THE RIGHT OF WAY

By Gilbert Parker

Volume 2. 

IX. OLD DEBTS FOR NEWX. THE WAY IN AND THE WAY OUTXI. THE RAISING OF THE CURTAINXII. THE COMING OF ROSALIEXIII. HOW CHARLEY WENT ADVENTURING, AND WHAT HE FOUNDXIV. ROSALIE, CHARLEY, AND THE MAN THE WIDOW PLOMONDON JILTEDXV. THE MARK IN THE PAPERXVI. MADAME DAUPHIN HAS A MISSIONXVII. THE TAILOR MAKES A MIDNIGHT FORAYXVIII. THE STEALING OF THE CROSS

CHAPTER IX

OLD DEBTS FOR NEW

Jo Portugtais was breaking the law of the river--he was running a littleraft down the stream at night, instead of tying up at sundown and campingon the shore, or sitting snugly over cooking-pot by the little woodencaboose on his raft. But defiance of custom and tradition was a habitwith Jo Portugais. He had lived in his own way many a year, and he waslikely to do so till the end, though he was a young man yet. He had manyprofessions, or rather many gifts, which he practised as it pleased him. He was river-driver, woodsman, hunter, carpenter, guide, as whim oropportunity came to him. On the evening when Charley Steele met with hismishap he was a river-driver--or so it seemed. He had been up nor'west ahundred 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--throughslides, over rapids, and in strong currents. Defying the code of theriver, with only one small light at the rear of his raft, he voyaged theswift current towards his home, which, when he arrived opposite the CoteDorion, was still a hundred miles below. He had watched the lights inthe river-drivers' camps, had seen the men beside the fires, and haddrifted on, with no temptation to join in the songs floating out over thedark 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 thecurrent carried him inshore. He saw the dim light, he saw dark figuresin the bar-room, he even got a glimpse of Suzon Charlemagne. He droppedthe house behind quickly, but looked back, leaning on the oar andthinking how swift was the rush of the current past the tavern. His eyeswere on the tavern door and the light shining through it. Suddenly thelight disappeared, and the door vanished into darkness. He heard ascuffle, and then a heavy splash. 

"There's trouble there, " said Jo Portugais, straining his eyes throughthe night, for a kind of low roar, dwindling to a loud whispering, andthen a noise of hurrying feet, came down the stream, and he could dimlysee dark figures running away into the night by different paths. 

"Some dirty work, very sure, " said Jo Portugais, and his eyes travelledback 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. Itmust 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 strainedhis eyes and ears. He shifted his position and took another oar, wherethe raft-lantern might not throw a reflection upon the water. He saw alight shine again through the tavern doorway, then a dark object blockthe light, and a head thrust forward towards the river as thoughlistening. 

At this moment he fancied he saw something in the water nearing him. Hestretched his neck. Yes, there was something. 

"It's a man. God save us--was it murder?" said Jo Portugais, andshuddered. "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 waista rope tied to a timber, jumped into the water. 

Three minutes later, on the raft, he was examining a wound in the head ofan insensible man. 

As his hand wandered over the body towards the heart, it touchedsomething that rattled against a button. He picked it up mechanicallyand held it to the light. It was an eye-glass. 

"My God!" said Jo Portugais, and peered into the man's face. "It'shim. " 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 yearnedtowards 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 awidely travelled man. He had adventured freely on the great rivers andin the forests, and had journeyed up towards Hudson's Bay farther thanany 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 amorose bearded man who looked forty, for it had been marked by hisdisappearance from Chaudiere and his return at the end of it, to find hismother dead and his father dying broken-hearted. What had driven Jo fromhome only his father knew; what had happened to him during that year onlyJo 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 apartin Chaudiere parish. A dreadful memory that haunted him, carried him outof the village, which clustered round the parish church, into VadromeMountain, three miles away, where he lived apart from all his kind. Itwas here he brought the man with the eye-glass one early dawn, after twonights and two days on the river, pulling him up the long hill in a lowcart with his strong faithful dogs, hitching himself with them andtoiling upwards through the dark. In his three-roomed hut he laid hischarge down upon a pile of bear-skins, and tended him with a strangegentleness, bathing the wound in the head and binding it again and again. 

The next morning the sick man opened his eyes heavily. He then beganfumbling mechanically on his breast. At last his fingers found hismonocle. 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 aminute his eyes opened again, and he gazed with painful, patheticseriousness at Jo. This grew to a kind of childish terror; then slowly, as a shadow passes, the perplexity, anxiety and terror cleared away, andleft his forehead calm, his eyes unvexed and peaceful. The monocledropped, and he did not heed it. At length he said wearily, and with anincredibly simple dependence:

"I am thirsty now. "

Jo lifted a wooden bowl to his lips, and he drank, drank, drank torepletion. 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 hadeaten and drunk the bowlful to the last drop and crumb, he lay back witha sigh of content, but trembling from weakness and the strain, thoughJo's hand had been under his head, and he had been fed like a littlechild. 

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 firstday in the hut at Vadrome Mountain passed without questioning on the partof either Charley Steele or his host. 

With good reason. Jo Portugais saw that memory was gone; that the pastwas blotted out. He had watched that first terrible struggle of memoryto reassert itself, as the eyes mechanically looked out upon new andstrange surroundings, but it was only the automatic habit of the sight, the fumbling of the blind soul in its cell-fumbling for the latch whichit could not find, for the door which would not open. The first day onthe raft, as Charley had opened his eyes upon the world again after thatawful night at the Cote Dorion, Jo. Had seen that same blankuncomprehending look--as it were, the first look of a mind upon theworld. This time he saw, and understood what he saw, and spoke as menspeak, but with no knowledge or memory behind it--only the involuntaryaction of muscle and mind repeated from the vanished past. 

Charley Steele was as a little child, and having no past, andcomprehending in the present only its limited physical needs and motions, he had no hope, no future, no understanding. In three days he was uponhis feet, and in four he walked out of doors and followed Jo into thewoods, and watched him fell a tree and do a woodsman's work. Indoors heregarded 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 fourtimes 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 anyinquiry by look or word. A hundred and twenty miles lay between him andhis old home, between him and Kathleen and Billy and Jean Jolicoeur'ssaloon, but between him and his past life the unending miles of eternityintervened. He was removed from it as completely as though he were deadand 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 patientlyawaited Jo's return. So it was that, at last, Jo made no attempt to lockthe door, but with a nod or a good-bye left him alone. When Charley sawhim 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 dothe work of the house. 

Since Charley came no one had visited the house, for there were no pathsbeyond it, and no one came to the Vadrome Mountain, save by chance. Butafter two months had gone the Cure came. Twice a year the Cure made it apoint to visit Jo in the interests of his soul, though the visits came tolittle, for Jo never went to confession, and seldom to mass. On thisoccasion the Cure arrived when Jo was out in the woods. He discoveredCharley. Charley made no answer to his astonished and friendly greeting, but watched him with a wide-eyed anxiety till the Cure seated himself atthe door to await Jo's coming. Presently, as he sat there, Charley, whohad studied his face as a child studies the unfamiliar face of astranger, 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 himkindly. 

When Jo came he lied to the Cure. He said he had found Charley wanderingin the woods, with a wound in his head, and had brought him home with himand 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 heunderstood Jo's interest in this man with the look of a child and nomemory: Jo's life was terribly lonely; he had no one to care for, and noone cared for him; here was what might comfort him! Through thishelpless man might come a way to Jo's own good. So he argued withhimself. 

What to do? Tell the story to the world by writing to the newspaper atQuebec? 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? Josaid that they ought to wait and see--wait awhile, and then, if hismemory did not return, they would try to find his friends, by publishinghis story abroad. 

Chaudiere was far from anywhere: it knew little of the world, and theworld 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, andwhat more could be wished at the moment? The Cure was a simple man, andwhen Jo urged that if the sick man could get well anywhere in the worldit would be at Vadrome Mountain in Chaudiere, the Cure's parochial pridewas roused, and he was ready to believe all Jo said. He also saw reasonin Jo's request that the village should not be told of the sick man'spresence. Before he left, the Cure knelt down and prayed, "for the goodof this poor mortal's soul and body. "

As he prayed, Charley knelt down also, and kept his eyes-calm unwonderingeyes-full fixed on the good M. Loisel, whose grey hair, thin peacefulface, 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 begracious to thee, my son, " Charley nodded in a friendly way. He watchedthe 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, andstraightway began to build a new room to the house. He gave the extraset of tools to Charley with an encouraging word. For the first timesince he had been brought here, Charley's face took on a look ofinterest. In half-an-hour he was at work, smiling and perspiring, andquickly learning the craft. He seldom spoke, but he sometimes laughed amirthful, natural boy's laugh of good spirits and contentment. From thatday his interest in things increased, and before two months went round, while yet it was late autumn, he looked in perfect health. He atemoderately, drank a great deal of water, and slept half the circle of theclock each day. His skin was like silk; the colour of his face was asthat of an apple; he was more than ever Beauty Steele. The Cure cametwo 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 havememory of what was said to him from one day to the next. A hundred waysJo had tried to rouse his memory. But the words Cote Dorion had nomeaning to him, and he listened blankly to all names and phrases once sofamiliar. 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 oneday the Cure came, bringing his brother, a great Parisian surgeon latelyarrived from France on a short visit. The Cure had told his brother thestory, and had been met by a keen, astonished interest in the unknown manon Vadrome Mountain. A slight pressure on the brain from accident hadbefore now produced loss of memory--the great man's professionalcuriosity was aroused: he saw a nice piece of surgical work readyto 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 withthe swift-minded action and adventuring intellects of such men as hisbrother, Marcel Loisel. Was it not tempting Providence, a surgicaloperation? He was so used to people getting ill and getting well withouta doctor--the nearest was twenty miles distant--or getting ill and dyingin what seemed a natural and preordained way, that to cut open a man'shead and look into his brain, and do this or that to his skull, seemedalmost sinful. Was it not better to wait and see if the poor man wouldnot recover in God's appointed time?

In answer to his sensitively eager and diverse questions, Marcel Loiselreplied that his dear Cure was merely mediaeval, and that he hadsacrificed his mental powers on the altar of a simple faith, which mightremove 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 hisbrother'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, andthere they found Charley at work in the little room that the two men hadbuilt. Charley nodded pleasantly when the Cure introduced his brother, but showed no further interest at first. He went on working at thecupboard under his hand. His cap was off and his hair was a littlerumpled where the wound had been, for he had a habit of rubbing the placenow and then--an abstracted, sensitive motion--although he seemed tosuffer no pain. The surgeon's eyes fastened on the place, and as Charleyworked and his brother talked, he studied the man, the scar, the contourof the head. At last he came up to Charley and softly placed his fingerson the scar, feeling the skull. Charley turned quickly. 

There was something in the long, piercing look of the surgeon whichseemed to come through limitless space to the sleeping and imprisonedmemory of Charley's sick mind. A confused, anxious, half-fearful lookcrept into the wide blue eyes. It was like a troubled ghost, flittingalong the boundaries of sight and sense, and leaving a chill and ahorrified wonder behind. The surgeon gazed on, and the trouble inCharley's eye passed to his face, stayed an instant. Then he turned awayto Jo Portugais. "I am thirsty now, " he said, and he touched his lips inthe way he was wont to do in those countless ages ago, when, millionsupon millions of miles away, people said: "There goes Charley Steele!"

"I am thirsty now, " and that touch of the lip with the tongue, were arevelation to the surgeon. 

A half-hour later he was walking homeward with the Cure. Jo accompaniedthem for a distance. As they emerged into the wider road-paths thatbegan half-way down the mountain, the Cure, who had watched his brother'sface 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 mindsince that first talk with his brother. "To save a mind, Marcel!" hesaid. 

"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, hehas had? What struggles, temptations, sins? He has none now, of anysort; not a stain, physical or moral. "

"That is not life, Marcel. "

"Well, well, you have changed. This morning it was I who would, and youhesitated. "

"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 asentimentalist? 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 brotheraffectionately. "Upon my soul, dear Prosper, you almost persuade me tobe reactionary and mediaeval. "

The Curb turned half uneasily towards Jo, who was following at a littledistance. 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 thesurgeon. 

"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 thoughfor 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 hasset legs and arms successfully. "

The surgeon eyed Jo humorously, but kindly. "He is probably as good adoctor 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. "Youhave 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 inbenediction, 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 answeredevasively. 

But to himself he kept saying: "The man was a drunkard--he was adrunkard. "

CHAPTER XI

THE RAISING OF THE CURTAIN

M. Marcel Loisel did his work with a masterly precision, with the aid ofhis brother and Portugais. The man under the instruments, not whollyinsensible, groaned once or twice. Once or twice, too, his eyes openedwith a dumb hunted look, then closed as with an irresistible weariness. When the work was over, and every stain or sign of surgery removed, sleepcame down on the bed--a deep and saturating sleep, which seemed to fillthe room with peace. For hours the surgeon sat beside the couch, now andagain feeling the pulse, wetting the hot lips, touching the forehead withhis palm. At last, with a look of satisfaction, he came forward to whereJo and the Cure sat beside the fire. 

"It is all right, " he said. "Let him sleep as long as he will. " Heturned 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 drivebefore you to-morrow, and sixty the next day. You can only reach theport now by starting at daylight to-morrow. "

So it was that Marcel Loisel, the great surgeon, was compelled to leaveChaudiere before he knew that the memory of the man who had been underhis knife had actually returned to him. He had, however, no doubt inhis own mind, and he was confident that there could be no physical harmfrom the operation. Sleep was the all-important thing. In it lay thestrength for the shock of the awakening--if awakening of memory therewas to be. 

Before he left he stooped over Charley and said musingly: "I wonder whatyou will wake up to, my friend?" Then he touched the wound with a lightcaressing finger. "It was well done, well done, " he murmured proudly. 

A moment afterwards he was hurrying down the hill to the open road, wherea cariole awaited the Cure and himself. 

For a day and a half Charley slept, and Jo watched him with anaffectionate solicitude. Once or twice, becoming anxious, because of theheavy 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 wrappedhim like a blanket, folding him away into a drenching darkness. 

For a time there was a deep silence, troubled only by Jo's deepbreathing, which seemed itself like the pulse of the silence. Charleyappeared not to be breathing at all. He was lying on his back, seeminglylifeless. Suddenly on the snug silence there was a sharp sound. A treeoutside snapped with the frost. 

Charley awoke. The body seemed not to awake, for it did not stir, butthe eyes opened wide and full, looking straight before them--straight upto the brown smoke-stained rafters, along which were ranged guns andfishing-tackle, axes and bear-traps. Full clear blue eyes, healthy anduntired as a child's fresh from an all-night's drowse, they looked andlooked. Yet, at first, the body did not stir; only the mind seemed to beawakening, the soul creeping out from slumber into the day. Presently, however, as the eyes gazed, there stole into them a wonder, a trouble, ananxiety. For a moment they strained at the rafters and the crude weaponsand implements there, then the body moved, quickly, eagerly, and turnedto see the flickering shadows made by the fire and the simple order ofthe room. 

A minute more, and Charley was sitting on the side of his couch, dazedand staring. This hut, this fire, the figure by the hearth in a soundsleep-his hand went to his head: it felt the bandage there!

He remembered now! Last night at the Cote Dorion! Last night he hadtalked with Suzon Charlemagne at the Cote Dorion; last night he had drunkharder than he had ever drunk in his life, he had defied, chaffed, insulted the river-drivers. The whole scene came back: the faces ofSuzon and her father; Suzon's fingers on his for an instant; the glass ofbrandy beside him; the lanterns on the walls; the hymn he sang; thesermon he preached--he shuddered a little; the rumble of angry noisesround him; the tumbler thrown; the crash of the lantern, and only onelight left in the place! Then Jake Hough and his heavy hand, the flyingmonocle, and his disdainful, insulting reply; the sight of the pistol inthe hand of Suzon's father; then a rush, a darkness, and his own fierceplunge towards the door, beyond which were the stars and the cool nightand the dark river. Curses, hands that battered and tore at him, thedoorway reached, and then a blow on the head and--falling, falling, falling, and distant noises growing more distant, and suddenly andsweetly--absolute silence. 

Again he shuddered. Why? He remembered that scene in his officeyesterday with Kathleen, and the one later with Billy. A sensitive chillswept all over him, making his flesh creep, and a flush sped over hisface 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 atthe Cote Dorion. Clearly this was the hut of a hunter. Probably he hadbeen fished out of the river by this woodsman and brought here. He felthis 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 theknives he saw unsheathed--or kicked or pummelled into the hereafter. Itwas about ten o'clock when he had had his "accident"--he affected asmile, 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 thewindow. 

Strange that he felt none the worse for his mishap, and his tongue was asclean and fresh as if he had been drinking milk last night, and not verydoubtful 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 forbreakfast before? Here he was with a fine appetite: it was like coals offire heaped on his head by Nature for last night's business at the CoteDorion. How true it was that penalties did not always come with--indiscretions. Yet, all at once, he flushed again to the forehead, for acurious sense of shame flashed through his whole being, and one CharleySteele--the Charley Steele of this morning, an unknown, unadventuring, onlooking Charley Steele--was viewing with abashed eyes the CharleySteele who had ended a doubtful career in the coarse and desperateproceedings of last night. With a nervous confusion he sought refuge inhis eye-glass. His fingers fumbled over his waistcoat, but did not findit. The weapon of defence and attack, the symbol of interrogation andincomprehensibility, was gone. Beauty Steele was under the eyes ofanother self, and neither disdain, nor contempt, nor the passive stare, were available. He got suddenly to his feet, and started forward, asthough to find refuge from himself. 

The abrupt action sent the blood to his head, and feeling a blindnesscome over him, he put both hands up to his temples, and sank back on thecouch, dizzy and faint. 

His motions waked Jo Portugais, who scrambled from the floor, and cametowards him. 

"M'sieu', " he said, "you must not. You are faint. " He dropped his handssupportingly 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 hislips. He drank, drank, drank, until the great bowl was drained to thelast 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 inhis 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 hadgreatly changed. The marks of smallpox, a heavy beard, grey hair, andsolitary life had altered him beyond Charley's recognition. 

Jo could hardly speak. His legs were trembling under him, for now heknew 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 manwho had saved him from hanging, to whom he owed a debt he dare notacknowledge. Jo's brain was in a muddle. Now that the great crisis wasover, now that the expected thing had come, and face to face with thecure, he had neither tongue, nor strength, nor wit. His words stuck inhis throat where his heart was, and for a minute his eyes had a kind ofmist 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 hishead with his hands, for it throbbed so, but his eyes were intent on hiscompanion. 

"Yes, M'sieu'. "

Charley's hand mechanically fumbled for his monocle. Jo turned quicklyto the wall, and taking it by its cord from the nail where it had beenfor these long months, handed it over. Charley took it and mechanicallyput it in his eye. "Thank you, my friend, " he said. "Have I beenconscious 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 youvery much. Do you think you could find me something to eat? I beg yourpardon--it isn't breakfast-time, of course, but I was never so hungry inmy life!"

"In a minute, M'sieu'--in one minute. But lie down, you must lie down alittle. You got up too quick, and it makes your head throb. You havehad nothing to eat. "

"Nothing, since yesterday noon, and very little then. I didn't eatanything at the Cote Dorion, I remember. " He lay back on the couch andclosed his eyes. The throbbing in his head presently stopped, and hefelt that if he ate something he could go to sleep again, it was sorestful in this place--a whole day's sleep and rest, how good it would beafter 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'slabour, and, like Robinson Crusoe no doubt, living in a serene self-sufficiency and an elysian retirement. Probably he had noresponsibilities in the world, with no one to say him nay, himself onlyto 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, untillately--was the slave of the civilisation to which he belonged. Wascivilisation worth the game?

His hand involuntarily went to his head. It changed the course of histhoughts. He must go back to-day to put Billy's crime right, to replacethe 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 ofhis office, and, bandaged head or no bandaged head, last night'sdisgraceful doings notwithstanding, it was his duty to face the wonderingeyes--what did he care for wondering eyes? hadn't he been making eyeswonder all his life?--face the wondering eyes in the little city, and seta crooked business straight. Fool and scoundrel certainly Billy was, butthere was Kathleen!

His lips tightened; he had a strange anxious flutter of the heart. Whenhad his heart fluttered like this? When had he ever before consideredKathleen's feelings as to his personal conduct so delicately? Well, since yesterday he did feel it, and a sudden sense of pity sprang up inhim--vague, shamefaced pity, which belied the sudden egotistical flourishwith which he put his monocle to his eye and tried futilely to smile inthe old way. 

He had lain with his eyes closed. They opened now, and he saw his hostspreading a newspaper as a kind of cloth on a small rough table, andputting some food upon it-bread, meat, and a bowl of soup. It wasthoughtful of this man to make his soup overnight-he saw Jo lift it frombeside the fire where it had been kept hot. A good fellow-an excellentfellow, 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 onthe 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 anda cup of coffee had been enough, and often too much, for him. Yet now hecould not wait to eat the soup with a spoon, but lifted the bowl and tooka long draught of it, and set it down with a sigh of content. Then hebroke bread into the soup--large pieces of black oat bread--until thebowl was a mass of luscious pulp. This he ate almost ravenously, his eyewandering 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 timefor venison. What did it matter! Jo sat on a bench beside the fire, hisface turned towards his guest, dreading the moment when the man he hadnursed 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 wasto 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 thelast crumbs of bread and meat and drunk the last drop of soup. He lookedat the woodsman as though wondering if he would bring more. Jo evidentlythought he had had enough, for he did not move. Charley's glancewithdrew from Jo, and busied itself with the few crumbs remaining uponthe table. He saw a little piece of bread on the floor. He picked it upand 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 lookingcasually down at the newspaper spread as a table-cloth. 

All at once his hand stopped, his eyes became fixed on a spot in thepaper. He gave a hoarse, guttural cry, like an animal in agony. Hislips became dry, his hand wiped a blinding mist from his eyes. 

Jo watched him with an intense alarm and a horrified curiosity. He felta 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 themover and over again, as Charley Steele, in a dry, croaking sort ofwhisper, read, in letters that seemed monstrous symbols of fire, a recordof himself:

"To-day, by special license from the civil and ecclesiastical courts [theparagraph in the paper began], was married, at St. Theobald's Church, Mrs. Charles Steele, daughter of the late Hon. Julien Wantage, and nieceof the late Eustace Wantage, Esq. , to Captain Thomas Fairing, of theRoyal Fusileers--"

Charley snatched at the top of the paper and read the date "Tenth ofFebruary, 18-!" It was August when he was at the Cote Dorion, the 5thAugust, 18-, and this paper was February 10th, 18-. He read on, in themonth-old paper, with every nerve in his body throbbing now: a fiercebeating that seemed as if it must burst the heart and the veins:

"--Captain Thomas Fairing, of the Royal Fusileers, whose career in ourmidst has been marked by an honourable sense of public and private duty. Our fellow-citizens will unite with us in congratulating the bride, whoseprevious misfortunes have only increased the respect in which she isheld. If all remember the obscure death of her first husband (though thebody was not found, there has never been a doubt of his death), and thesubsequent discovery that he had embezzled trust-moneys to the extent oftwenty-five thousand dollars, thereby setting the final seal of shameupon a misspent life, destined for brilliant and powerful uses, allhave conspired to forget the association of our beautiful and admiredtownswoman with his career. It is painful to refer to thesecircumstances, but it is only within the past few days that the estate ofthe misguided man has been wound up, and the money he embezzled restoredto its rightful owners; and it is better to make these remarks now thanrepeat them in the future, only to arouse painful memories in quarterswhere we should least desire to wound. 

"In her new life, blessed by a romantic devotion known and admired byall, Mrs. Fairing and her husband will be followed by the affectionategood wishes of the whole community. "

The man on the hearth-stone shrank back at the sight of the still, whiteface, in which the eyes were like sparks of fire. His impulse had beento go over and offer the hand of sympathy to the stricken man, but hissimple mind grasped the fact that no one might, with impunity, invadethis awful quiet. Charley was frozen in body, but his brain was awakewith the heat of "a burning fiery furnace. "

Seven months of unconscious life-seven months of silence--no sight, noseeing, no knowing; seven months of oblivion, in which the world hadburied him out of ken in an unknown grave of infamy! Seven months--andKathleen was married again to the man she had always loved. To the worldhe himself was a rogue and thief. Billy had remained silent--Billy, whomhe had so befriended, had let decent men heap scorn and reproaches on hismemory. Here was what the world thought of him--he read the lines overagain, his eyes scorching, but his finger steady, as it traced the linesslowly: "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 andburied, out of sight, out of repute, soon to be out of mind and out ofmemory, save as a warning to others--an old example raked out of thedust-bin of time by the scavengers of morality, to toss at all who trodthe 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 andtell Tom Fairing to go his way and show his face no more? Break up thisunion, this marriage of love in which these two rejoiced? SummonKathleen out of her illegal intercourse with the man who had been true toher all these years?

To what end? What had he ever done for her that he might destroy hernow? What sort of Spartan tragedy was this, that the woman who had beenthe victim of circumstances, who had been the slave to a tie he neverfelt, yet which had been as iron-bound to her, should now be brought outto 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 ofher 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 achievementin justice! Would not the world have a right to say that the only decentthing he could do was to eliminate himself from the equation? Whatprofit for him in the great summing-up, that he was technically innocentof this one thing, and that to establish his innocence he broke a woman'sheart and destroyed a boy's life? To what end! It was the murderercoming back as a ghost to avenge himself for being hanged. Suppose hewent back--the death's-head at the feast--what would there be for himselfafterwards; for any one for whom he was responsible? Living at thatprice?

To die and end it all, to disappear from this petty life where he haddone so little, and that little ill? To die?

No. There was in him some deep, if obscure, fatalism after all. If hehad been meant to die now, why had he not gone to the bottom of the riverthat yesterday at the Cote Dorion? Why had he been saved by this yokelat 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 senseslain fallow all these months, a vacuous vegetation, an emptyconsciousness? Was it fate? Did it not seem probable that the GreatMachine had, in its automatic movement, tossed him up again on the shoresof Time because he had not fallen on the trap-door predestined for hiseternal exit?

It was clear to him that death by his own hand was futile, and that ifthere were trap-doors set for him alone, it were well to wait until hetrod upon them and fell through in his appointed hour in the movement ofthe 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 manon the bench stirred. Crossing the room he dropped a hand on the man'sshoulder. "Open the blind, my friend. "

Jo Portugais got to his feet quickly, eyes averted--he did not dare lookinto 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 mountainthe hut looked down through a clearing, flanked by forest trees. 

It was a goodly scene. The green and frosted foliage of the pines andcedars; the flowery tracery of frost hanging like cobwebs everywhere; thepoudre sparkle in the air; the hills of silver and emerald sloping downto the valley miles away, where the village clustered about the great oldparish church; the smoke from a hundred chimneys, in purple spirals, rising straight up in the windless air; over all peace and a perfectsilence. 

Charley mechanically fixed his eye-glass and stood with hands resting onthe 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 thesemonths, " 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 nomemory of it. The real Charley Steele had been enveloped in oblivion forseven 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, allacquired impressions and influences vanished, he had been walking in theworld with no more complexity of mind than a new-born child, nothingintervening between the sight of the eyes and the original sense. 

Now, when the real Charley Steele emerged again, the folds of mind andsoul unrolling to the million-voiced creation and touched by the antennaof a various civilisation, the phantom Charley was gone once more intoobscurity. The real Charley could remember naught of the other, couldfeel naught, save, as in the stirring industrious day, one remembers thathe 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 theglue pot, which brought back in a cloudy impression curious unfamiliarfeelings. Sights, sounds, motions, passed in a confused way through hismind as the smell of the glue crept through his nostrils; and hestruggled hard to remember. But no--seven months of his life were gonefor ever. Yet he knew and felt that a vast change had gone over him, hadpassed through him. While the soul had lain fallow, while the body hadbeen growing back to childlike health again, and Nature had been pouringinto his sick senses her healing balm; while the medicaments of peace andsleep and quiet labour had been having their way with him, he had beenreorganised, renewed, flushed of the turgid silt of dissipation. For hissins and weaknesses there had been no gall and vinegar to drink. 

As Charley stood looking round the workshop, Jo entered, shaking the snowfrom 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 theCure. As Charley entered, M. Loisel carne forward with outstretchedhand. 

"I am glad to see you well again, Monsieur, " he said, and his cool thinhand 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 clearsoluble look of the priest--such a well of simplicity he had never beforeseen. Only naked eye could meet that naked eye, imperfect though his ownsight was. 

"It is good of you to feel so, and to come and tell me so, " he answeredquietly. "I have been a great trouble, I know. "

There was none of the old pose in his manner, none of the old crypticquality 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 andthat of Jo Portugais, my good friend here, " he rejoined. 

"M'sieu', " replied Jo, his face turned away, and his foot pushing a logon 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 treatmentfrom 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 nomeans sentimentally. "So said the Friend of the World. "

Charley looked the Curb steadily in the eyes. He was thinking how simplythis man had said these things; as if, indeed, they were part of hislife; 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 theeye-glass fell again. He had seen familiarity with sacred names andthings in the uneducated, in excited revivalists, worked up to a stateclairvoyant and conversational with the Creator; but he had never heardan educated man speak as this man did. 

At last Charley said: "Your brother--Portugais tells me that yourbrother, 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. Butmy brother, from one stand-point--a human stand-point--had scruples. These I did not share, but they were strong in him, Monsieur. Marcelasked himself--" He stopped suddenly and looked towards Jo. 

Charley saw the look, and said quickly: "Speak plainly. Portugais is myfriend. "

Jo turned slowly towards him, and a light seemed to come to his eyes--ashining something that resolved itself into a dog-like fondness, an utterobedience, a strange intense gratitude. 

"Marcel asked himself, " the Cure continued, "whether you would thank himfor bringing you back to--to life and memory. I fear he was trying tosee what I should say--I fear so. Marcel said, 'Suppose that he shouldcurse me for it? Who knows what he would be brought back to--to whatsuffering 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 andlive 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 yourfriends 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 nodifference to them. "

He looked the Cure in the eyes steadily, and as though he would conveyhis intentions without words. The Curb understood. The habit oflistening to the revelations of the human heart had given him somethingof 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 thoughyou had no past, Monsieur?"

"It is that, Monsieur. "

Jo suddenly turned and left the room, for he heard a step on the frostysnow 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. Hefastened his eyes on Charley. "Monsieur, is there any reason why youshould not stay here? I ask it now, man to man--not as a priest of mypeople, but as man to man. "

Charley did not answer for a moment. He was wondering how he should puthis reply. But his look did not waver, and the Cure saw the honesty ofthe gaze. At length he replied: "If you mean, have I committed any crimewhich the law may punish?--I answer no, Monsieur. If you mean, have Irobbed 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, youcan think of me as badly as you will, or as well, for what I dohenceforth is the only thing that really concerns the world, Monsieur leCure. "

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 droppeddown here like a stone from a sling. I had life by the throat; now ithas 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 matterwhat he was? If he was not a Catholic, were he Buddhist, pagan, orProtestant, the position for them personally was the same. "I am verysorry, " he said gently. "I might have helped you had you been aCatholic. "

The eye-glass came like lightning to the eye, and a caustic, questioningphrase was on the tongue, but Charley stopped himself in time. For, apart from all else, this priest had been his friend in calamity, hadacted with a charming sensibility. The eye-glass troubled the Cure, andthe look on Charley's face troubled him still more, but it passed asCharley 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 theold days when his mind turned to Jean Jolicoeur's saloon--"that I will donothing to cause regret for your humanity and--and Christian kindness. "Again the tongue touched the lips--a wave of the old life had swept overhim, the old thirst had rushed upon him. Perhaps it was the force ofthis feeling which made him add, with a curious energy, "I give you myword, 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 noone but yourself. "

Charley's face paled, and the Cure's was scarcely less pale. InCharley's mind was the question, Who had discovered his presence here?Was he not, then, to escape? Who should send him parcels through thepost?

The Cure was perturbed. Was he, then, to know who this man was--his nameand history? Was the story of his life now to be told?

Charley broke the silence. "Tell the girl to come in. " Instantlyafterwards the postmaster's daughter entered. The look of the girl'sface, at once delicate and rosy with health, almost put the question ofthe letter out of his mind for an instant. Her dark eyes met his as hecame forward with outstretched hand. 

"This is addressed, as you will see, 'To the Sick Man at the House of JoPortugais, at Vadrome Mountain. ' Are you that person, Monsieur?" sheasked. 

As she handed the parcel, Charley's eyes scanned her face quickly. Howdid this habitant girl come by this perfect French accent, this refinedmanner? He did not know the handwriting on the parcel; he hastily toreit open. Inside were a few dozen small packets. Here also was a sheetof 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 adifferent personal feeling. The Cure's has been described. JoPortugais' mind was asking if this meant that the man who had comeinto his life must now go out of it; and the girl was asking who wasthis mysterious man, like none she had ever seen or known. 

Without hesitation Charley handed over the letter to the Cure, who tookit with surprise, read it with amazement, and handed it back with a flushon his face. 

"Thank you, " said Charley to the girl. "It is good of you to bring itall 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. Hebowed. As she turned and went towards the door her eyes met his. Sheblushed. 

"Wait, Mademoiselle; I will go back with you, " said the Cure kindly. Heturned to Charley and held out his hand. "God be with you, Monsieur--Charles, " he said. "Come and see me soon. " Remembering that his brotherhad 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 wasputting the surgeon's letter into the fire, and did not see her; yet sheblushed 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 mindwas compassing large revolutions. The events of the last few days hadcut deep. His life had been turned upside down. All his predispositionshad been suddenly brought to check, his habits turned upon the flank androuted, his mental postures flung into confusion. He had to start lifeagain; but it could not be in the way of any previous travel of mind orbody. The line of cleavage was sharp and wide, and the only connectionwith the past was in the long-reaching influence of evil habits, whichcrept from their coverts, now and again, to mock him as his old self hadmocked life--to mock him and to tempt him. Through seven months ofhealthy life for his body, while brain and will were sleeping, the wholeman had made long strides towards recreation. But with the renewal ofwill and mind the old weaknesses, roused by memory, began to emergeintermittently, as water rises from a spring. There was somethingterrible in this repetition of sensation--the law of habit answeringto the machine-like throbbing of memory, as, a kaleidoscope turning, turning, its pictures pass a certain point at fixed intervals--anautomatic recurrence. He found himself at times touching his lips withhis tongue, and with this act came the dry throat, the hot eye, therestless hand feeling for a glass that eluded his fingers. 

Twice in one week did this fever surge up in him, and it caught him inthose moments when, exhausted by the struggle of his mind to adapt itselfto the new conditions, his senses were delicately susceptible. Visionsof Jolicoeur's saloon came to his mind's eye. With a singularseparateness, a new-developed dual sense, he saw himself standing in thesummer heat, looking over to the cool dark doorway of the saloon, and hecaught again the smell of the fresh-drawn beer. He was conscious ofwatching 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, CharlesMallard, had known--while he had to suffer for what Charley Steele haddone. Then, all at once, as he was thinking and dreaming and seeing, there would seize upon him the old appetite, coincident with the seizureof his brain by the old sense of cynicism at its worst--such a worst ashad made him insult Jake Hough when the rough countryman was ready totake his part that wild night at the Cote Dorion. 

At such moments life became a conflict--almost a terror--for as yet hehad not swung into line with the new order of things. In truth, therewas no order of things; for one life was behind him and the new one wasnot yet decided upon, save that here he would stay--here out of theworld, out of the game, far from old associations, cut off, and to be forever 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 withunselfishness, with the desire to give greater than the desire to get, then he had never known love. He realised now that he had given Kathleenonly what might be given across a dinner-table--the sensuous tribute ofa temperament, passionate without true passion or faith or friendship. Kathleen had known that he gave her nothing worth the having; for in somemeagre sense she knew what love was, and had given it meagrely, after hernature, 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 owntable--his, Charley Steele's own table in his own house--the house he hadgiven her by deed of gift the day he died. Tom Fairing was sitting wherehe used to sit, talking across the table--not as he used to talk--lookinginto Kathleen's face as he had never looked. He was no more to them thana dark memory. "Well, why should I be more?" he asked himself. "I amdead, if not buried. They think me down among the fishes. My game isdone; and when she gets older and understands life better, Kathleen willsay, 'Poor Charley--he might have been anything!' She'll be sure to saythat some day, for habit and memory go round in a circle and pass thesame point again and again. For me--they take me by the throat--" Heput his hand up as if to free his throat from a grip, his tongue touchedhis lips, his hands grew restless. 

"It comes back on me like a fit of ague, this miserable thirst. If Iwere within sight of Jolicoeur's saloon, I should be drinking hard thisminute. But I'm here, and--" His hand felt his pocket, and he took outthe powders the great surgeon had sent him. 

"He knew--how did he know that I was a drunkard? Does a man carry in hisface the tale he would not tell? Jo says I didn't talk of the past, thatI never had delirium, that I never said a word to suggest who I was, orwhere I came from. Then how did the doctor--man know? I suppose everyparticular habit carries its own signal, and the expert knows theciphers. " He opened the paper containing the powders, and looked roundfor water, then paused, folded the paper up, and put it in his pocketagain. He went over to the window and looked out. His shoulders setsquare. "No, no, no, not a speck on my tongue!" he said. "What I can'tdo of my own will is not worth doing. It's too foolish, to yield to theshadow of an old appetite. I play this game alone--here in Chaudiere. "

He looked out and down. The sweet sun of early spring was shininghard, and the snow was beginning to pack, to hang like a blanket on thebranches, 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 icewas safe--a long line of poles from shore to shore--and carioles werehurrying across to the village. Being market-day, the place was alivewith the cheerful commerce of the habitant. The bell of the parishchurch was ringing. The sound of it came up distantly and peacefully. Charley drew a long breath, turned away to a pail of water, filled adipper half full, and drank it off gaspingly. Then he returned to thewindow with a look of relief. 

"That does it, " he said. "The horrible thing is gone again--out of mybrain 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. Yethe 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 saysit's the best suit he's made in a year. I'm afraid he'll not make manymore suits, old Trudel. 

"He's very bad. When he goes there'll be no tailor--ah, old Trudel willbe missed for sure, M'sieu'!"

Jo spread the clothes out on the table--a coat, waistcoat, and trousersof fulled cloth, grey and bulky, and smelling of the loom and thetailor's iron. Charley looked at them interestedly, then glanced at theclothes 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. Portugaisleft the room, and when he came back, Charley was dressed in the suit ofgrey fulled cloth. It was loose, but comfortable, and save for therefined face--on which a beard was growing now--and the eye-glass, hemight easily have passed for a farmer. When he put on the dog-skin furcap and a small muffler round his neck, it was the costume of thehabitant 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 himselfagain. The sweet, cold air, with a bracing wind in his face, gave peaceto 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 ofthe 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 incoming to the village? What did he expect? As he entered the villagehis pace slackened. He had no destination, no object. He was simplyaware 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. "CharlesMallard, Notary?"--No, that was not for him. Everything that remindedhim 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, andtoday he wanted his thoughts for himself. More people passed him, andspoke of him to each other, though there was no coarse curiosity--thehabitant has manners. 

Presently he passed a low shop with a divided door. The lower half wasclosed, the upper open, and the winter sun was shining full into theroom, 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, bentover his work, with a needle in his hand, sat Louis Trudel the tailor. Hearing footsteps, feeling a shadow, he looked up. Charley started atthe look of the shrunken, yellow face; for if ever death had set hisseal, it was on that haggard parchment. The tailor's yellow eyes ranfrom 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 andpersistent. 

"What's the good of wanting--I can't get it, " was the irritable reply, ashe uncrossed his legs. 

Charley took the iron out of his hand. "I'll press, if you'll show mehow, " 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 alittle. 

"Precisely that. " Charley wetted a seam with water as he had often seentailors do. He dropped the hot iron on the seam, and sniffed withsatisfaction. 

"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, " RosalieEvanturel dreamed dreams. Mystery, so fascinating a thing in all theexperiences of life, took hold of her. The strange man in the lonelyhut on the hill, the bandaged head, the keen, piercing blue eyes, themonocle, like a masked battery of the mind, levelled at her--all appealedto that life she lived apart from the people with whom she had dailycommerce. Her world was a world of books and dreams, and simple, practical duties of life. Most books were romance to her, for most wereof a life to which she had not been educated. Even one or two purelyProtestant books of missionary enterprise, found in a box in her deadmother's room, had had all the charms of poetry and adventure. It wasall new, therefore all delightful, even when the Protestant sentimentsshocked her as being not merely untrue, but hurting that aesthetic sensenever remote from the mind of the devout Catholic. 

She had blushed when monsieur had first looked at her, in the hut onVadrome Mountain, not because there was any soft sentiment about him inher heart--how could there be for a man she had but just seen!--butbecause her feelings, her imagination, were all at high temperature;because the man compelled attention. The feeling sprang from a deepsensibility, a natural sense, not yet made incredulous by the ironies oflife. These had never presented themselves to her in a country, in aparish, where people said of fortune and misfortune, happiness andsorrow, "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, thatshe had had a good education and nice tastes. It was the cultivation ofthe primitive and idealistic mind, which could not rationalise a sense ofromance, of the altruistic, by knowledge of life. As she sat behind thepost-office counter she read all sorts of books that came her way. Whenshe 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 ofwonder, and, very often, eyes full of tears--so near to the eyes of herrace. Her imagination inhabited Chaudiere with a different folk, livingin homes very unlike these wide, sweeping-roofed structures, with doublewindows 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 andable and simple, doing good things in disguise, succouring distress, yielding their lives without thought for a cause, or a woman, and lovingwith an undying love. 

Charley was of these people--from the first instant she saw him. TheCure, the Avocat, and the Seigneur were also of them, but placidly, unimportantly. "The Sick Man at Jo Portugais' House" came out of amysterious distance. Something in his eyes said, "I have seen, I haveknown, " told her that when he spoke she would answer freely, that theywere kinsfolk in some hidden way. Her nature was open and frank; shelived upon the house-tops, as it were, going in and out of the lives ofthe people of Chaudiere with neighbourly sympathy and understanding. Yetshe 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 thisthe Cure could vouch. Her official position made her the servant of thepublic, and she did her duty with naturalness. 

She had been a figure in the parish ever since the day she returned fromthe convent at Quebec, and took her dead mother's place in the home andthe parish. She had a quick temper, but there was not a cheerless notein her nature, and there was scarce a dog or a horse in the parish butknew her touch, and responded to it. Squirrels ate out of her hand, shehad even tamed two partridges, and she kept in her little garden a bearshe had brought up from a cub. Her devotion to her crippled father wasin keeping with her quick response to every incident of sorrow or joy inthe parish--only modified by wilful prejudices scarcely in keeping withher unselfishness. 

As Mrs. Flynn, the Seigneur's Irish cook, said of her: "Shure, she's notmade all av wan piece, the darlin'! She'll wear like silk, but she's notlinen for everybody's washin'. " And Mrs. Flynn knew a thing or two, aswas conceded by all in Chaudiere. No gossip was Mrs. Flynn, but she knewwell what was going on in the parish, and she had strong views upon allsubjects, and a special interest in the welfare of two people inChaudiere. 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 protestthat what was "fit for Teddy was not fit for a gintleman of quality, " theSeigneur had had his way, never repenting of his choice. Mrs. Flynn'scooking was not her only good point. She had the rarest sense and anunfailing spring of good-nature--life bubbled round her. It was she thathad suggested the crippled M. Evanturel to the Seigneur when the officeof postmaster became vacant, and the Seigneur had acted on hersuggestion, henceforth taking greater interest in Rosalie. 

It was Mrs. Flynn who gave Rosalie information concerning Charley'sarrival at the shop of Louis Trudel the tailor. The morning afterCharley came, Mrs. Flynn had called for a waistcoat of the Seigneur, whowas expected home from a visit to Quebec. She found Charley standing ata table pressing seams, and her quick eye took him in with knowledge andinstinct. She was the one person, save Rosalie, who could always divertold Louis, and this morning she puckered his sour face with amusement bythe story of the courtship of the widow Plomondon and Germain Boily thehorse-trainer, whose greatest gift was animal-training, and greatestweakness a fondness for widows, temporary and otherwise. Before she leftthe shop, with the stranger's smile answering to her nod, she had made upher mind that Charley was a tailor by courtesy only. So she told Rosaliea few moments afterwards. 

"'Tis a man, darlin', that's seen the wide wurruld. 'Tis himisperes heknows, not parrishes. Fwhat's he doin' here, I dun'no'. Fwhere's hecome from, I dun'no'. French or English, I dun'no'. But a gintlemanborn, I know. 'Tis no tailor, darlin', but tailorin' he'll do as aisy ashe'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'sstayin', 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 apinch 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 astranger. '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, andplays 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 windowtowards the tailor-shop. 

"How manny times have ye seen him?"

"Only once;" answered Rosalie truthfully. She did not, however, tellMrs. Flynn that she had thrice walked nearly to Vadrome Mountain in thehope 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 fromVadrome 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 thoughtof him. 

"What Portugais knows, he'll not be tellin', " said Mrs. Flynn, after amoment. "An' 'tis no business of ours, is it, darlin'? Shure, there'sJo comin' out of the tailor-shop now!"

They both looked out of the window, and saw Jo encounter Filion Lacassethe saddler, and Maximilian Cour the baker. The three stood in themiddle of the street for a minute, Jo talking freely. He was usuallymorose and taciturn, but now he spoke as though eager to unburden hismind--Charley and he had agreed upon what should be said to the people ofChaudiere. 

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 threecrows 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 areyou to say no when ma'm'selle bids!" she added. 

Very soon afterwards Jo was inside the post-office, telling his tale withthe deliberation of a lesson learned by heart. 

"It's all right, as ma'm'selle knows, " he said. "The Cure was there whenma'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 likethe pine-trees and the junipers to cure some things. He was with me veryquiet some time. The Cure come and come. He knows. When m'sieu' gotwell, he say, 'I will not go from Chaudiere; I will stay. I am poor, andI will earn my bread here. ' At first, when he is getting well, he iscarpent'ring. He makes cupboards and picture-frames. The Cure has oneof the cupboards in the sacristy; the frames he puts on the Stations ofthe Cross in the church. "

"That's good enough for me!" said Maximilian Cour. "Did he make themfor nothing?" asked Filion Lacasse solemnly. 

"Not one cent did he ask. What's more, he's working for Louis Trudel fornothing. He come through the village yesterday; he see Louis old andsick 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 theChurch for nothing, he is a Christian. If he work for Louis Trudel fornothing, he is a fool--first-class--or a saint. I wouldn't work forLouis Trudel if he give me five dollars a day. "

"Tiens! the man that work for Louis Trudel work for the Church, for allold Louis makes goes to the Church in the end--that is his will. TheNotary knows, " said Maximilian Cour. 

"See there, now, " interposed Mrs. Flynn, pointing across the street tothe tailor-shop. "Look at that grocer-man stickin' in his head; andthere'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 tothe street, and started forward with startled exclamations, the grocerfollowing. They all ran out from the post-office. Not far up the streeta crowd was gathering. Rosalie locked the office-door and followed theothers quickly. 

In front of the Hotel Trois Couronnes a painful thing was happening. Germain Boily, the horse-trainer, fresh from his disappointment with thewidow Plomondon, had driven his tamed moose up to the Trois Couronnes, and had drunk enough whiskey to make him ill-tempered. He had then begunto "show off" the animal, but the savage instincts of the moose beingroused, 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 tothe ground, and tore gaping wounds in his neck. 

It was all the work of a moment. People ran from the doorways andsidewalks, but stayed at a comfortable distance until the moose wasdragged down; then they made to approach the insensible man. Before anyone could reach him, however, the great hound, with dripping fangs, rushed to his master's body, and, standing over it, showed his teethsavagely. The hotel-keeper approached, but the bristles of the houndstood 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 handcoaxingly, and with insinuating rhetoric drew a little nearer than thelandlord had done; but he retreated precipitously as the hound crouchedback for a spring. Some one called for a gun, and Filion Lacasse raninto his shop. The animal had now settled down on his master's body, hisbloodshot eyes watching in menace. The one chance seemed to be to shoothim, and there must be no bungling, lest his prostrate master suffer atthe same time. The crowd had melted away into the houses, and were nowstanding at doorways and windows, ready for instant retreat. 

Filion Lacasse's gun was now at disposal, but who would fire it? JoPortugais 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 onecould interfere she moved along the open space to the mad beast, speakingsoothingly, 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. Withassured kindness of voice and manner, Rosalie walked deliberately over tothe hound. At first the animal's bristles came up, and he prepared tospring, but murmuring to him, she held out her hand, and presently laidit on his huge head. With a growl of subjection, the dog drew from thebody of his master, and licked Rosalie's fingers as she knelt besideBoily and felt his heart. She put her arm round the dog's neck, and saidto the crowd, "Some one come--only one--ah, yes, you, Monsieur!" sheadded, 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 hisshoulder. The hound at first resented the act, but under Rosalie's touchbecame quiet, and followed at their heels towards the post-office, licking the wounded man's hands as they hung down. Inside M. Evanturel'shouse the injured man was laid upon a couch. Charley examined hiswounds, 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 hearranged that in the evening Boily should be removed to his house, toawait the arrival of the doctor from the next parish. 

This was Charley's public introduction to the people of Chaudiere, and itwas his second meeting with Rosalie Evanturel. 

The incident brought him into immediate prominence. Before he left thepost-office, Filion Lacasse, Maximilian Cour, and Mrs. Flynn had givenforth his history, as related by Jo Portugais. The village was agog withexcitement. 

But attention was not centred on himself, for Rosalie's courage had setthe parish talking. When the Notary stood on the steps of the saddler'sshop, 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 thesick 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 meno' the place sneakin' behind dures, an' she walkin' up cool as leaf inmornin' dew, an' quietin' the divil's own! Did ye iver see annythinglike it, sir--you that's seen so much?"

"Madame, it is not touch of hand alone, or voice alone, " answeredCharley. 

"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 todo. "

"Like that, Madame. "

"Thrue for you, sir, 'tis as you say. There's language more than tongueof 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! 'Tisnot the furst time to be doin' brave things. Just a shlip of a girl shewas, three years ago, afther her mother died, an' she was back fromconvint. A woman come to the parish an' was took sick in the house ofher brother--from France she was. Small-pox they said at furst. 'Twasno small-pox, but plague, got upon the seas. Alone she was in the house--her brother left her alone, the black-hearted coward. The peoplewouldn'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 tillI come back, ' an' away she wint to the house of plague. A week shestayed, an' no one wint near her. Alone she was with the woman and theplague. 'Lave her be, ' said the Cure when he come back; "tis for thelove 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, ' saysshe. ''Tis God's work for me to do, ' says she. 'An' the woman will liveif '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 weall, but the woman died of the plague. All alone did Rosalie draw her tothe grave on a stone-boat down the lane, an' over the hill, an' into thechurchyard. 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 wintback an' burned the house to the ground--sarve the villain right thatlave the sick woman alone! An' her own clothes she burned, an' put onthe 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 otherto forgit? Shure the Cure was for iver broken-hearted, for that he wassick 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 prisincewheriver he may be!"

This was the story of Rosalie which Mrs. Flynn told Charley, as he stoodat the street door of the post-office. When she had finished, Charleywent 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 hergood-bye but a few minutes before. 

"May I sit and watch for an hour longer, Mademoiselle?" he said. "Youwill 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 directionsto Mrs. Flynn, doing household duty, bringing warmth in with her, andleaving light behind her. 

It was afternoon when he returned to his bench in the tailor-shop, andwas received by old Louis Trudel in peevish silence. For an hour theyworked 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 filedpast the doorway of the tailor-shop; it had loitered on the other side ofthe street; it had been measured for more clothes than in three monthspast--that it might see Charley at work in the shop, cross-legged on abench, or wielding the goose, his eye glass in his eye. Here wassensation 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 littlegold handle; but no one in Chaudiere had ever worn a glass in his eyelike 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 tributeto his importance and sign of the interest he created) Charley came to becalled "M'sieu', " and the Mallard was at last entirely dropped. 

Presently people came and stood at the tailor's door and talked, orlistened to Louis Trudel and M'sieu' talking. And it came to be noisedabroad that the stranger talked as well as the Cure and better than theNotary. By-and-by they associated his eye-glass with his talent, so thatit seemed, as it were, to be the cause of it. Yet their talk was ever ofsimple subjects, of everyday life about them, now and then of politics, occasionally of the events of the world filtered to them through vasttracts of country. There was one subject which, however, was barred;perhaps because there was knowledge abroad that M'sieu' was not aCatholic, perhaps because Charley himself adroitly changed theconversation when it veered that way. 

Though the parish had not quite made up its mind about him, there were anumber of things in his favour. In the first place, the Cure seemedsatisfied; secondly, he minded his own business. Also, he was workingfor Louis Trudel for nothing. These things Jo Portugais diligentlyimpressed on the minds of all who would listen. 

From above the frosted part of the windows of the post-office, in thecorner where she sorted letters, Rosalie could look over at the tailor'sshop at an angle; could sometimes even see M'sieu' standing at the longtable with a piece of chalk, a pair of shears, or a measure. She watchedthe tailor-shop herself, but it annoyed her when she saw any one else doso. She resented--she was a woman and loved monopoly--all inquiryregarding M'sieu', so frequently addressed to her. 

One afternoon, as Charley came out, on his way to the house on VadromeMountain, she happened to be outside. He saw her, paused, lifted his furcap, 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 everyday--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 bottleof ink beside the paper. 

"You were very brave that day, " he said--they had not talked togethersince, 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 wasarrested. He ran his fingers over it, and a curious look flashed acrosshis face. He held the paper up to the light quickly, and looked throughit. It was thin, half-foreign paper, without lines, and there was awater-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 oneyear had this paper been made, and then the trade in it was stopped. Ithad gone its ways down the channels of commerce, and here it was in hishand, a reminder, not only of the old life, but, as it were, theparchment for the new. There it was, a piece of plain good paper, readyfor pen and ink and his letter to the Cure's brother in Paris--the onlyletter 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 lettermust be written--Kathleen, invisible but permanent, obscured, but broughtto life by the raising of a hand. 

The girl caught the flash of feeling in his face, saw him holding thepaper up to the light, and then, with an abstracted air, calmly lay itdown. 

"That will do, thank you, " he said. "Give me the whole packet. " Shewrapped 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 thecounter. "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 afortnight, will you?" He did not need all this paper to write lettersupon, yet he meant to buy all the paper of this sort that the shopcontained. But he must get money from Louis Trudel--he would speak aboutit 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 significanceto 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 readmuch?" he asked, almost casually, yet deeply interested in the charm andintelligence 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 primitiveplace, such a mind and nature would be the wiser for reading; whether itwere not better to be without a mental aspiration, which might set upfalse 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 andwent out. 

She ran to the door and watched him go down the street. For a little shestood thinking, then, turning to the counter, and snatching up a sheet ofthe paper he had bought, held it up to the light. She gave a cry ofamazement. 

"Kathleen!" she exclaimed. 

She thought of the start he gave when he looked at the water-mark; shethought of the look on his face when he said he would buy all this papershe had. 

"Who was Kathleen?" she whispered, as though she was afraid some onewould 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 asource less friendly than Jo Portugais. The Notary's wife, bringing herboy to be measured for a suit of broadcloth, asked Charley if the thingsJo had told about him were true, and if it was also true that he was aProtestant, and perhaps an Englishman. As yet, Charley had been askedno direct questions, for the people of Chaudiere had the considerationof their temperament; but the Notary's wife was half English, and beinga figure in the place, she took to herself more privileges than did oldMadame Dugal, the Cure's sister. 

To her ill-disguised impertinence in English, as bad as her French and asfluent, Charley listened with quiet interest. When she had finished hervoluble statement she said, with a simper and a sneer-for, after all, aNotary's wife must keep her position--"And now, what is the truth aboutit? And are you a Protestant?"

There was a sinister look in old Trudel's eyes as, cross-legged on histable, he listened to Madame Dauphin. He remembered the time, twenty-five years ago, when he had proposed to this babbling woman, and had beenrejected with scorn--to his subsequent satisfaction; for there was novisible reason why any one should envy the Notary, in his house or out ofit. Already Trudel had a respect for the tongue of M'sieu'. He had nottalked much the few days he had been in the shop, but, as the old man hadsaid 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 hisnew apprentice, with the hand of a master-workman, would go clip, clipthrough madame's inquisitiveness. He was not disappointed, for he heardCharley say:

"One person in the witness-box at a time, Madame. Till Jo Portugais iscross-examined and steps down, I don't see what I can do!"

"But you are a Protestant!" said the woman snappishly. This man wasonly a tailor, dressed in fulled cloth, and no doubt his past life wouldnot bear inspection; and she was the Notary's wife, and had said topeople in the village that she would find out the man's history fromhimself. 

"That is one good reason why I should not go to confession, " he repliedcasually, 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 Iam?"

Charley calmly put up his monocle. He looked at the foolish little womanwith 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 towardsthe door. 

On the instant Charley's feeling changed. Was he then going to carry theold life into the new, and rebuke a silly garish woman whose faults weregeneric more than personal? He hurried forward to the door andcourteously opened it for her. 

"Permit me, Madame, " he said. 

She saw that there was nothing ironical in this politeness. She had asudden apprehension of an unusual quality called "the genteel, " for nostorekeeper in Chaudiere ever opened or shut a shop-door for anybody. She smiled a vacuous smile; she played "the lady" terribly, as, with acurious conception of dignity, she held her body stiff as a ramrod, andwith a prim merci sailed into the street. 

This gorgeous exit changed her opinion of the man she had been unable tocatechise. Undoubtedly he had snubbed her--that was the word she used inher mind--but his last act had enabled her, in the sight of severalhabitants and even of Madame Dugal, "to put on airs, " as the charmingMadame Dugal said afterwards. 

Thinking it better to give the impression that she had had a successfulinterview, she shook her head mysteriously when asked about M'sieu', andmurmured, "He is quite the gentleman!" which she thought a sociallydistinguished remark. 

When she had gone, Charley turned to old Louis. 

"I don't want to turn your customers away, " he said quietly, "but thereit is! I don't need to answer questions as a part of the business, doI?"

There was a sour grin on the face of old Trudel. He grunted someinaudible answer, then, after a pause, added: "I'd have been hung formurder, if she'd answered the question I asked her once as I wanted herto. "

He opened and shut his shears with a sardonic gesture. 

Charley smiled, and went to the window. For a minute he stood watchingMadame Dauphin and Rosalie at the post-office door. The memory of histalk with Rosalie was vivid to him at the moment. He was thinking alsothat he had not a penny in the world to pay for the rest of the paper hehad 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'renot 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 wasvery miserly-for the love of God. 

He had scarcely realised what was happening when Charley first sat downon the bench beside him. He had been taken by surprise. Apart from theexcitement of the new experience, he had profited by the curiosity of thepublic, for he had orders enough to keep him busy until summer, and hehad had to give out work to two extra women in the parish, though he hadnever before had more than one working for him. But his ruling passionwas strong in him. He always remembered with satisfaction that once whenthe Cure was absent and he was supposed to be dying, a priest fromanother parish came, and, the ministrations over, he had made an offeringof a gold piece. When the young priest hesitated, his fingers had creptback to the gold piece, closed on it, and drawn it back beneath thecoverlet again. He had then peacefully fallen asleep. It was a graciousmemory. 

"I don't need much, I don't want a great deal, " continued Charley whenthe tailor did not answer, "but I have to pay for my bed and board, and Ican'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 gesturetowards 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 getout 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 thewhimsical mental attitude of his past life was being brought to thesurface by this odd figure, with big spectacles pushed up on a yellowforehead, and shrunken hands viciously clutching the shears. 

"You don't mean to say you're not going to work to-day, and this suit ofclothes promised for to-morrow night--for the Manor House too!"

With a piece of chalk Charley idly made heads on brown paper. "Afterall, why should clothes be the first thing in one's mind--when they aresome one else's! It's a beautiful day outside. I've never felt the sunso 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 weweren't paid for our work we always stopped to consider our health--andthe weather. I don't want a great deal. I put it to you honestly. Doyou want me? If you do, will you give me enough to live on--enough tobuy a suit of clothes a year, to pay for food and a room? If I work foryou for nothing, I have to live on others for nothing, or kill myself asyou're doing. "

There was no answer at once, and Charley went on: "I came to you becauseI 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 Icould: 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 whatto 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 wasmore, I wanted work. I wanted to work at the first thing that appealedto me. I had no particular fancy for tailoring--you get bowlegged intime!"--the old spirit was fighting with the new--"but here you were atwork, and there I was idle, and I had been ill, and some one who wasn'tresponsible for me--a stranger-worked for me and cared for me. Wasn't itnatural, when you were playing the devil with yourself, that I shouldstep 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 megoing, " 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'llnever get another man so cheap; and it suits me to stay--you need someone 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 inwords would he acknowledge the possibility of the end. 

"I should think so, " Charley answered, his eyes on the bright sun and thesoft 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 roomhere. "

"I meant board and lodging too, " said Louis Trudel with an outburst ofeager generosity, for, as it was, he had offered about one-half of whatCharley was worth to him. 

Charley nodded. "Very well, that will do, " he said, and took off hiscoat and went to work. For a long time they worked silently. The tailorwas in great good-humour; for the terrible trial was over, and he now hadan assistant who would be a better tailor than himself. There would bemore profit, more silver nails for the church door, and more masses forhis soul. 

"The Cure says you are all right. . . . When will you come here?" hesaid at last. 

"To-morrow night I shall sleep here, " answered Charley. 

So it was arranged that Charley should come to live in the tailor'shouse, to sleep in the room which the tailor had provided for a wifetwenty-five years before--even for her that was now known as MadameDauphin. 

All morning the tailor chuckled to himself. When they sat down at noonto a piece of venison which Charley had prepared himself--taking thefrying-pan out of the hands of Margot Patry, the old servant, and cookingit to a turn--Louis Trudel saw his years lengthen to an indefiniteperiod. He even allowed himself to nervously stand up, bow, shakeCharley's hand jerkingly, and say:

"M'sieu', I care not what you are or where you come from, or even ifyou're a Protestant, perhaps an Englishman. You're a gentleman and atailor, and old Louis Trudel will not forget you. It shall be as yousaid this morning--it is no day for work. We will play, and the clothesfor the Manor can go to the devil. Smoke of hell-fire, I will go andhave a pipe with that, poor wretch the Notary!"

So, a wonderful thing happened. Louis Trudel, on a week-day and amarket-day, went to smoke a pipe with Narcisse Dauphin, and to tell himthat M. Mallard was going to stay with him for ever, at fine wages. Healso announced that he had paid this whole week's wages in advance; buthe did not tell what he did not know--that half the money had alreadybeen 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 slowlydrawn from the woman the story of her life as he sat by the kitchen fireand 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 downhis 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, sofar as all past habits of mind were concerned, it was a relief to recordhis passing reflections, as he had been wont to do when the necessity forit was less. Writing them here was like the bursting of an imprisonedstream; it was relaxing the ceaseless eye of vigilance; freeing animprisoned personality. This personality was not yet merged into thatwhich must take its place, must express itself in the involuntary actswhich tell of a habit of mind and body--no longer the imitative and thehistrionic, but the inherent and the real. 

On the afternoon of the day that old Louis agreed to give him wages, andwent to smoke a pipe with the Notary, Charley scribbled down his thoughtson this matter of personality and habit. 

"Who knows, " he wrote, "which is the real self? A child comes into theworld gin-begotten, with the instinct for liquor in his brain, like thescent 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 intoanother atmosphere, is cared for by ginhating minds and hearts: habitfastens on him--fair, decent, and temperate habit--and he grows up likethe Cure yonder, a brother of Aaron. Which is the real? Is the instinctfor the gin killed, or covered? Is the habit of good living mere habitand mere acting, in which the real man never lives his real life, or isit 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 poorfutility; to whom brain was but animal intelligence abnormally developed;to whom speechless sensibility and intelligence was the only reality; towhom 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, thecreation of a personal need and helplessness, the despairing cry of thevictims of futility--And here am I flung like a stone from a sling intothis field where men believe in God as a present and tangible being; whoreply 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, becomelike unto this tailor here, whose life narrows into one sole cause; whoseonly wish is to have the Church draw the coverlet of forgiveness andsafety over him; who has solved all questions in a blind belief or aninherited predisposition--which? This stingy, hard, unhappy man--howshould 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 naturaldemand and spiritual anxieties, why does not this tailor 'let his lightso shine before men that they may see his good works, and glorify hisFather 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 raisedtowards the little post-office opposite, he wrote these words. Afterwards he sat and thought till the shadows deepened, and the tailorcame in to supper. Then he took up the pieces of paper, and, going tothe fire, which was still lighted of an evening, thrust them inside. 

Louis Trudel saw the paper burning, and, glancing down, he noticed thatone piece--the last--had slipped to the floor and was lying under thetable. He saw the pencil still in Charley's hand. Forthwith his naturalsuspicion leaped up, and the cunning of the monomaniac was upon him. With all his belief in le bon Dieu and the Church, Louis Trudel trustedno one. One eye was ever open to distrust man, while the other was everclosed with blind belief in Heaven. 

As Charley stooped to put wood in the fire, the tailor thrust a footforward and pushed the piece of paper further under the table. 

That night the tailor crept down into the shop, felt for the paper in thedark, found it, and carried it away to his room. All kinds of thoughtshad raged through his diseased mind. It was a letter, perhaps, and if aletter, then he would gain some facts about the man's life. But if itwas a letter, why did he burn it? It was said that he never received aletter 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 anda spy of the English government, for was there not disaffection in someof the parishes? Perhaps it was a plan of robbery. To such a state ofhallucination did his weakened mind come, that he forgot the kindlyfeeling 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 thatM'sieu' had put an arm through his when they went upstairs, and that nowincreased suspicion. Why should the man have been so friendly? To lullhim into confidence, perhaps, and then to rob and murder him in hissleep. Thank God, his ready money was well hid, and the rest was safe inthe 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 beenaccidentally brushed off on the floor. It was in French, and, holdingthe candle close, he slowly deciphered the crabbed, characteristichandwriting. 

His eyes dilated, his yellow cheeks took on spots of unhealthy red, hishand trembled. Anger seized him, and he mumbled the words over and overagain to himself. Twice or thrice, as the paper lay in one hand, hestruck it with the clinched fist of the other, muttering and distraught. 

"This tailor here. . . . This stingy, hard, unhappy man. . . . Ifthere 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 theinfidel! A Protestant heretic--he was already damned; a robber--youcould 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, tosow plague through a parish where all were at peace in the bosom of theChurch. The tailor had three ruling passions--cupidity, vanity, andreligion. Charley had now touched the three, and the whole man wasalive. His cupidity had been flattered by the unpaid service of acapable assistant, but now he saw that he was paying the devil a wage. His vanity was overwhelmed by a satanic ridicule. His religion and hisGod had been assaulted in so shameful a way that no punishment could begreat enough for the man of hell. In religion he was a fanatic; he was ademented fanatic now. 

He thrust the paper into his pocket, then crept out into the hall and tothe door of Charley's bedroom. He put his ear to the door. After amoment he softly raised the latch, and opened the door and listenedagain. 'M'sieu' was in a deep sleep. 

Louis Trudel scarcely knew why he had listened, why he had opened thedoor and stood looking at the figure in the bed, barely definable in thesemi-darkness of the room. If he had meant harm to the helpless man, hehad brought no weapon; if he had been curious, there the man waspeacefully sleeping!

His sick, morbid imagination was so alive, that he scarcely knew what hedid. As he stood there listening, hatred and horror in his heart, avoice said to him: "Thou shalt do no murder. " The words kept ringing inhis ears. Yet he had not thought of murder. The fancied command itselfwas his first temptation towards such a deed. He had thought of raisingthe parish, of condign punishment of many sorts, but not this. As heclosed the door softly, killing entered his mind and stayed there. "Thoushalt not" had been the first instigation to "Thou shalt. "

It haunted him as he returned to his room, undressed himself, and wentto 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 laywith 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, withthe monocle shining and hard in the eye. The monocle haunted him. Thatwas the infidel's sign. "Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!" Whatsign should he show?

Presently he sat up straight in bed. In another minute he was out anddressing. 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 smalliron cross from the front door. It was a cross which had been blessed bythe Pope, and had been brought to Chaudiere by the beloved mother of theCure, now dead. 

"When I have done with it I will put it back, " he said, as he thrust itinside his shirt, and hurried stealthily back to his house. As he gotinto bed he gave a noiseless, mirthless laugh. All night he lay with hisyellow 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 havenoticed the curious baleful look in the eyes of the tailor; but he wasdeeply 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 ofJolicoeur's saloon was opening and shutting before his mind's eye, andthere was a smell of liquor everywhere. It was in his nostrils when thehot steam rose from the clothes he was pressing, in the thick odour ofthe 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 thelittle tavern where white whiskey was sold to unwise habitants. But hefought on. Here was the heritage of his past, the lengthening chain ofslavery to his old self--was it his real self? Here was what wouldprevent him from forgetting all that he had been and not been, all thehappiness he might have had, all that he had lost--the ceaselessreminder. He was still the victim to a poison which gave not only astruggle 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 hefought the fever in his throat, resisting the temptation to take thatmedicine which the Curb's brother had sent him. 

"If he had a soul!" The thinking served as an antidote, for by theceaseless iteration his mind was lulled into a kind of drowse. Again andagain he went to the pail of water that stood on the window-sill, andlifting it to his lips, drank deep and full, to quench the wearingthirst. 

"If he had a soul!" He looked at Louis Trudel, silent and morose, theclammy yellow of a great sickness in his face and hands, but his mindonly 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 asign from Heaven, tailor-man!" As if in reply to his thoughts there camethe sound of singing, and of bells ringing in the parish church. 

A procession with banners was coming near. It was a holy day, andChaudiere was mindful of its duties. The wanderers of the parish hadcome home for Easter. All who belonged to Chaudiere and worked in thewoods or shanties, or lived in big cities far away, were returned--thosewho could return--to take the holy communion in the parish church. Yesterday the parish had been alive with a pious hilarity. The greatchurch had been crowded beyond the doors, the streets had been full ofcheerily dressed habitants. There had, however, come a sudden chill tothe seemly rejoicings--the little iron cross blessed by the Pope had beenstolen from the door of the church!

The fact had been told to the Cure as he said the Mass, and from thealtar steps, before going to the pulpit, he referred to the robbery withpoignant 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 thecoast of Africa. 

Louis Trudel had heard the Cure's words, and in his place at the rear ofthe church he smiled sourly to himself. In due time the little crossshould be returned, but it had work to do first. He did not take theholy communion this Easter day, or go to confession as was his wont. Not, however, until a certain day later did the Cure realise this, thoughfor thirty years the tailor had never omitted his Easter-time duties. 

The people guessed and guessed, but they knew not on whom to castsuspicion at first. No sane Catholic of Chaudiere could possibly havetaken the holy thing. Presently a murmur crept about that M'sieu' mighthave been the thief. He was not a Catholic, and--who could tell? Whoknew where he came from? Who knew what he had been? Perhaps a jail-bird-robber-murderer! Charley, however, stitched on, intent upon his ownstruggle. 

The procession passed the doorway: men bearing banners with sacred texts, acolytes swinging censers, a figure of the Saviour carved in wood bornealoft, the Cure under a silk canopy, and a long line of habitantsfollowing with sacred song. People fell upon their knees in the streetas 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 wooljacket, hastened to the doorway, knelt down, made the sign of the cross, and said a prayer. Then he turned quickly towards Charley, who, lookingat 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 farbeyond 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 daybefore he died at the Cote Dorion came to him:

"Sacristan, acolyte, player, or preacher, Each to his office, but whoholds the key? Death, only Death, thou, the ultimate teacher, Wilt showit to me!"

He was suddenly startled from his reverie, through which the processionwas 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 involuntaryexclamation of helplessness, an automatic phrase deflected from its firstsignificance to meet a casual need of the mind. Yet it seemed likesatire, 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 forthe sudden onslaught. He did not put up his hand even, but stared at thetailor, who, within a foot of him, stopped short with the iron poised. 

Louis Trudel repented in time. With the cunning of the monomaniac herealised that an attack now might frustrate his great stroke. It wouldbring the village to his shop door, precipitate the crisis upon the wrongincident. 

As it chanced, only one person in Chaudiere saw the act. That wasRosalie Evanturel across the way. She saw the iron raised, and lookedfor M'sieu' to knock the tailor down; but, instead, she beheld the tailorgo 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, " hesaid across the room to old Louis; "I meant no offence at all. I wastrying to think it out in a human sort of way. I suppose I wanted a signfrom Heaven--wanted too much, no doubt. "

The tailor's lips twitched, and his hand convulsively clutched the shearsat his side. 

"It is no matter now, " he answered shortly. "I have had signs fromHeaven; perhaps you will have one too!"

"It would be worth while, " rejoined Charley musingly. Charley wonderedbitterly if he had made an irreparable error in saying those ill-chosenwords. This might mean a breach between them, and so make his positionin the parish untenable. He had no wish to go elsewhere--where could hego? It mattered little what he was, tinker or tailor. He had now onlyto work his way back to the mind of the peasant; to be an animal withintelligence; to get close to mother earth, and move down the declivityof life with what natural wisdom were possible. It was his duty to adapthimself to the mind of such as this tailor; to acquire what the tailorand his like had found--an intolerant belief and an inexpensive security, to be got through yielding his nature to the great religious dream. Andwhat perfect tranquillity, what smooth travelling found therein. 

Gazing across the street towards the little post-office, he saw RosalieEvanturel at the window. He fell to thinking about her. Rosalie, on herpart, 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 thesaddler. He stopped short at the tailor's door. Looking at Charley, heexclaimed roughly:

"If you don't hand out the cross you stole from the church door, we'lltar and feather you, M'sieu'. " Charley looked up, surprised. It hadnever occurred to him that they could associate him with the theft. "I know nothing of the cross, " he said quietly. "You're the only hereticin the place. You've done it. Who are you? What are you doing here inChaudiere?"

"Working at my trade, " was Charley's quiet answer. He looked towardsLouis Trudel, as though to see how he took this ugly charge. 

Old Louis responded at once. "Get away with you, Filion Lacasse, " hecroaked. "Don't come here with your twaddle. M'sieu' hasn't stole thecross. 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 agood Catholic--bah!--when you've got a heretic living with you. "

"What's that to you?" growled the tailor, and reached out a nervous handtowards 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 inthe churchyard. Be off with you. Ach, " he sharply added, when Filiondid not move, "I'll cut your hair for you!" He scrambled off the benchwith his shears. 

Filion Lacasse disappeared with his friends, and the old man settled backon 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 itturned towards him, but Rosalie Evanturel, standing outside, saw it; andshe 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 wasshut in the evening, her eyes were fastened on the windows. 

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Is the habit of good living mere habit and mere actingSuspicion, the bane of sick old age