fixed idea that Rosalie loved Charley and that he loved her,
+and that the only thing that stood in the way of their marriage was
+religion.  From the first Charley had conquered Mrs. Flynn.  That he was
+a tailor was a pity and a shame, but love was love, and the man had a
+head on him and a heart in him; and love was love!  So Mrs. Flynn said:
+
+"'Tis one that a man that's a man should do annything for, was it havin'
+the heart cut out uv him, or givin' the last drop uv his blood.  Shure,
+for such as her, murder, or false witness, or givin' up the last wish or
+thought a man hugged to his boosom, would be as aisy as aisy."
+
+Charley laughed to himself, her purpose was so obvious, but his heart
+went out to her, for she was a friend, and, whatever came to him, Rosalie
+would not be alone.
+
+"I believe every word of yours," he said, shaking her hand, "and we'll
+see, you and I, that no man marries her who isn't ready to do what you
+say."
+
+"Would you do it yourself--if it was you?" she asked, flushing for her
+boldness.
+
+"I would," he answered.
+
+"Then do it," she said, and fled inside the house and shut the door.
+
+"Mrs. Flynn--good Mrs. Flynn!" he said, and went back sadly to his
+house, and shut himself up with his thoughts.  When night drew on he went
+to bed, but he could not sleep.  He got up after a time, and taking pen
+and paper, wrote for a long time.  Having finished, he took what he had
+written, and placing it with the two packets-of money and pearls--which
+he had brought from his old home, he addressed it to the Cure, and going
+to the safe in the wall of the shop, placed them inside and locked the
+door.
+
+Then he went to bed, and slept soundly--the deep sleep of the just.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+A BURNING FIERY FURNACE
+
+Every man within the limits of the parish was in his bed, save one.  He
+was a stranger who, once before, had visited Chaudiere for one brief day,
+when he had been saved from death at the Red Ravine, and had fled the
+village that night because, as he thought, he had heard the voice of his
+old friend's ghost in the trees.  Since that time he had travelled in
+many parishes, healing where he could, entertaining where he might,
+earning money as the charlatan.  He was now on his way back through the
+parishes to Montreal, and his route lay through Chaudiere.  He had hoped
+to reach Chaudiere before nightfall--he remembered with fear the incident
+from which he had fled many months before; but his horse had broken its
+leg on a corduroy bridge, a few miles out from the parish in the hills,
+and darkness came upon him before he could hide his wagon in the woods
+and proceed afoot to Chaudiere.  He had shot his horse, and rolled it
+into the swift torrent beneath the bridge.
+
+Travelling the lonely road, he drank freely from the whiskey-horn he
+carried, to keep his spirits up, so that by the time he came to the
+outskirts of Chaudiere he was in a state of intoxication, and reeled
+impudently along with the "Dutch courage" the liquor had given him.
+Arrived at the first cluster of houses in the place, he paused uncertain.
+Should he knock here or go on to the tavern?  He shivered at thought of
+the tavern, for it was near it he had heard Charley Steele's voice
+calling to him out of the trees.  If he knocked here, would the people
+admit him in his present state?--he had sense enough to know that he was
+very drunk.  As he shook his head in owlish gravity, he saw the church on
+the hill not far away.  He chuckled to himself.  The carpet in the
+chancel and the hassocks at the altar would make a good bed.  No fear of
+Charley's ghost coming inside the church--it wouldn't be that kind of a
+ghost.  As he travelled the intervening space, shrugging his shoulders,
+staggering serenely, he told himself in confidence that he would leave
+the church at dawn, go to the tavern, purchase a horse as soon as might
+be, and get back to his wagon.
+
+The church door was unlocked, and he entered and made his way to the
+chancel, found surplices in the vestry and put a hassock inside one for a
+pillow.  Then he sat down and drew the loose rug of the chancel-floor
+over him, and took another drink from the whiskey horn.  Lighting his
+pipe, he smoked for a while, but grew drowsy, and his pipe fell into his
+lap.  With eyes nearly shut he struck another match, made to light his
+pipe again, but threw the match away, still burning.  As he did so the
+pipe dropped again from his mouth, and he fell back on the hassock-pillow
+he had made.
+
+The lighted match fell on a surplice which had dropped from his arms as
+he came from the vestry, and set it afire.  In five minutes the whole
+chancel was burning, and the sleeping man waked in the midst of smoke and
+flame.  He staggered to his feet with a terror-stricken cry, stumbled
+down the aisle, through the front door, and out into the night.  Reaching
+the road, he turned his face again to the hill where his wagon lay hid.
+If he could reach that, he would be safe; nobody would suspect him.  He
+clutched the whiskey-horn tight and broke into a run.  As he passed
+beyond the village his excited imagination heard Charley Steele's ghost
+calling after him.  He ran harder.  The voice kept calling from
+Chaudiere.
+
+Not Charley's voice, but the voices of many people in Chaudiere were
+calling.  Some wakeful person had seen the glare in the church windows
+and had given the alarm, and now there rang through the streets the call-
+"Fire! Fire! Fire!"
+
+Charley and Jo were among the last to wake, for both had slept soundly,
+but Jo was roused by a handful of gravel thrown at his window and a
+warning cry, and a few moments later he and Charley were in the street
+with a hurrying crowd.  Over all the village was a red glare, lighting up
+the sky, burnishing the trees.  The church was a mass of flames.
+
+Charley was as pale as the rest of the crowd; for he thought of the Cure,
+he thought of this people to whom their church meant more than home and
+vastly more than friend and fortune.  His heart was with them all: not
+because it was their church that was burning, but because it was
+something dear to them.
+
+Reaching the hill, he saw the Cure coming from the vestry of the burning
+church, bearing some vessels of the altar.  Depositing them in the arms
+of his weeping sister, he turned again towards the door.  People clung to
+him, and would not let him go.
+
+"See, it is all inflames," they cried.  "Your cassock is singed.  You
+shall not go."
+
+At that moment Charley and Portugais came up.  A hurried question to the
+Cure from Charley, a key handed over, a nod from Jo, and before the Cure
+could prevent them the two men had rushed through the smoke and flame
+into the vestry, Portugais holding Charley's hand.
+
+The crowd outside waited in a terrible anxiety.  The timbers of the
+chancel portion of the building seemed about to fall, and still the two
+men did not appear.  The people called; the Cure clinched his hands at
+his side--he was too fearful even to pray.
+
+But now the two men appeared, loaded with the few treasures of the
+church.  They were scorched and singed, and the beards of both were
+burned, but, stumbling and exhausted, they brought their loads to the
+eager arms of the waiting habitants.
+
+Then from the other end of the church came a cry: "The little cross--the
+little iron cross!"  Then another cry: "Rosalie Evanturel!  Rosalie
+Evanturel!"  Some one came running to the Cure.
+
+"Rosalie Evanturel has gone inside for the little cross on the pillar.
+She is in the flames; the door has fallen in.  She can't get out again."
+
+With a hoarse cry, Charley darted back inside the vestry door.  A cry of
+horror went up.
+
+It was only a minute and a half, but it seemed like years, and then a man
+in flames appeared in the fiery porch--and not alone.  He carried a girl
+in his arms.  He wavered even at the threshold with the timbers swaying
+overhead, but, with a last effort, he plunged forward through the
+furnace, and was caught by eager hands on the margin of endurable heat.
+The two were smothered in quilts brought from the Cure's house, and
+carried swiftly to the cool safety of the grass and trees beyond.  The
+woman had fainted in the flame of the church; the man dropped insensible
+as they caught her from his arms.
+
+As they tore away Charley's coat muffling his face, and opened his shirt,
+they stared in awe.  The cross which Rosalie had torn from the pillar,
+Charley had thrust into his bosom, and there it now lay on the red scar
+made by itself in the hands of Louis Trudel.
+
+M. Loisel waved the people back.  He raised Charley's head.  The Abbe
+Rossignol, who had just arrived with the Seigneur, lifted the cross from
+the insensible man's breast.
+
+He started when he saw the scar.  Then he remembered the tale he had
+heard.  He turned away gravely to his brother.  "Was it the cross or the
+woman he went for?" he asked.
+
+"Great God--do you ask!" the Seigneur said indignantly.  "And he
+deserves her," he muttered under his breath.
+
+Charley opened his eyes.  "Is she safe?" he asked, starting up.
+
+"Unscathed, my son," the Cure said.
+
+Was this tailor-man not his son?  Had he not thirsted for his soul as a
+hart for the water-brooks?
+
+"I am very sorry for you, Monsieur," said Charley.
+
+"It is God's will," was the reply, in a choking voice.  "It will be years
+before we have another church--many, many years."
+
+The roof gave way with a crash, and the spire shot down into the flaming
+debris.
+
+The people groaned.
+
+"It will cost sixty thousand dollars to build it up again," said Filion
+Lacasse.
+
+"We have three thousand dollars from the Passion Play," said the Notary.
+"That could go towards it."
+
+"We have another two thousand in the bank," said Maximilian Cour.
+
+"But it will take years," said the saddler disconsolately.
+
+Charley looked at the Cure, mournful and broken but calm.  He saw the
+Seigneur, gloomy and silent, standing apart.  He saw the people in
+scattered groups, looking more homeless than if they had no homes.  Some
+groups were silent; others discussed angrily the question, who was the
+incendiary--that it had been set on fire seemed certain.
+
+"I said no good would come of the play-acting," said the Seigneur's
+groom, and was flung into the ditch by Filion Lacasse.
+
+Presently Charley staggered to his feet, purpose in his face.  These
+people, from the Cure and Seigneur to the most ignorant habitant, were
+hopeless and inert.  The pride of their lives was gone.
+
+"Gather the people together," he said to the Notary and Filion Lacasse.
+Then he turned to the Cure and the Seigneur.
+
+"With your permission, messieurs," he said, "I will do a harder thing
+than I have ever done.  I will speak to them all."
+
+Wondering, M. Loisel added his voice to the Notary's, and the word went
+round.  Slowly they all made their way to a spot the Cure indicated.
+
+Charley stood on the embankment above the road, the notables of the
+parish round him.
+
+Rosalie had been taken to the Cure's house.  In that wild moment in the
+church when she had fallen insensible in Charley's arms, a new feeling
+had sprung up in her.  She loved him in every fibre, but she had a
+strange instinct, a prescience, that she was lying on his breast for the
+last time.  She had wound her arms round his neck, and, as his lips
+closed on hers, she had cried: "We shall die together--together."
+
+As she lay in the Cure's house, she thought only of that moment.
+
+"What are they cheering for?" she asked, as a great noise came to her
+through the window.
+
+"Run and see," said the Cure's sister to Mrs. Flynn, and the fat woman
+hurried away.
+
+Rosalie raised herself so that she could look out of the window.  "I can
+see him," she cried.
+
+"See whom?" asked the Cure's sister.
+
+"Monsieur," she answered, with a changed voice.  "He is speaking.  They
+are cheering him."
+
+Ten minutes later, the Cure and the Notary entered the room.  M. Loisel
+came forward to Rosalie, and took her hands in his.
+
+"You should not have done it," he said.
+
+"I wanted to do something," she replied.  "To get the cross for you
+seemed the only payment I could make for all your goodness to me."
+
+"It nearly cost you your life--and the life of another," he said, shaking
+his head reproachfully.
+
+Cheering came again from the burning church.  "Why do they cheer?" she
+asked.
+
+"Why do they cheer?  Because the man we have feared, Monsieur Mallard--"
+
+"I never feared him," said Rosalie, scarcely above her breath.
+
+"Because he has taught them the way to a new church again--and at once,
+at once, my child."
+
+"A remarkable man!" said Narcisse Dauphin.  "There never was such a
+speech.  Never in any courtroom was there such an appeal."
+
+"What did he do?" asked Mademoiselle Loisel, her hand in Rosalie's.
+
+"Everything," answered the Cure.  "There he stood in his tattered
+clothes, the beard burnt to his chin, his hands scorched, his eyes
+bloodshot, and he spoke--"
+
+"'With the tongues of men and of angels,'" said M. Dauphin
+enthusiastically.
+
+The Cure frowned and continued: "'You look on yonder burning walls,' he
+said, 'and wonder when they will rise again on this hill made sacred by
+the burial of your beloved, by the christening of your children, the
+marriages which have given you happy homes, and the sacraments which are
+to you the laws of your lives.  You give one-twentieth of your income
+yearly towards your church--then give one-fortieth of all you possess
+today, and your church will be begun in a month.  Before a year goes
+round you will come again to this venerable spot and enter another church
+here.  Your vows, your memories, and your hopes will be purged by fire.
+All that you possess will be consecrated by your free-will offerings.'
+--Ah, if I could but remember what came afterwards!  It was all
+eloquence, and generous and noble thought."
+
+"He spoke of you," said the Notary--"he spoke the truth; and the people
+cheered.  He said that the man outside the walls could sometimes tell the
+besieged the way relief would come.  Never again shall I hear such a
+speech."
+
+"What are they going to do?" asked Rosalie, and withdrew her trembling
+hand from that of Madame Dugal.
+
+"This very day, at my office, they will bring their offerings, and we
+will begin at once," answered M. Dauphin.  "There is no man in Chaudiere
+but will take the stocking from the hole, the bag from the chest, the
+credit from the bank, the grain from the barn for the market, or make the
+note of hand to contribute one-fortieth of all he is worth for the
+rebuilding of the church."
+
+"Notes of hand are not money," said the Cure's sister, the practical
+sense ever uppermost.
+
+"They shall all be money--hard cash," said the Notary.  "The Seigneur is
+going to open a sort of bank, and take up the notes of hand, and give
+bank-bills in return.  To-day I go with his steward to Quebec to get the
+money."
+
+"What does the Abbe Rossignol say?" said the Cure's sister.
+
+"Our church and parish are our own," interposed the Cure proudly.  "We do
+our duty and fear no abbe."
+
+"Voila!" said M. Dauphin, "he never can keep hands off.  I saw him go to
+Jo Portugais a little while ago.  'Remember!' he said--I can't make out
+what he was after.  We have enough to remember to-day, for sure."
+
+"Good may come of it, perhaps," said M. Loisel, looking sadly out upon
+the ruins of his church.
+
+"See, 'tis the sunrise!" said Mrs. Flynn's voice from the corner, her
+face towards the eastern window.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL
+
+In four days ten thousand dollars in notes and gold had been brought to
+the office of the Notary by the faithful people of Chaudiere.  All day in
+turn M. Loisel and M. Rossignol sat in the office and received that which
+represented one-fortieth of the value of each man's goods, estate, and
+wealth--the fortieth value of a woodsawyer's cottage, or a widow's
+garden.  They did it impartially for all, as the Cure and three of the
+best-to-do habitants had done for the Seigneur, whose four thousand
+dollars had been paid in first of all.
+
+Charley had been confined to his room for three days, because of his
+injuries and a feverish cold he had caught, and the habitants did not
+disturb his quiet.  But Mrs. Flynn took him broth made by Rosalie's
+hands, and Rosalie fought with her desire to go to him and nurse him.
+She was not, however, the Rosalie of the old impulse and impetuous
+resolve--the arrow had gone too deep; she waited till she could see his
+face again and look into his eyes.  Not apathy, but a sense of the
+inevitable was upon her, and pale and fragile, but with a calm spirit,
+she waited for she knew not what.
+
+She felt that the day of fate was closing down.  She must hold herself
+ready for the hour when he would need her most.  At first, when the
+conviction had come to her that the end of all was near, she had
+revolted.  She had had impulse to go to him at all hazards, to say to
+him: "Come away--anywhere, anywhere!"  But that had given place to the
+deeper thing in her, and something of Charley's spirit of stoic waiting
+had come upon her.
+
+She watched the people going to the Notary's office with their tributes
+and free-will offerings, and they seemed like people in a play--these
+days she lived no life which was theirs.  It was a dream, unimportant
+and temporary.  She was feeling what was behind all life, and permanent.
+It could not last, but there it was; and she could not return to the
+transitory till this cloud of fate was lifted.  She was much too young to
+suffer so, but the young ever suffer most.
+
+On the fourth day she saw Charley.  He came from his shop and went to the
+Notary's office.  At first she was startled, for he was clean-shaven--the
+fire had burned his beard to the skin.  She saw a different man, far
+removed from this life about them both--individual, singular.  He was
+pale, and his eye-glass, with the cleanshaven face, gave an impression of
+refined separateness.  She did not know that the same look was in both
+their faces.  She watched him till he entered the Notary's shop, then she
+was called away to her duties.
+
+Charley had come to give his one-fortieth with the rest.  When he entered
+the Notary's office, the Seigneur and M. Dauphin stood up to greet him.
+They congratulated him on his recovery, while feeling also that the
+change in his personal appearance somehow affected their relations.
+A crowd gathered round the door of the shop.  When Charley made his
+offering, with a statement of his goods and income, the Seigneur and
+Notary did not know what to do.  They were disposed to decline it, for
+since Monsieur was no Catholic, it was not his duty to help.  At this
+moment of delicate anxiety M. Loisel entered.  With a swift bright flush
+to his cheek he saw the difficulty, and at once accepted freely.
+
+"God bless you," he said, as he took the money, and Charley left.  "It
+shall build the doorway of my church."
+
+Later in the day the Cure sent for Charley.  There were grave matters to
+consider, and his counsel was greatly needed.  They had all come to
+depend on the soundness of his judgment.  It had never gone astray in
+Chaudiere, they said.  They owed to him this extraordinary scheme, which
+would be an example to all modern Christianity.  They told him so.  He
+said nothing in reply.
+
+In an hour he had planned for them a scheme for the consideration of
+contractors; had drawn, with the help of M. Loisel, an architect's rough
+plan of the new church, and, his old professional instincts keenly alive,
+had lucidly suggested the terms and safeguards of the contracts.
+
+Then came the question of the money contributed.  The day before, M.
+Dauphin and the Seigneur's steward had arrived in safety from Quebec with
+twenty thousand dollars in bank-bills.  These M. Rossignol had exchanged
+for the notes of hand of such of the habitants as had not ready cash to
+give.  All of this twenty thousand dollars had been paid over.  They had
+now thirty thousand dollars in cash, besides three thousand which the
+Cure had at his house, the proceeds of the Passion Play.  It was proposed
+to send this large sum to the bank in Quebec in another two days, when
+the whole contributions should be complete.
+
+As to the safety of the money, the timid M. Dauphin did not care to take
+responsibility.  Strangers were still arriving, ignorant of the fact that
+the Passion Play had ceased, and some of them must be aware that this
+large sum of money was in the parish--no doubt also knew that it was in
+his house.  It was therefore better, he urged, that M. Rossignol or the
+Cure should take charge of it.  M. Loisel urged that secrecy as to the
+resting-place of the money was important.  It was better that it should
+be deposited in the most unlikely place, and with some unofficial person
+who might not be supposed to have it in charge.
+
+"I have it!" said the Seigneur.  "The money shall be placed in old Louis
+Trudel's safe in the wall of the tailor-shop."
+
+It was so arranged, after Charley's protests of unwillingness, and
+counter-appeals from the others.  That evening at sundown thirty-three
+thousand dollars was deposited in the safe in the old stone wall of the
+tailorshop, and the lock was sealed with the parish seal.
+
+But the Notary's wife had wormed the secret from her husband, and she
+found it hard to keep.  She told it to Maximilian Cour, and he kept it.
+She told it to her cousin, the wife of Filion Lacasse, and she did not
+keep it.  Before twenty-four hours went round, a dozen people knew it.
+
+The evening of the second day, another two thousand dollars was added to
+the treasure, and the lock was again sealed--with the utmost secrecy.
+Charley and Jo Portugais, the infidel and the murderer, were thus the
+sentries to the peace of a parish, the bankers of its gifts, the security
+for the future of the church of Chaudiere.  Their weapons of defence were
+two old pistols belonging to the Seigneur.
+
+"Money is the master of the unexpected," the Seigneur had said as he
+handed them over.  He chuckled for hours afterwards as he thought of his
+epigram.  That night, as he turned over in bed for the third time, as was
+his custom before going to sleep, another epigram came to him--"Money is
+the only fox hunted night and day."  He kept repeating it over and over
+again with vain pride.
+
+The truth of M. Rossignol's aphorisms had been demonstrated several days
+before.  On his return from Quebec with the twenty thousand dollars of
+the Seigneur's money, M. Dauphin had dwelt with great pride on the
+discretion and energy he and the steward had shown; had told dramatically
+of the skill which had enabled them to make a journey of such importance
+so secretly and safely; had covered himself with blushes for his own
+coolness and intrepidity.  Fortune had, however, favoured his reputation
+and his intrepidity, for he had been pursued from the hour he and his
+companion left Quebec.  A taste for the picturesque had impelled him to
+arrange for two relays of horses, and this fact saved him and the twenty
+thousand dollars he carried.  Two hours after he had left Quebec, four
+determined men had got upon his trail, and had only been prevented from
+overtaking him by the freshness of the horses which his dramatic
+foresight had provided.
+
+The leader of these four pursuers was Billy Wantage, who had come to know
+of the curious action of the Seigneur of Chaudiere from an intimate
+friend, a clerk in the bank.  Billy's fortunes were now in a bad way,
+and, in desperate straits for money, he had planned this bold attempt at
+the highwayman's art with two gamblers, to whom he owed money, and a
+certain notorious horse-trader of whom he had made a companion of late.
+Having escaped punishment for a crime once before, through Charley's
+supposed death, the immunity nerved him to this later and more dangerous
+enterprise.  The four rode as hard as their horses would permit, but M.
+Dauphin and his companion kept always an hour or more ahead, and, from
+the high hills overlooking the village, Billy and his friends saw the two
+enter it safely in the light of evening.
+
+His three friends urged Billy to turn back, since they were out of
+provisions and had no shelter.  It was unwise to go to a tavern or a
+farmer's house, where they must certainly be suspected.  Billy, however,
+determined to make an effort to find the banking-place of the money, and
+refused to turn back without a trial.  He therefore proposed that they
+should separate, going different directions, secure accommodation for the
+night, rest the following day, and meet the next night at a point
+indicated.  This was agreed upon, and they separated.
+
+When the four met again, Billy had nothing to communicate, as he had been
+taken ill during the night before, and had been unable to go secretly
+into Chaudiere village.  They separated once more.  When they met the
+next night Billy was accompanied by an old confederate.  As he was
+entering Chaudiere the previous evening, he had met John Brown, with his
+painted wagon and a new mottled horse.  John Brown had news of importance
+to give; for, in the stable-yard of the village tavern, he had heard one
+habitant confide to another that the money for the new church was kept in
+the safe of the tailor-shop.  John Brown was as ready to share in Billy's
+second enterprise as he had been to incite him to his first crime.
+
+So it was that as the Seigneur made his epigram and gloated over it, the
+five men, with horses at a convenient distance, armed to the teeth, broke
+stealthily into Charley's house.
+
+They entered silently through the kitchen window, and made their way into
+the little hall.  Two stood guard at the foot of the stairs, and three
+crept into the shop.
+
+This night Jo Portugais was sleeping up-stairs, while Charley lay upon
+the bench in the tailor-shop.  Charley heard the door open, heard
+unfamiliar steps, seized his pistol, and, springing up, with his back to
+the safe, called out loudly to Jo.  As he dimly saw men rush at him, he
+fired.  The bullet reached its mark, and one man fell dead.  At that
+moment a dark-lantern was turned full on Charley, and a pistol was fired
+pointblank at him.
+
+As he fell, shot through the breast, the man who had fired dropped the
+lantern with a shriek of terror.  He had seen the ghost of his brother-
+in-law-Charley Steele.
+
+With a quaking cry of warning to the others, Billy bolted from the house,
+followed by his companions, two of whom were struggling with Jo Portugais
+on the stairway.  These now also broke and ran.
+
+Jo rushed into the shop, and saw, as he thought, Charley lying dead--
+saw the robber dead upon the floor.  His master and friend gone, the
+conviction seized him that his own time had come.  He would give himself
+to justice now--but to God's justice, not to man's.  The robbers were
+four to one, and he would avenge his master's death and give his own life
+to do it!  It was all the thought of a second.  He rushed out after the
+robbers, shouting as he ran, to awake the villagers.  He heard the
+marauders ahead of him, and, fleet of foot, rushed on.  Reaching them as
+they mounted, he fired, and brought down his man--a shivering quack-
+doctor, who, like his leader, had seen a sight in the tailor-shop that
+struck terror to his soul.  Two of the others then fired at Jo, who had
+caught a horse by the head.  He fell without a sound, and lay upon his
+face--he did not hear the hoofs of the escaping horses nor any other
+sound.  He had fallen without a pang beside the quackdoctor, whose
+medicines would never again quicken a pulse in his own body or any other.
+
+Behind, in the village, frightened people flocked about the tailor-shop.
+Within, Mrs. Flynn and the Notary crudely but tenderly bound up the
+dreadful wound in Charley's side, while Rosalie pillowed his head on her
+bosom.
+
+With a strange quietness Rosalie gave orders to the Notary and Mrs.
+Flynn.  There was a light in her eyes--an unnatural light--of strength
+and presence of mind.  Her hand was steady, and as gently as a mother
+with a child she wiped the moist forehead, and poured a little brandy
+between the set teeth.
+
+"Stand back--give him air," she said, in a voice of authority to those
+who crowded round.
+
+People fell back in awe, for, amid tears and excitement and fear, this
+girl had a strange convincing calm.  By the time Charley's wound was
+stopped, messengers were on the way to the Cure and the Seigneur.  By
+Rosalie's instructions the dead body of the robber was removed, Charley's
+bed up-stairs was prepared for him, a fire was lighted, and twenty hands
+were ready to do accurately her will.  Now and again she felt his pulse,
+and she watched his face intently.  In her bitter sorrow her heart had a
+sort of thankfulness, for his head was on her breast, he was in her arms.
+It had been given her once more to come first to his rescue, and with one
+wild cry, unheard by any one, to call out his beloved name.
+
+The world of Chaudiere, roused by the shooting, had then burst in upon
+them; but that one moment had been hers, no matter what came after.  She
+had no illusions--she knew that the end was near: the end of all for him
+and for them both.
+
+The Cure entered and hurried forward.  There was the seal of the parish
+intact on the door of the safe, but at what cost!
+
+"He has given his life for the church," he said, then commanded all to
+leave, save those needed to carry the wounded man up-stairs.
+
+Still it was Rosalie that directed the removal.  She held his hand; she
+saw that he was carefully laid down; she raised his head to a proper
+height; she moistened his lips and fanned him.  Meanwhile the Cure fell
+upon his knees, and the noise of talk and whispering ceased in the house.
+
+But presently there was loud murmuring and shuffling of feet outside
+again, and Rosalie left the room hurriedly and went below to stop it.
+She met the men who were bringing the body of Jo Portugais into the shop.
+
+Up-stairs the Cure's voice prayed: "Of Thy mercy, O Lord, hear our
+prayer.  Grant that he be brought into Thy Church ere his last hour come.
+Forgive, O Lord--"
+
+Charley stirred and opened his eyes.  He saw the Cure bowed in prayer; he
+heard the trembling voice.  He touched the white head with his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+IN WHICH CHARLEY MEETS A STRANGER
+
+The Cure came to his feet with a joyful cry.  "Monsieur--my son," he
+said, bending over him.
+
+"Is it all over?" Charley asked calmly, almost cheerfully.  Death now
+was the only solution of life's problems, and he welcomed it from the
+void.
+
+The Cure went to the door and locked it.  The deepest desire of his life
+must here be uttered, his great aspiration be realised.
+
+"My son," he said, as he came softly to the bedside again, "you have
+given to us all you had--your charity, your wisdom, your skill.  You have
+"--it was hard, but the man's wound was mortal, and it must be said "you
+have consecrated our new church with your blood.  You have given all to
+us; we will give all to you--"
+
+There was a soft knocking at the door.  He went and opened it a very
+little.  "He is conscious, Rosalie," he whispered.  "Wait--wait--one
+moment."
+
+Then came the Seigneur's voice saying that Jo was gone, and that all the
+robbers had escaped, save the two disposed of by Charley and Jo.
+
+The Cure turned to the bed once more.  "What did he say about Jo?"
+Charley asked.
+
+"He is dead, my son, and the quack-doctor also.  The others have
+escaped."
+
+Charley turned his face away.  "Au revoir, Jo," he said into the great
+distance.
+
+Then there was silence for a moment, while outside the door a girl
+prayed, with an old woman's arm around her.
+
+The Cure leaned over Charley again.  "Shall not the sacraments of the
+Church comfort you in your last hours?" he said.  "It is the way, the
+truth, and the life.  It is the Voice that says: 'Peace' to the vexed
+mind.  Human intellect is vanity; only the soul survives.  Will you not
+hear the Voice?  Will you not give us who love and honour you the right
+to make you ours for ever?  Will you not come to the bosom of that Church
+for which you have given all?"
+
+"Tell them so," Charley said, and he motioned towards the window, under
+which the people were gathered.
+
+With a glad exclamation the Cure hastened to the window, and, in a voice
+of sorrowful exultation, spoke to the people below.
+
+Charley reckoned swiftly with his fate.  What was there now to do?  If
+his wound was not mortal, what tragedy might now come!  For Billy's hand
+--the hand of Kathleen's brother--had brought him low.  If the robbers
+and murderers were captured, he must be dragged into the old life, and to
+what an issue--all the old problems carried into more terrible
+conditions.  And Rosalie--in his half-consciousness he had felt her near
+him; he felt her near him now.  Rosalie--in any case, what could there be
+for her?  Nothing.  He had heard the Cure whisper her name at the door.
+She was outside-praying for him.  He stretched out a hand as though he
+saw her, and his lips framed her name.  In his weakness and fading life
+he had no anguish in the thought of her.  Life and Love were growing
+distant though he loved her as few love and live.  She would be removed
+from want by him--there were the pearls and the money in the safe with
+the money of the Church; there was the letter to the Cure, his last
+testament, leaving all to her.  He, sleeping, would fear no foe; she,
+awake in the living world, would hold him in dear remembrance.  Death
+were the better thing for all.  Then Kathleen in her happiness would be
+at peace; and even Billy might go unmolested, for, who was there to
+recognise Billy, now that Portugais was dead?
+
+He heard the Cure's voice at the window--"Oh, my dear people, God has
+given him to us at last.  I go now to prepare him for his long journey,
+to--"
+
+Charley realised and shuddered.  Receive the sacraments of the Church?
+Be made ready by the priest for his going hence--end all the soul's
+interrogations, with the solving of his own mortal problems?  Say "I
+believe," confess his sins, and, receiving absolution, lie down in peace.
+
+He suddenly raised himself on his elbow, flinging his body over.  The
+bandage of his wound was displaced, and blood gushed out upon the white
+clothes of the bed.  "Rosalie!" he gasped.  "Rosalie, my love!  God keep
+.  .  .  "
+
+As he sank back he heard the priest's anguished voice above him, calling
+for help.  He smiled.
+
+"Rosalie--" he whispered.  The priest ran and unlocked the door, and
+Rosalie entered, followed by the Seigneur and Mrs. Flynn.
+
+"Quick!  Quick!" said the priest.  "The bandage slipped."
+
+The bandage slipped--or was it slipped?  Who knows!
+
+Blind with agony, and as in a direful dream, Rosalie made her way to the
+bed.  The sight of his ensanguined body roused her, and, murmuring his
+name--continually murmuring his name--she assisted Mrs. Flynn to bind up
+the wound again.  Standing where she stood when she had stayed Louis
+Trudel's arm long ago, with an infinite tenderness she touched the scar-
+the scar of the cross--on his breast.  Terrible as was her grief, her
+heart had its comfort in the thought--who could rob her of that for
+ever?--that he would die a martyr.  It did not matter now who knew the
+story of her love.  It could not do him harm.  She was ready to proclaim
+it to all the world.  And those who watched knew that they were in the
+presence of a great human love.
+
+The priest made ready to receive the unconscious man into the Church.
+Had Charley not said, "Tell them so?"  Was it not now his duty to say the
+sacred offices over a son of the Church in his last bitter hour?  So it
+was done while he lay unconscious.
+
+For hours he lay still, and then the fevered blood, poisoned by the
+bullet which had brought him down, made him delirious, gave him
+hallucinations--open-eyed illusions.  All the time Rosalie knelt at the
+foot of the bed, her piteous tearless eyes for ever fixed on his face.
+
+Towards evening, with an unnatural strength, he sat up in bed.
+
+"See," he whispered, "that woman in the corner there.  She has come to
+take me, but I will not go."  Fantasy after fantasy possessed him-
+fantasy, strangely mixed with facts of his own past.  Now it was
+Kathleen, now Billy, now Jo Portugais, now John Brown, now Suzon
+Charlemagne at the Cote Dorion, again Jo Portugais.  In strange, touching
+sentences he spoke to them, as though they were present before him.  At
+length he stopped abruptly, and gazed straight before him--over the head
+of Rosalie into the distance.
+
+"See," he said, pointing, "who is that?  Who?  I can't see his face--it
+is covered.  So tall-so white!  He is opening his arms to me.  He is
+coming--closer--closer.  Who is it?"
+
+"It is Death, my son," said the priest in his ear, with a pitying
+gentleness.
+
+The Cure's voice seemed to calm the agitated sense, to bring it back to
+the outer precincts of understanding.  There was an awe-struck silence as
+the dying man fumbled, fumbled, over his breast, found his eye-glass,
+and, with a last feeble effort, raised it to his eye, shining now with an
+unearthly fire.  The old interrogation of the soul, the elemental habit
+outlived all else in him.  The idiosyncrasy of the mind automatically
+expressed itself.
+
+"I beg--your--pardon," he whispered to the imagined figure, and the light
+died out of his eyes, "have I--ever--been--introduced--to you?"
+
+"At the hour of your birth, my son," said the priest, as a sobbing cry
+came from the foot of the bed.
+
+But Charley did not hear.  His ears were for ever closed to the voices of
+life and time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+THE HAND AT THE DOOR
+
+The eve of the day of the memorable funeral two belated visitors to the
+Passion Play arrived in the village, unknowing that it had ended, and of
+the tragedy which had set a whole valley mourning; unconscious that they
+shared in the bitter fortunes of the tailor-man, of whom men and women
+spoke with tears.  Affected by the gloom of the place, the two visitors
+at once prepared for their return journey, but the manner of the
+tailorman's death arrested their sympathies, touched the humanity in
+them.  The woman was much impressed.
+
+They asked to see the body of the man.  They were taken to the door of
+the tailor-shop, while their horses were being brought round.  Within the
+house itself they were met by an old Irishwoman, who, in response to
+their wish "to see the brave man's body," showed them into a room where a
+man lay dead with a bullet through his heart.  It was the body of Jo
+Portugais, whose master and friend lay in another room across the
+hallway.  The lady turned back in disappointment--the dead man was little
+like a hero.
+
+The Irishwoman had meant to deceive her, for at this moment a girl who
+loved the tailor was kneeling beside his body, and, if possible, Mrs.
+Flynn would have no curious eyes look upon that scene.
+
+When the visitors came into the hall again, the man said: "There was
+another; Kathleen--a woodsman."  But standing by the nearly closed door,
+behind which lay the dead tailor of Chaudiere--they could see the holy
+candles flickering within--Kathleen whispered "We've seen the tailor--
+that's enough.  It's only the woodsman there.  I prefer not, Tom."
+
+With his fingers at the latch, the man hesitated, even as Mrs. Flynn
+stepped apprehensively forward; then, shrugging a shoulder, he responded
+to Kathleen's hand on his arm.  They went down the stairs together, and
+out to their carriage.
+
+As they drove away, Kathleen said: "It's strange that men who do such
+fine things should look so commonplace."
+
+"The other one might have been more uncommon," he replied.
+
+"I wonder!" she said, with a sigh of relief, as they passed the bounds
+of the village.  Then she caught herself flushing, for she suddenly
+realised that the exclamation was one so often on the lips of a dead,
+disgraced man whose name she once had borne.
+
+If the door of the little room upstairs had opened to the fingers of the
+man beside her, the tailor of Chaudiere, though dead, would have been
+dearly avenged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI
+
+THE CURE SPEAKS
+
+The Cure stood with his back to the ruins of the church, at his feet two
+newly made graves, and all round, with wistful faces, crowds of reverent
+habitants.  A benignant sorrow made his voice in perfect temper with the
+pensive striving of this latest day of spring.  At the close of his
+address he said:
+
+"I owe you much, my people.  I owe him more, for it was given him, who
+knew not God, to teach us how to know Him better.  For his past, it is
+not given you to know.  It is hidden in the bosom of the Church.  Sinner
+he once was, criminal never, as one can testify who knows all"--he turned
+to the Abbe Rossignol, who stood beside him, grave and compassionate--
+"and his sins were forgiven him.  He is the one sheaf which you and I may
+carry home rejoicing from the pagan world of unbelief.  What he had in
+life he gave to us, and in death he leaves to our church all that he has
+not left to a woman he loved--to Rosalie Evanturel."
+
+There was a gasping murmur among the people, but they stilled again, and
+strained to hear.
+
+"He leaves her a little fortune, and to us all else he had.  Let us pray
+for his soul, and let us comfort her who, loving deeply, reaped no
+harvest of love.
+
+"The law may never reach his ruthless murderers, for there is none to
+recognise their faces; and were they ten times punished, how should it
+avail us now!  Let us always remember that, in his grave, our friend
+bears on his breast the little iron cross we held so dear.  That is all
+we could give--our dearest treasure.  I pray God that, scarring his
+breast in life, it may heal all his woes in death, and be a saving image
+on his bosom in the Presence at the last."
+
+He raised his hands in benediction.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+Never again was there a Passion Play in the Chaudiere Valley.  Spring-
+times and harvests and long winters came and went, and a blessing seemed
+to be upon the valley, for men prospered, and no untoward things befel
+the people.  So it was for twenty years, wherein there had been going and
+coming in quiet.  Some had gone upon short mortal journeys and had come
+back, some upon long immortal voyages, and had never returned.  Of the
+last were the Seigneur and a woman once a Magdalene; but in a house
+beside a beautiful church, with a noble doorway, lived the Cure, M.
+Loisel, aged and serene.  There never was a day, come rain or shine, in
+which he was not visited by a beautiful woman, whose life was one with
+the people of the valley.
+
+There was no sorrow in the parish which the lady did not share, with the
+help of an old Irishwoman called Mrs. Flynn.  Was there sickness in the
+parish, her hand smoothed the pillow and soothed the pain.  Was there
+trouble anywhere, her face brought light to the door way.  Did any suffer
+ill-repute, her word helped to restore the ruined name.  They did not
+know that she forgave so much in all the world, because she thought she
+had so much in herself to forgive.
+
+She was ever called "Madame Rosalie," and she cherished the name, and
+gave commands that when her grave came to be made near to a certain other
+grave, Madame Rosalie should be carved upon the stone.  Cheerfulness and
+serenity were ever with her, undisturbed by wish to probe the mystery of
+the life which had once absorbed her own.  She never sought to know
+whence the man came; it was sufficient to know whither he had gone, and
+that he had been hers for a brief dream of life.  It was better to have
+lived the one short thrilling hour with all its pain, than never to have
+known what she knew or felt what she had felt.  The mystery deepened her
+romance, and she was even glad that the ruffians who slew him were never
+brought to justice.  To her mind they were but part of the mystic
+machinery of fate.
+
+For her the years had given many compensations, and so she told the Cure,
+one midsummer day, when she brought to visit him the orphaned son of
+Paulette Dubois, graduated from his college in France and making ready to
+go to the far East.
+
+"I have had more than I deserve--a thousand times," she said.
+
+The Cure smiled, and laid a gentle hand upon her own.  "It is right for
+you to think so," he said, "but after a long life, I am ready to say
+that, one way or another, we earn all the real happiness we have.  I mean
+the real happiness--the moments, my child.  I once had a moment full of
+happiness."
+
+"May I ask?" she said.
+
+"When my heart first went out to him"--he turned his face towards the
+churchyard.
+
+"He was a great man," she said proudly.
+
+The Cure looked at her benignly: she was a woman, and she had loved the
+man.  He had, however, come to a stage of life where greatness alone
+seemed of little moment.  He forbore to answer her, but he pressed her
+hand.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Youth is the only comrade for youth
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "RIGHT OF WAY":
+
+A left-handed boy is all right in the world
+Always hoping the best from the worst of us
+Damnable propinquity
+Good fathers think they have good daughters
+Have not we all something to hide--with or without shame?
+He has wheeled his nuptial bed into the street
+He left his fellow-citizens very much alone
+He had had acquaintances, but never friendships, and never loves
+Hugging the chain of denial to his bosom
+I have a good memory for forgetting
+I am only myself when I am drunk
+I should remember to forget it
+Importunity with discretion was his motto
+In all secrets there is a kind of guilt
+Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere acting
+It is good to live, isn't it?
+Know how bad are you, and doesn't mind
+Liquor makes me human
+Nervous legs at a gallop
+Pathetically  in earnest
+Shure, if we could always be 'about the same,' we'd do
+So say your prayers, believe all you can, don't ask questions
+Strike first and heal after--"a kick and a lick"
+Suspicion, the bane of sick old age
+Things that once charmed charm less
+Was not civilisation a mistake
+Who knows!
+Youth is the only comrade for youth
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIGHT OF WAY, PARKER, ENTIRE ***
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