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+The Project Gutenberg EBook Lane That Had No Turning, by Parker, v3
+#66 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: The Lane That Had No Turning, Volume 3.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6239]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 17, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LANE HAD NO TURNING, PARKER, V3 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+THE LANE THAT HAD NO TURNING
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 3.
+
+
+THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF ANNETTE
+THE MARRIAGE OF THE MILLER
+MATHURIN
+THE STORY OF THE LIME-BURNER
+THE WOODSMAN'S STORY OF THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF
+UNCLE JIM
+THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH
+PARPON THE DWARF
+
+
+
+THE TRAGIC COMEDY OF ANNETTE
+
+The chest of drawers, the bed, the bedding, the pieces of linen, and the
+pile of yarn had been ready for many months.  Annette had made inventory
+of them every day since the dot was complete--at first with a great deal
+of pride, after a time more shyly and wistfully: Benoit did not come.  He
+had said he would be down with the first drive of logs in the summer, and
+at the little church of St. Saviour's they would settle everything and
+get the Cure's blessing.  Almost anybody would have believed in Benoit.
+He had the brightest scarf, the merriest laugh, the quickest eyes, and
+the blackest head in Pontiac; and no one among the river drivers could
+sing like him.  That was, he said gaily, because his earrings were gold,
+and not brass like those of his comrades.  Thus Benoit was a little vain,
+and something more; but old ladies such as the Little Chemist's wife said
+he was galant.  Probably only Medallion the auctioneer and the Cure did
+not lose themselves in the general admiration; they thought he was to
+Annette like a farthing dip to a holy candle.
+
+Annette was the youngest of twelve, and one of a family of thirty-for
+some of her married brothers and sisters and their children lived in her
+father's long white house' by the river.  When Benoit failed to come in
+the spring, they showed their pity for her by abusing him; and when she
+pleaded for him they said things which had an edge.  They ended by
+offering to marry her to Farette, the old miller, to whom they owed money
+for flour.  They brought Farette to the house at last, and she was
+patient while he ogled her, and smoked his strong tabac, and tried to
+sing.  She was kind to him, and said nothing until, one day, urged by her
+brother Solime, he mumbled the childish chanson Benoit sang the day he
+left, as he passed their house going up the river:
+
+              "High in a nest of the tam'rac tree,
+               Swing under, so free, and swing over;
+               Swing under the sun and swing over the world,
+               My snow-bird, my gay little lover
+               My gay little lover, don, don!  .  .  .  don, don!
+
+              "When the winter is done I will come back home,
+               To the nest swinging under and over,
+               Swinging under and over and waiting for me,
+               Your rover, my snow-bird, your rover--
+               Your lover and rover, don, don!  .  .  .  don, don!"
+
+It was all very well in the mouth of the sprightly, sentimental Benoit;
+it was hateful foolishness in Farette.  Annette now came to her feet
+suddenly, her pale face showing defiance, and her big brown eyes flicking
+anger.  She walked up to the miller and said: "You are old and ugly and a
+fool.  But I do not hate you; I hate Solime, my brother, for bringing you
+here.  There is the bill for the flour?  Well, I will pay it myself--and
+you can go as soon as you like."
+
+Then she put on her coat and capote and mittens, and went to the door.
+"Where are you going, Ma'm'selle?" cried Solime, in high rage.
+
+"I am going to M'sieu' Medallion," she said.
+
+Hard profane words followed her, but she ran, and never stopped till she
+came to Medallion's house.  He was not there.  She found him at the
+Little Chemist's.  That night a pony and cart took away from the house
+of Annette's father the chest of drawers, the bed, the bedding, the
+pieces of linen, and the pile of yarn which had been made ready so long
+against Benoit's coming.  Medallion had said he could sell them at once,
+and he gave her the money that night; but this was after he had had a
+talk with the Cure, to whom Annette had told all.  Medallion said he had
+been able to sell the things at once; but he did not tell her that they
+were stored in a loft of the Little Chemist's house, and that the Little
+Chemist's wife had wept over them and carried the case to the shrine of
+the Blessed Virgin.
+
+It did not matter that the father and brothers stormed.  Annette was
+firm; the dot was hers, and she would do as she wished.  She carried the
+money to the miller.  He took it grimly and gave her a receipt, grossly
+mis-spelled, and, as she was about to go, brought his fist heavily down
+on his leg and said: "Mon Dieu, it is brave--it is grand--it is an
+angel."  Then he chuckled: "So, so!  It was true.  I am old, ugly, and a
+fool.  Eh, well, I have my money!"  Then he took to counting it over in
+his hand, forgetting her, and she left him growling gleefully over it.
+
+She had not a happy life, but her people left her alone, for the Cure had
+said stern things to them.  All during the winter she went out fishing
+every day at a great hole in the ice--bitter cold work, and fit only for
+a man; but she caught many fish, and little by little laid aside pennies
+to buy things to replace what she had sold.  It had been a hard trial to
+her to sell them.  But for the kind-hearted Cure she would have repined.
+The worst thing happened, however, when the ring Benoit had given her
+dropped from her thin finger into the water where she was fishing.  Then
+a shadow descended on her, and she grew almost unearthly in the anxious
+patience of her face.  The Little Chemist's wife declared that the look
+was death.  Perhaps it would have been if Medallion had not sent a lad
+down to the bottom of the river and got the ring.  He gave it to the
+Cure, who put it on her finger one day after confession.  Then she
+brightened, and waited on and on patiently.
+
+She waited for seven years.  Then the deceitful Benoit came pensively
+back to her, a cripple from a timber accident.  She believed what he told
+her; and that was where her comedy ended and her tragedy began.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MARRIAGE OF THE MILLER
+
+Medallion put it into his head on the day that Benoit and Annette were
+married.  "See," said Medallion, "Annette wouldn't have you--and quite
+right--and she took what was left of that Benoit, who'll laugh at you
+over his mush-and-milk."
+
+"Benoit will want flour some day, with no money."  The old man chuckled
+and rubbed his hands.  "That's nothing; he has the girl--an angel!"
+"Good enough, that is what I said of her--an angel!"
+
+"Get married yourself, Farette."
+
+For reply Farette thrust a bag of native tabac into Medallion's hands.
+Then they went over the names of the girls in the village.  Medallion
+objected to those for whom he wished a better future, but they decided at
+last on Julie Lachance, who, Medallion thought, would in time profoundly
+increase Farette's respect for the memory of his first wife; for Julie
+was not an angel.  Then the details were ponderously thought out by the
+miller, and ponderously acted upon, with the dry approval of Medallion,
+who dared not tell the Cure of his complicity, though he was without
+compunction.  He had a sense of humour, and knew there could be no
+tragedy in the thing--for Julie.  But the miller was a careful man and
+original in his methods.  He still possessed the wardrobe of the first
+wife, thoughtfully preserved by his sister, even to the wonderful grey
+watered-poplin which had been her wedding-dress.  These he had taken out,
+shaken free of cayenne, camphor, and lavender, and sent upon the back of
+Parpon, the dwarf, to the house where Julie lodged (she was an orphan),
+following himself with a statement on brown paper, showing the extent of
+his wealth, and a parcel of very fine flour from the new stones in his
+mill.  All was spread out, and then he made a speech, describing his
+virtues, and condoning his one offence of age by assuring her that every
+tooth in his head was sound.  This was merely the concession of
+politeness, for he thought his offer handsome.
+
+Julie slyly eyed the wardrobe and as slyly smiled, and then, imitating
+Farette's manner--though Farette could not see it, and Parpon spluttered
+with laughter--said:
+
+"M'sieu', you are a great man.  The grey poplin is noble, also the flour,
+and the writing on the brown paper.  M'sieu', you go to Mass, and all
+your teeth are sound; you have a dog-churn, also three feather-beds, and
+five rag carpets; you have sat on the grand jury.
+
+"M'sieu', I have a dot; I accept you.  M'sieu', I will keep the brown
+paper, and the grey poplin, and the flour."  Then with a grave elaborate
+bow, "M'sieu'!"
+
+That was the beginning and end of the courtship.  For though Farette came
+every Sunday evening and smoked by the fire, and looked at Julie as she
+arranged the details of her dowry, he only chuckled, and now and again
+struck his thigh and said:
+
+"Mon Dieu, the ankle, the eye, the good child, Julie, there!"
+
+Then he would fall to thinking and chuckling again.  One day he asked her
+to make him some potato-cakes of the flour he had given her.  Her answer
+was a catastrophe.  She could not cook; she was even ignorant of
+buttermilk-pudding.  He went away overwhelmed, but came back some days
+afterwards and made another speech.  He had laid his plans before
+Medallion, who approved of them.  He prefaced the speech by placing the
+blank marriage certificate on the table.  Then he said that his first
+wife was such a cook, that when she died he paid for an extra Mass and
+twelve very fine candles.  He called upon Parpon to endorse his words,
+and Parpon nodded to all he said, but, catching Julie's eye, went off
+into gurgles of laughter, which he pretended were tears, by smothering
+his face in his capote.  "Ma'm'selle," said the miller, "I have thought.
+Some men go to the Avocat or the Cure with great things; but I have been
+a pilgrimage, I have sat on the grand jury.  There, Ma'm'selle!"  His
+chest swelled, he blew out his cheeks, he pulled Parpon's ear as Napoleon
+pulled Murat's.  "Ma'm'selle, allons!  Babette, the sister of my first
+wife-ah! she is a great cook also--well, she was pouring into my plate
+the soup--there is nothing like pea-soup with a fine lump of pork, and
+thick molasses for the buckwheat cakes.  Ma'm'selle, allons!  Just then
+I thought.  It is very good; you shall see; you shall learn how to cook.
+Babette will teach you.  Babette said many things.  I got mad and spilt
+the soup.  Ma'm'selle--eh, holy, what a turn has your waist!"
+
+At length he made it clear to her what his plans were, and to each and
+all she consented; but when he had gone she sat and laughed till she
+cried, and for the hundredth time took out the brown paper and studied
+the list of Farette's worldly possessions.
+
+The wedding-day came.  Julie performed her last real act of renunciation
+when, in spite of the protests of her friends, she wore the grey watered-
+poplin, made modern by her own hands.  The wedding-day was the
+anniversary of Farette's first marriage, and the Cure faltered in the
+exhortation when he saw that Farette was dressed in complete mourning,
+even to the crape hat-streamers, as he said, out of respect for the
+memory of his first wife, and as a kind of tribute to his second.  At the
+wedding-breakfast, where Medallion and Parpon were in high glee, Farette
+announced that he would take the honeymoon himself, and leave his wife to
+learn cooking from old Babette.
+
+So he went away alone cheerfully, with hymeneal rice falling in showers
+on his mourning garments; and his new wife was as cheerful as he, and
+threw rice also.
+
+She learned how to cook, and in time Farette learned that he had his one
+true inspiration when he wore mourning at his second marriage.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MATHURIN
+
+The tale was told to me in the little valley beneath Dalgrothe Mountain
+one September morning.  Far and near one could see the swinging of the
+flail, and the laughter of a ripe summer was upon the land.  There was a
+little Calvary down by the riverside, where the flax-beaters used to say
+their prayers in the intervals of their work; and it was just at the foot
+of this that Angele Rouvier, having finished her prayer, put her rosary
+in her pocket, wiped her eyes with the hem of her petticoat, and said to
+me:
+
+"Ah, dat poor Mathurin, I wipe my tears for him!"
+
+"Tell me all about him, won't you, Madame Angele?  I want to hear you
+tell it," I added hastily, for I saw that she would despise me if I
+showed ignorance of Mathurin's story.  Her sympathy with Mathurin's
+memory was real, but her pleasure at the compliment I paid her was also
+real.
+
+"Ah!  It was ver' longtime ago--yes.  My gran'mudder she remember dat
+Mathurin ver' well.  He is not ver' big man.  He has a face-oh, not ver'
+handsome, not so more handsome as yours--non.  His clothes, dey hang on
+him all loose; his hair, it is all some grey, and it blow about him head.
+He is clean to de face, no beard--no, nosing like dat.  But his eye--la,
+M'sieu', his eye!  It is like a coal which you blow in your hand, whew!
+--all bright.  My gran'mudder, she say, 'Voila, you can light your pipe
+with de eyes of dat Mathurin!'  She know.  She say dat M'sieu' Mathurin's
+eyes dey shine in de dark.  My gran'fadder he say he not need any lights
+on his cariole when Mathurin ride with him in de night.
+
+"Ah, sure!  it is ver' true what I tell you all de time.  If you cut off
+Mathurin at de chin, all de way up, you will say de top of him it is a
+priest.  All de way down from his neck, oh, he is just no better as
+yoursel' or my Jean--non.  He is a ver' good man.  Only one bad ting he
+do.  Dat is why I pray for him; dat is why everybody pray for him--only
+one bad ting.  Sapristi!--if I have only one ting to say God-have-mercy
+for, I tink dat ver' good; I do my penance happy.  Well, dat Mathurin him
+use to teach de school.  De Cure he ver' fond of him.  All de leetla
+children, boys and girls, dey all say: 'C'est bon Mathurin!'  He is not
+ver' cross--non.  He have no wife, no child; jes live by himself all
+alone.  But he is ver' good friends with everybody in Pontiac.  When he
+go 'long de street, everybody say, 'Ah, dere go de good Mathurin!'  He
+laugh, he tell story, he smoke leetla tabac, he take leetla white wine
+behin' de door; dat is nosing--non.
+
+"He have in de parish five, ten, twenty children all call Mathurin; he is
+godfadder with dem--yes.  So he go about with plenty of sugar and sticks
+of candy in his pocket.  He never forget once de age of every leetla
+child dat call him godfadder.  He have a brain dat work like a clock.  My
+gran'fadder he say dat Mathurin have a machine in his head.  It make de
+words, make de thoughts, make de fine speech like de Cure, make de gran'
+poetry--oh, yes!
+
+"When de King of Englan' go to sit on de throne, Mathurin write ver' nice
+verse to him.  And by-and-by dere come to Mathurin a letter--voila, dat
+is a letter!  It have one, two, three, twenty seals; and de King he say
+to Mathurin: 'Merci mille fois, m'sieu'; you are ver' polite.  I tank
+you.  I will keep your verses to tell me dat my French subjects are all
+loyal like M. Mathurin.'  Dat is ver' nice, but Mathurin is not proud--
+non.  He write six verses for my granmudder--hein?  Dat is something.
+He write two verses for de King of Englan' and he write six verses for
+my granmudder--you see!  He go on so, dis week, dat week, dis year, dat
+year, all de time.
+
+"Well, by-and-by dere is trouble on Pontiac.  It is ver' great trouble.
+You see dere is a fight 'gainst de King of Englan', and dat is too bad.
+It is not his fault; he is ver' nice man; it is de bad men who make de
+laws for de King in Quebec.  Well, one day all over de country everybody
+take him gun, and de leetla bullets, and say, I will fight de soldier of
+de King of Englan'--like dat.  Ver' well, dere was twenty men in Pontiac,
+ver' nice men--you will find de names cut in a stone on de church; and
+den, three times as big, you will find Mathurin's name.  Ah, dat is de
+ting!  You see, dat rebellion you English call it, we call it de War of
+de Patriot--de first War of de Patriot, not de second-well, call it what
+you like, quelle difference?  The King of Englan' smash him Patriot War
+all to pieces.  Den dere is ten men of de twenty come back to Pontiac
+ver' sorry.  Dey are not happy, nobody are happy.  All de wives, dey cry;
+all de children, dey are afraid.  Some people say, What fools you are;
+others say, You are no good; but everybody in him heart is ver' sorry all
+de time.
+
+"Ver' well, by-and-by dere come to Pontiac what you call a colonel with a
+dozen men--what for, you tink?  To try de patriots.  He will stan' dem
+against de wall and shoot dem to death--kill dem dead.  When dey come, de
+Cure he is not in Pontiac--non, not dat day; he is gone to anudder
+village.  De English soldier he has de ten men drew up before de church.
+All de children and all de wives dey cry and cry, and dey feel so bad.
+Certainlee, it is a pity.  But de English soldier he say he will march
+dem off to Quebec, and everybody know dat is de end of de patriots.
+
+"All at once de colonel's horse it grow ver' wild, it rise up high, and
+dance on him hind feet, and--voila!  he topple him over backwards, and de
+horse fall on de colonel and smaish him--smaish him till he go to die.
+Ver' well; de colonel, what does he do?  Dey lay him on de steps of de
+church.  Den he say: 'Bring me a priest, quick, for I go to die.'  Nobody
+answer.  De colonel he say: 'I have a hunder sins all on my mind; dey are
+on my heart like a hill.  Bring to me de priest,'--he groan like dat.
+Nobody speak at first; den somebody say de priest is not here.  'Find me
+a priest,' say de colonel; 'find me a priest.'  For he tink de priest
+will not come, becos' he go to kill de patriots.  'Bring me a priest,'
+he say again, 'and all de ten shall go free.'  He say it over and over.
+He is smaish to pieces, but his head is all right.  All at once de doors
+of de church open behin' him--what you tink!  Everybody's heart it stan'
+still, for dere is Mathurin dress as de priest, with a leetla boy to
+swing de censer.  Everybody say to himself, What is dis?  Mathurin is
+dress as de priest-ah! dat is a sin.  It is what you call blaspheme.
+
+"The English soldier he look up at Mathurin and say: 'Ah, a priest at
+last--ah, M'sieu' le Cure, comfort me!' "Mathurin look down on him and
+say: 'M'sieu', it is for you to confess your sins, and to have de office
+of de Church.  But first, as you have promise just now, you must give up
+dese poor men, who have fight for what dey tink is right.  You will let
+dem go free dis women'?'"  'Yes, yes,' say de English colonel; 'dey shall
+go free.  Only give me de help of de Church at my last.' "Mathurin turn
+to de other soldiers and say: 'Unloose de men.'
+
+"De colonel nod his head and say: 'Unloose de men.' Den de men are
+unloose, and dey all go away, for Mathurin tell dem to go quick.
+
+"Everybody is ver' 'fraid becos' of what Mathurin do.  Mathurin he say to
+de soldiers: 'Lift him up and bring him in de church.'  Dey bring him up
+to de steps of de altar.  Mathurin look at de man for a while, and it
+seem as if he cannot speak to him; but de colonel say: 'I have give you
+my word.  Give me comfort of de Church before I die.'  He is in ver'
+great pain, so Mathurin he turn roun' to everybody dat stan' by, and tell
+dem to say de prayers for de sick.  Everybody get him down on his knees
+and say de prayer.  Everybody say: 'Lord have mercy.  Spare him, O Lord;
+deliver him, O Lord, from Thy wrath!'  And Mathurin he pray all de same
+as a priest, ver' soft and gentle.  He pray on and on, and de face of de
+English soldier it get ver; quiet and still, and de tear drop down his
+cheek.  And just as Mathurin say at de last his sins dey are forgive, he
+die.  Den Mathurin, as he go away to take off his robes, he say to
+himself: 'Miserere mei Deus! miserere mei Deus!'
+
+"So dat is de ting dat Mathurin do to save de patriots from de bullets.
+Ver' well, de men dey go free, and when de Governor at Quebec he hear de
+truth, he say it is all right.  Also de English soldier die in peace and
+happy, becos' he tink his sins are forgive.  But den--dere is Mathurin
+and his sin to pretend he is a priest!  The Cure he come back, and dere
+is a great trouble.
+
+"Mathurin he is ver' quiet and still.  Nobody come near him in him house;
+nobody go near to de school.  But he sit alone all day in de school, and
+he work on de blackboar' and he write on de slate; but dere is no child
+come, becos' de Cure has forbid any one to speak to Mathurin.  Not till
+de next Sunday, den de Cure send for Mathurin to come to de church.
+Mathurin come to de steps of de altar; den de Cure say to him:
+
+"'Mathurin, you have sin a great sin.  If it was two hunderd years ago
+you would be put to death for dat.'
+
+"Mathurin he say ver' soft: 'Dat is no matter.  I am ready to die now.
+I did it to save de fadders of de children and de husbands of de wives.
+I do it to make a poor sinner happy as he go from de world.  De sin is
+mine.'
+
+"Den de Cure he say: 'De men are free, dat is good; de wives have dere
+husbands and de children dere fadders.  Also de man who confess his sins
+--de English soldier--to whom you say de words of a priest of God, he is
+forgive.  De Spirit of God it was upon him when he die, becos' you speak
+in de name of de Church.  But for you, blasphemer, who take upon you de
+holy ting, you shall suffer!  For penance, all your life you shall teach
+a chile no more.'
+
+"Voila, M'sieu' le Cure he know dat is de greatest penance for de poor
+Mathurin!  Den he set him other tings to do; and every month for a whole
+year Mathurin come on his knees all de way to de church, but de Cure say:
+'Not yet are you forgive.'  At de end of de year Mathurin he look so
+thin, so white, you can blow through him.  Every day he go to him school
+and write on de blackboar', and mark on de slate, and call de roll of de
+school.  But dere is no answer, for dere is no children.  But all de time
+de wives of de men dat he have save, and de children, dey pray for him.
+And by-and-by all de village pray for him, so sorry.
+
+"It is so for two years; and den dey say dat Mathurin he go to die.  He
+cannot come on his knees to de church; and de men whose life he save, dey
+come to de Cure and ask him to take de penance from Mathurin.  De Cure
+say: 'Wait till nex' Sunday.'  So nex' Sunday Mathurin is carry to de
+church--he is too weak to walk on his knees.  De Cure he stan' at de
+altar, and he read a letter from de Pope, which say dat Mathurin his
+penance is over, and he is forgive; dat de Pope himself pray for
+Mathurin, to save his soul.  So "Mathurin, all at once he stan' up, and
+his face it smile and smile, and he stretch out his arms as if dey are on
+a cross, and he say, 'Lord, I am ready to go,' and he fall down.  But de
+Cure catch him as he fall, and Mathurin say: 'De children--let dem come
+to me dat I teach dem before I die.'  And all de children in de church
+dey come close to him, and he sit up and smile at dem, and he say:
+
+"'It is de class in 'rithmetic.  How much is three times four?' And dem
+all answer: 'T'ree times four is twelve.' And he say: 'May de Twelve
+Apostles pray for me!'  Den he ask: 'Class in geography--how far is it
+roun' de world?'  And dey answer: 'Twenty-four t'ousand miles.'  He say:
+'Good; it is not so far to God!  De school is over all de time,' he say.
+And dat is only everything of poor Mathurin.  He is dead.
+
+"When de Cure lay him down, after he make de Sign upon him, he kiss his
+face and say: 'Mathurin, now you are a priest unto God.'"
+
+That was Angele Rouvier's story of Mathurin, the Master of the School,
+for whom the women and the children pray in the parish of Pontiac, though
+the school has been dismissed these hundred years and more.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE LIME-BURNER
+
+For a man in whose life there had been tragedy he was cheerful.  He had a
+habit of humming vague notes in the silence of conversation, as if to put
+you at your ease.  His body and face were lean and arid, his eyes oblique
+and small, his hair straight and dry and straw-coloured; and it flew out
+crackling with electricity, to meet his cap as he put it on.  He lived
+alone in a little but near his lime-kiln by the river, with no near
+neighbours, and few companions save his four dogs; and these he fed
+sometimes at expense of his own stomach.  He had just enough crude poetry
+in his nature to enjoy his surroundings.  For he was well placed.  Behind
+the lime-kiln rose knoll on knoll, and beyond these the verdant hills,
+all converging to Dalgrothe Mountain.  In front of it was the river, with
+its banks dropping forty feet, and below, the rapids, always troubled and
+sportive.  On the farther side of the river lay peaceful areas of meadow
+and corn land, and low-roofed, hovering farm-houses, with one larger than
+the rest, having a wind-mill and a flag-staff.  This building was almost
+large enough for a manor, and indeed it was said that it had been built
+for one just before the conquest in 1759, but the war had destroyed the
+ambitious owner, and it had become a farm-house.  Paradis always knew the
+time of the day by the way the light fell on the wind-mill.  He had owned
+this farm once, he and his brother Fabian, and he had loved it as he
+loved Fabian, and he loved it now as he loved Fabian's memory.  In spite
+of all, they were cheerful memories, both of brother and house.
+
+At twenty-three they had become orphans, with two hundred acres of land,
+some cash, horses and cattle, and plenty of credit in the parish, or in
+the county, for that matter.  Both were of hearty dispositions, but
+Fabian had a taste for liquor, and Henri for pretty faces and shapely
+ankles.  Yet no one thought the worse of them for that, especially at
+first.  An old servant kept house for them and cared for them in her
+honest way, both physically and morally.  She lectured them when at first
+there was little to lecture about.  It is no wonder that when there came
+a vast deal to reprove, the bonne desisted altogether, overwhelmed by the
+weight of it.
+
+Henri got a shock the day before their father died when he saw Fabian
+lift the brandy used to mix with the milk of the dying man, and pouring
+out the third of a tumbler, drink it off, smacking his lips as he did so,
+as though it were a cordial.  That gave him a cue to his future and to
+Fabian's.  After their father died Fabian gave way to the vice.  He drank
+in the taverns, he was at once the despair and the joy of the parish;
+for, wild as he was, he had a gay temper, a humorous mind, a strong arm,
+and was the universal lover.  The Cure, who did not, of course, know one-
+fourth of his wildness, had a warm spot for him in his heart.  But there
+was a vicious strain in him somewhere, and it came out one day in a
+perilous fashion.
+
+There was in the hotel of the Louis Quinze an English servant from the
+west, called Nell Barraway.  She had been in a hotel in Montreal, and it
+was there Fabian had seen her as she waited at table.  She was a
+splendid-looking creature--all life and energy, tall, fair-haired, and
+with a charm above her kind.  She was also an excellent servant, could do
+as much as any two women in any house, and was capable of more airy
+diablerie than any ten of her sex in Pontiac.  When Fabian had said to
+her in Montreal that he would come to see her again, he told her where he
+lived.  She came to see him instead, for she wrote to the landlord of the
+Louis Quinze, enclosed fine testimonials, and was at once engaged.
+Fabian was stunned when he entered the Louis Quinze and saw her waiting
+at table, alert, busy, good to behold.  She nodded at him with a quick
+smile as he stood bewildered just inside the door, then said in English:
+"This way, m'sieu'."
+
+As he sat down he said in English also, with a laugh and with snapping
+eyes: "Good Lord, what brings you here, lady-bird?"
+
+As she pushed a chair under him she whispered through his hair: "You!"
+and then was gone away to fetch pea-soup for six hungry men.
+
+The Louis Quinze did more business now in three months than it had done
+before in six.  But it became known among a few in Pontiac that Nell was
+notorious.  How it had crept up from Montreal no one guessed, and, when
+it did come, her name was very intimately associated with Fabian's.  No
+one could say that she was not the most perfect of servants, and also no
+one could say that her life in Pontiac had not been exemplary.  Yet wise
+people had made up their minds that she was determined to marry Fabian,
+and the wisest declared that she would do so in spite of everything--
+religion (she was a Protestant), character, race.  She was clever, as the
+young Seigneur found, as the little Avocat was forced to admit, as the
+Cure allowed with a sigh, and she had no airs of badness at all and very
+little of usual coquetry.  Fabian was enamoured, and it was clear that he
+intended to bring the woman to the Manor one way or another.
+
+Henri admitted the fascination of the woman, felt it, despaired, went to
+Montreal, got proof of her career, came back, and made his final and only
+effort to turn his brother from the girl.
+
+He had waited an hour outside the hotel for his brother, and when Fabian
+got in, he drove on without a word.  After a while, Fabian, who was in
+high spirits, said:
+
+"Open your mouth, Henri.  Come along, sleepyhead."
+
+Straightway he began to sing a rollicking song, and Henri joined in with
+him heartily, for the spirit of Fabian's humour was contagious:
+
+                        "There was a little man,
+                         The foolish Guilleri
+                         Carabi.
+                         He went unto the chase,
+                         Of partridges the chase.
+                         Carabi.
+                         Titi Carabi,
+                         Toto Carabo,
+                         You're going to break your neck,
+                         My lovely Guilleri!"
+
+He was about to begin another verse when Henri stopped him, saying:
+
+"You're going to break your neck, Fabian."
+
+"What's up, Henri?" was the reply.
+
+"You're drinking hard, and you don't keep good company."
+
+Fabian laughed.  "Can't get the company I want, so what I can get I have,
+Henri, my lad."
+
+"Don't drink."  Henri laid his freehand on Fabian's knee.
+
+"Whiskey-wine is meat and drink to me--I was born on New Year's Day, old
+coffin-face.  Whiskey-wine day, they ought to call it.  Holy! the empty
+jars that day."  Henri sighed.  "That's the drink, Fabian," he said
+patiently.  "Give up the company.  I'll be better company for you than
+that girl, Fabian."
+
+"Girl?  What the devil do you mean!"
+
+"She, Nell Barraway, was the company I meant, Fabian."
+
+"Nell Barraway--you mean her?  Bosh!  I'm going to marry her, Henri."
+
+"You mustn't, Fabian," said Henri, eagerly clutching Fabian's sleeve.
+
+"But I must, my Henri.  She's the best-looking, wittiest girl I ever saw
+--splendid.  Never lonely with her."
+
+"Looks and brains isn't everything, Fabian."
+
+"Isn't it, though?  Isn't it?  Tiens, you try it!"
+
+"Not without goodness."  Henri's voice weakened.
+
+"That's bosh.  Of course it is, Henri, my dear.  If you love a woman, if
+she gets hold of you, gets into your blood, loves you so that the touch
+of her fingers sets your pulses going pom-pom, you don't care a sou
+whether she is good or not."
+
+"You mean whether she was good or not?"
+
+"No, I don't.  I mean is good or not.  For if she loves you she'll travel
+straight for your sake.  Pshaw, you don't know anything about it!"
+
+"I know all about it."
+
+"Know all about it!  You're in love--you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Fabian sat open-mouthed for a minute.  "Godam!" he said.  It was his one
+English oath.
+
+"Is she good company?" he asked after a minute.
+
+"She's the same as you keep--voila, the same."
+
+"You mean Nell--Nell?" asked Fabian, in a dry, choking voice.
+
+"Yes, Nell.  From the first time I saw her.  But I'd cut my hand off
+first.  I'd think of you; of our people that have been here for two
+hundred years; of the rooms in the old house where mother used to be."
+
+Fabian laughed nervously.  "Holy heaven, and you've got her in your
+blood, too!"
+
+"Yes, but I'd never marry her.  Fabian, at Montreal I found out all about
+her.  She was as bad--"
+
+"That's nothing to me, Henri," said Fabian, "but something else is.  Here
+you are now.  I'll make a bargain."  His face showed pale in the
+moonlight.  "If you'll drink with me, do as I do, go where I go, play the
+devil when I play it, and never squeal, never hang back, I'll give her
+up.  But I've got to have you--got to have you all the time, everywhere,
+hunting, drinking, or letting alone.  You'll see me out, for you're
+stronger, had less of it.  I'm soon for the little low house in the
+grass.  Stop the horses."
+
+Henri stopped them and they got out.  They were just opposite the lime-
+kiln, and they had to go a few hundred yards before they came to the
+bridge to cross the river to their home.  The light of the fire shone in
+their faces as Fabian handed the flask to Henri, and said: "Let's drink
+to it, Henri.  You half, and me half."  He was deadly pale.
+
+Henri drank to the finger-mark set, and then Fabian lifted the flask to
+his lips.
+
+"Good-bye, Nell!" he said.  "Here's to the good times we've had!"  He
+emptied the flask, and threw it over the bank into the burning lime, and
+Garotte, the old lime-burner, being half asleep, did not see or hear.
+
+The next day the two went on a long hunting expedition, and the following
+month Nell Barraway left for Montreal.
+
+Henri kept to his compact, drink for drink, sport for sport.  One year
+the crops were sold before they were reaped, horses and cattle went
+little by little, then came mortgage, and still Henri never wavered,
+never weakened, in spite of the Cure and all others.  The brothers were
+always together, and never from first to last did Henri lose his temper,
+or openly lament that ruin was coming surely on them.  What money Fabian
+wanted he got.  The Cure's admonitions availed nothing, for Fabian would
+go his gait.  The end came on the very spot where the compact had been
+made; for, passing the lime-kiln one dark night, as the two rode home
+together, Fabian's horse shied, the bank of the river gave way, and with
+a startled "Ah, Henri!" the profligate and his horse were gone into the
+river below.
+
+Next month the farm and all were sold, Henri Paradis succeeded the old
+lime-burner at his post, drank no more ever, and lived his life in sight
+of the old home.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WOODSMAN'S STORY OF THE GREAT WHITE CHIEF
+
+The old woodsman shifted the knife with which he was mending his fishing-
+rod from one hand to the other, and looked at it musingly, before he
+replied to Medallion.  "Yes, m'sieu', I knew the White Chief, as they
+called him: this was his"--holding up the knife; "and this"--taking a
+watch from his pocket.  "He gave them to me; I was with him in the Circle
+on the great journey."
+
+"Tell us about him, then," Medallion urged; "for there are many tales,
+and who knows which is the right one?"
+
+"The right one is mine.  Holy, he was to me like a father then!  I know
+more of the truth than any one."  He paused a moment, looking out on the
+river where the hot sun was playing with all its might, then took off his
+cap with deliberation, laid it beside him, and speaking as it were into
+the distance, began:
+
+"He once was a trader of the Hudson's Bay Company.  Of his birth some
+said one thing, some another; I know he was beaucoup gentil, and his
+heart, it was a lion's!  Once, when there was trouble with the
+Chipp'ways, he went alone to their camp, and say he will fight their
+strongest man, to stop the trouble.  He twist the neck of the great
+fighting man of the tribe, so that it go with a snap, and that ends it,
+and he was made a chief, for, you see, in their hearts they all hated
+their strong man.  Well, one winter there come down to Fort o' God two
+Esquimaux, and they say that three white men are wintering by the
+Coppermine River; they had travel down from the frozen seas when their
+ship was lock in the ice, but can get no farther.  They were sick with
+the evil skin, and starving.  The White Chief say to me: 'Galloir, will
+you go to rescue them?'  I would have gone with him to the ends of the
+world--and this was near one end."
+
+The old man laughed to himself, tossed his jet-black hair from his
+wrinkled face, and after a moment, went on: "There never was such a
+winter as that.  The air was so still by times that you can hear the
+rustle of the stars and the shifting of the northern lights; but the cold
+at night caught you by the heart and clamp it--Mon Dieu, how it clamp!
+We crawl under the snow and lay in our bags of fur and wool, and the dogs
+hug close to us.  We were sorry for the dogs; and one died, and then
+another, and there is nothing so dreadful as to hear the dogs howl in the
+long night--it is like ghosts crying in an empty world.  The circle of
+the sun get smaller and smaller, till he only tramp along the high edge
+of the north-west.  We got to the river at last and found the camp.
+There is one man dead--only one; but there were bones--ah, m'sieu', you
+not guess what a thing it is to look upon the bones of men, and know
+that--!"
+
+Medallion put his hand on the old man's arm.  "Wait a minute," he said.
+Then he poured out coffee for both, and they drank before the rest was
+told.
+
+"It's a creepy story," said Medallion, "but go on."
+
+"Well, the White Chief look at the dead man as he sit there in the snow,
+with a book and a piece of paper beside him, and the pencil in the book.
+The face is bent forward to the knees.  The White Chief pick up the book
+and pencil, and then kneel down and gaze up in the dead man's face, all
+hard like stone and crusted with frost.  I thought he would never stir
+again, he look so long.  I think he was puzzle.  Then he turn and say to
+me: 'So quiet, so awful, Galloir!' and got up.  Well, but it was cold
+then, and my head seemed big and running about like a ball of air.  But
+I light a spirit-lamp, and make some coffee, and he open the dead man's
+book--it is what they call a diary--and begin to read.  All at once I
+hear a cry, and I see him drop the book on the ground, and go to the dead
+man, and jerk his fist as if to strike him in the face.  But he did not
+strike."
+
+Galloir stopped, and lighted his pipe, and was so long silent that
+Medallion had to jog him into speaking.  He puffed the smoke so that his
+face was in the cloud, and he said through it: "No, he did not strike.
+He get to his feet and spoke: 'God forgive her!' like that, and come and
+take up the book again, and read.  He eat and drunk, and read the book
+again, and I know by his face that something more than cold was clamp his
+heart.
+
+"'Shall we bury him in the snow?' I say.  'No,' he spoke, 'let him sit
+there till the Judgmen'.  This is a wonderful book, Galloir,' he went on.
+'He was a brave man, but the rest--the rest!'--then under his breath
+almost: 'She was so young--but a child.' I not understand that.  We start
+away soon, leaving the thing there.  For four days, and then I see that
+the White Chief will never get back to Fort Pentecost; but he read the
+dead man's book much.  .  .  ."
+
+"I cannot forget that one day.  He lies down looking at the world--
+nothing but the waves of snow, shining blue and white, on and on.  The
+sun lift an eye of blood in the north, winking like a devil as I try to
+drive Death away by calling in his ear.  He wake all at once; but his
+eyes seem asleep.  He tell me to take the book to a great man in
+Montreal--he give me the name.  Then he take out his watch--it is stop--
+and this knife, and put them into my hands, and then he pat my shoulder.
+He motion to have the bag drawn over his head.  I do it.  .  .  .  Of
+course that was the end!"
+
+"But what about the book?" Medallion asked.
+
+"That book?  It is strange.  I took it to the man in Montreal--tonnerre,
+what a fine house and good wine had he!--and told him all.  He whip out a
+scarf, and blow his nose loud, and say very angry: 'So, she's lost both
+now!  What a scoundrel he was!  .  .  .'  Which one did he mean?  I not
+understan' ever since."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+UNCLE JIM
+
+He was no uncle of mine, but it pleased me that he let me call him Uncle
+Jim.
+
+It seems only yesterday that, for the first time, on a farm "over the
+border," from the French province, I saw him standing by a log outside
+the wood-house door, splitting maple knots.  He was all bent by years and
+hard work, with muscles of iron, hands gnarled and lumpy, but clinching
+like a vise; grey head thrust forward on shoulders which had carried
+forkfuls of hay and grain, and leaned to the cradle and the scythe, and
+been heaped with cordwood till they were like hide and metal; white
+straggling beard and red watery eyes, which, to me, were always hung with
+an intangible veil of mystery--though that, maybe, was my boyish fancy.
+Added to all this he was so very deaf that you had to speak clear and
+loud into his ear; and many people he could not hear at all, if their
+words were not sharp-cut, no matter how loud.  A silent, withdrawn man
+he was, living close to Mother Earth, twin-brother of Labour, to whom
+Morning and Daytime were sounding-boards for his axe, scythe, saw, flail,
+and milking-pail, and Night a round hollow of darkness into which he
+crept, shutting the doors called Silence behind him, till the impish page
+of Toil came tapping again, and he stepped awkwardly into the working
+world once more.  Winter and summer saw him putting the kettle on the
+fire a few minutes after four o'clock, in winter issuing with lantern
+from the kitchen door to the stable and barn to feed the stock; in summer
+sniffing the grey dawn and looking out on his fields of rye and barley,
+before he went to gather the cows for milking and take the horses to
+water.
+
+For forty years he and his worn-faced wife bowed themselves beneath the
+yoke, first to pay for the hundred-acre farm, and then to bring up and
+educate their seven children.  Something noble in them gave them
+ambitions for their boys and girls which they had never had for
+themselves; but when had gone the forty years, in which the little farm
+had twice been mortgaged to put the eldest son through college as a
+doctor, they faced the bitter fact that the farm had passed from them to
+Rodney, the second son, who had come at last to keep a hotel in a town
+fifty miles away.  Generous-hearted people would think that these grown-
+up sons and daughters should have returned the old people's long toil and
+care by buying up the farm and handing it back to them, their rightful
+refuge in the decline of life.  But it was not so.  They were tenants
+where they had been owners, dependants where they had been givers, slaves
+where once they were, masters.  The old mother toiled without a servant,
+the old man without a helper, save in harvest time.
+
+But the great blow came when Rodney married the designing milliner who
+flaunted her wares opposite his bar-room; and, somehow, from the date
+of that marriage, Rodney's good fortune and the hotel declined.  When he
+and his wife first visited the little farm after their marriage the old
+mother shrank away from the young woman's painted face, and ever
+afterwards an added sadness showed in her bearing and in her patient
+smile.  But she took Rodney's wife through the house, showing her all
+there was to show, though that was not much.  There was the little
+parlour with its hair-cloth chairs, rag carpet, centre table, and iron
+stove with black pipes, all gaily varnished.  There was the parlour
+bedroom off it, with the one feather-bed of the house bountifully piled
+up with coarse home-made blankets, topped by a silk patchwork quilt, the
+artistic labour of the old wife's evening hours while Uncle Jim peeled
+apples and strung them to dry from the rafters.  There was a room,
+dining-room in summer, and kitchen dining-room in winter, as clean as
+aged hands could scrub and dust it, hung about with stray pictures from
+illustrated papers, and a good old clock in the corner "ticking" life,
+and youth, and hope away.  There was the buttery off that, with its
+meagre china and crockery, its window looking out on the field of rye,
+the little orchard of winter apples, and the hedge of cranberry bushes.
+Upstairs were rooms with no ceilings, where, lying on a corn-husk bed,
+you reached up and touched the sloping roof, with windows at the end
+only, facing the buckwheat field, and looking down two miles towards the
+main road--for the farm was on a concession or side-road, dusty in
+summer, and in winter sometimes impassable for weeks together.  It was
+not much of a home, as any one with the mind's eye can see, but four
+stalwart men and three fine women had been born, raised, and quartered
+there, until, with good clothes, and speaking decent English and
+tolerable French, and with money in their pockets, hardly got by the old
+people, one by one they issued forth into the world.
+
+The old mother showed Rodney's wife what there was for eyes to see, not
+forgetting the three hives of bees on the south side, beneath the parlour
+window.  She showed it with a kind of pride, for it all seemed good to
+her, and every dish, and every chair, and every corner in the little
+house had to her a glory of its own, because of those who had come and
+gone--the firstlings of her flock, the roses of her little garden of
+love, blooming now in a rougher air than ranged over the little house on
+the hill.  She had looked out upon the pine woods to the east and the
+meadow-land to the north, the sweet valley between the rye-field and the
+orchard, and the good honest air that had blown there for forty years,
+bracing her heart and body for the battle of love and life, and she had
+said through all, Behold it is very good.
+
+But the pert milliner saw nothing of all this; she did not stand abashed
+in the sacred precincts of a home where seven times the Angel of Death
+had hovered over a birth-bed.  She looked into the face which Time's
+finger had anointed, and motherhood had etched with trouble, and said:
+
+"'Tisn't much, is it?  Only a clap-board house, and no ceilings upstairs,
+and rag carpets-pshaw!"
+
+And when she came to wash her hands for dinner, she threw aside the
+unscented, common bar-soap, and, shrugging her narrow shoulders at the
+coarse towel, wiped her fingers on her cambric handkerchief.  Any other
+kind of a woman, when she saw the old mother going about with her twisted
+wrist--a doctor's bad work with a fracture--would have tucked up her
+dress, and tied on an apron to help.  But no, she sat and preened herself
+with the tissue-paper sort of pride of a vain milliner, or nervously
+shifted about, lifting up this and that, curiously supercilious, her
+tongue rattling on to her husband and to his mother in a shallow, foolish
+way.  She couldn't say, however, that any thing was out of order or ill-
+kept about the place.  The old woman's rheumatic fingers made corners
+clean, and wood as white as snow, the stove was polished, the tins were
+bright, and her own dress, no matter what her work, neat as a girl's,
+although the old graceful poise of the body had twisted out of drawing.
+
+But the real crisis came when Rodney, having stood at the wood-house door
+and blown the dinner-horn as he used to do when a boy, the sound floating
+and crying away across the rye-field, the old man came--for, strange to
+say, that was the one sound he could hear easily, though, as he said to
+himself, it seemed as small as a pin, coming from ever so far away.  He
+came heavily up from the barn-yard, mopping his red face and forehead,
+and now and again raising his hand to shade his eyes, concerned to see
+the unknown visitors, whose horse and buggy were in the stable-yard.  He
+and Rodney greeted outside warmly enough, but there was some trepidation
+too in Uncle Jim's face--he felt trouble brewing; and there is no trouble
+like that which comes between parent and child.  Silent as he was,
+however, he had a large and cheerful heart, and nodding his head he
+laughed the deep, quaint laugh which Rodney himself of all his sons had--
+and he was fonder of Rodney than any.  He washed his hands in the little
+basin outside the wood-house door, combed out his white beard, rubbed his
+red, watery eyes, tied a clean handkerchief round his neck, put on a
+rusty but clean old coat, and a minute afterwards was shaking hands for
+the first time with Rodney's wife.  He had lived much apart from his
+kind, but he had a mind that fastened upon a thought and worked it down
+until it was an axiom.  He felt how shallow was this thin, flaunting
+woman of flounces and cheap rouge; he saw her sniff at the brown sugar-
+she had always had white at the hotel; and he noted that she let Rodney's
+mother clear away and wash the dinner things herself.  He felt the little
+crack of doom before it came.
+
+It came about three o'clock.  He did not return to the rye-field after
+dinner, but stayed and waited to hear what Rodney had to say.  Rodney did
+not tell his little story well, for he foresaw trouble in the old home;
+but he had to face this and all coming dilemmas as best he might.  With a
+kind of shamefacedness, yet with an attempt to carry the thing off
+lightly, he told Uncle Jim, while, inside, his wife told the old mother,
+that the business of the hotel had gone to pot (he did not say who was
+the cause of that), and they were selling out to his partner and coming
+to live on the farm.
+
+"I'm tired anyway of the hotel job," said Rodney.  "Farming's a better
+life.  Don't you think so, dad?"
+
+"It's better for me, Rod," answered Uncle Jim, "it's better for me."
+
+Rodney was a little uneasy.  "But won't it be better for me?" he asked.
+
+"Mebbe," was the slow answer, "mebbe, mebbe so."
+
+"And then there's mother, she's getting too old for the work, ain't she?"
+
+"She's done it straight along," answered the old man, "straight along
+till now."
+
+"But Millie can help her, and we'll have a hired girl, eh?"
+
+"I dunno, I dunno," was the brooding answer; "the place ain't going to
+stand it."
+
+"We'll get more out of it," answered Rodney.  "I'll stock it up, I'll put
+more under barley.  All the thing wants is working, dad.  Put more in,
+get more out.  Now ain't that right?"
+
+The other was looking off towards the rye-field, where, for forty years,
+up and down the hillside, he had travelled with the cradle and the
+scythe, putting all there was in him into it, and he answered, blinking
+along the avenue of the past:
+
+"Mebbe, mebbe!"
+
+Rodney fretted under the old man's vague replies, and said: "But darn it
+all, can't you tell us what you think?"
+
+His father did not take his eyes off the rye-field.  "I'm thinking," he
+answered, in the same old-fashioned way, "that I've been working here
+since you were born, Rod.  I've blundered along, somehow, just boggling
+my way through.  I ain't got anything more to say.  The farm ain't mine
+any more, but I'll keep my scythe sharp and my axe ground just as I
+always did, and I'm for workin' as I've always worked as long as I'm let
+to stay."
+
+"Good Lord, dad, don't talk that way!  Things ain't going to be any
+different for you and mother than they are now.  Only, of course--"
+He paused.
+
+The old man pieced out the sentence: "Only, of course, there can't be two
+women rulin' one house, Rod, and you know it as well as I do."
+
+Exactly how Rodney's wife told the old mother of the great change Rodney
+never'knew; but when he went back to the house the grey look in his
+mother's face told him more than her words ever told.  Before they left
+that night the pink milliner had already planned the changes which were
+to celebrate her coming and her ruling.
+
+So Rodney and his wife came, all the old man prophesied in a few brief
+sentences to his wife proving true.  There was no great struggle on the
+mother's part; she stepped aside from governing, and became as like a
+servant as could be.  An insolent servant-girl came, and she and Rodney's
+wife started a little drama of incompetency, which should end as the
+hotel-keeping ended.  Wastefulness, cheap luxury, tawdry living, took the
+place of the old, frugal, simple life.  But the mother went about with
+that unchanging sweetness of face, and a body withering about a fretted
+soul.  She had no bitterness, only a miserable distress.  But every
+slight that was put upon her, every change, every new-fangled idea, from
+the white sugar to the scented soap and the yellow buggy, rankled in the
+old man's heart.  He had resentment both for the old wife and himself,
+and he hated the pink milliner for the humiliation that she heaped upon
+them both.  Rodney did not see one-fifth of it, and what he did see lost
+its force, because, strangely enough, he loved the gaudy wife who wore
+gloves on her bloodless hands as she did the house-work and spent
+numberless afternoons in trimming her own bonnets.  Her peevishness grew
+apace as the newness of the experience wore off.  Uncle Jim seldom spoke
+to her, as he seldom spoke to anybody, but she had an inkling of the
+rancour in his heart, and many a time she put blame upon his shoulders to
+her husband, when some unavoidable friction came.
+
+A year, two years, passed, which were as ten upon the shoulders of the
+old people, and then, in the dead of winter, an important thing happened.
+About the month of March Rodney's first child was expected.  At the end
+of January Rodney had to go away, expecting to return in less than a
+month.  But, in the middle of February, the woman's sacred trouble came
+before its time.  And on that day there fell such a storm as had not been
+seen for many a year.  The concession road was blocked before day had
+well set in; no horse could go ten yards in it.  The nearest doctor was
+miles away at Pontiac, and for any man to face the journey was to connive
+with death.  The old mother came to Uncle Jim, and, as she looked out of
+a little unfrosted spot on the window at the blinding storm, told him
+that the pink milliner would die.  There seemed to be no other end to it,
+for the chances were a hundred to one against the strongest man making a
+journey for the doctor, and another hundred to one against the doctor's
+coming.
+
+No one knows whether Uncle Jim could hear the cries from the torture-
+chamber, but, after standing for a time mumbling to himself, he wrapped
+himself in a heavy coat, tied a muffler about his face, and went out.
+If they missed him they must have thought him gone to the barn, or in the
+drive-shed sharpening his axe.  But the day went on and the old mother
+forgot all the wrongs that she had suffered, and yearned over the trivial
+woman who was hurrying out into the Great Space.  Her hours seemed
+numbered at noon, her moments measured as it came towards sundown, but
+with the passing of the sun the storm stopped, and a beautiful white
+peace fell on the world of snow, and suddenly out of that peace came six
+men; and the first that opened the door was the doctor.  After him came
+Uncle Jim, supported between two others.
+
+Uncle Jim had made the terrible journey, falling at last in the streets
+of the county town with frozen hands and feet, not a dozen rods from the
+doctor's door.  They brought him to, he told his story, and, with the
+abating of the storm, the doctor and the villagers drove down to the
+concession road, and then made their way slowly up across the fields,
+carrying the old man with them, for he would not be left behind.
+
+An hour after the doctor entered the parlour bedroom the old mother came
+out to where the old man sat, bundled up beside the fire with bandaged
+hands and feet.
+
+"She's safe, Jim, and the child too," she said softly.  The old man
+twisted in his chair, and blinked into the fire.  "Dang my soul!" he
+said.
+
+The old woman stooped and kissed his grey tangled hair.  She did not
+speak, and she did not ask him what he meant; but there and then they
+took up their lives again and lived them out.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSE WITH THE TALL PORCH
+
+No one ever visited the House except the Little Chemist, the Avocat,
+and Medallion; and Medallion, though merely an auctioneer, was the only
+person on terms of intimacy with its owner, the old Seigneur, who for
+many years had never stirred beyond the limits of his little garden.  At
+rare intervals he might be seen sitting in the large stone porch which
+gave overweighted dignity to the house, itself not very large.
+
+An air of mystery surrounded the place: in summer the grass was rank,
+the trees seemed huddled together in gloom about the houses, the vines
+appeared to ooze on the walls, and at one end, where the window-shutters
+were always closed and barred, a great willow drooped and shivered; in
+winter the stone walls showed naked and grim among the gaunt trees and
+furtive shrubs.
+
+None who ever saw the Seigneur could forget him--a tall figure with
+stooping shoulders; a pale, deeply lined, clean-shaven face, and a
+forehead painfully white, with blue veins showing; the eyes handsome,
+penetrative, brooding, and made indescribably sorrowful by the dark skin
+around them.  There were those in Pontiac, such as the Cure, who
+remembered when the Seigneur was constantly to be seen in the village;
+and then another person was with him always, a tall, handsome youth, his
+son.  They were fond and proud of each other, and were religious and good
+citizens in a highbred, punctilious way.
+
+At that time the Seigneur was all health and stalwart strength.  But one
+day a rumour went abroad that he had quarrelled with his son because of
+the wife of Farette the miller.  No one outside knew if the thing was
+true, but Julie, the miller's wife, seemed rather to plume herself that
+she had made a stir in her little world.  Yet the curious habitants came
+to know that the young man had gone, and after a few years his having
+once lived there had become a mere memory.  But whenever the Little
+Chemist set foot inside the tall porch he remembered; the Avocat was kept
+in mind by papers which he was called upon to read and alter from time to
+time; the Cure never forgot, because when the young man went he lost not
+one of his flock but two; and Medallion, knowing something of the story,
+had wormed a deal of truth out of the miller's wife.  Medallion knew that
+the closed, barred rooms were the young man's; and he knew also that the
+old man was waiting, waiting, in a hope which he never even named to
+himself.
+
+One day the silent old housekeeper came rapping at Medallion's door, and
+simply said to him: "Come--the Seigneur!"
+
+Medallion went, and for hours sat beside the Seigneur's chair, while the
+Little Chemist watched and sighed softly in a corner, now and again
+rising to feel the sick man's pulse or to prepare a cordial.  The
+housekeeper hovered behind the high-backed chair, and when the Seigneur
+dropped his handkerchief--now, as always, of the exquisite fashion of a
+past century--she put it gently in his hand.
+
+Once when the Little Chemist touched his wrist, his dark eyes rested on
+him with inquiry, and he said: "Soon?"
+
+It was useless trying to shirk the persistency of that look.  "Eight
+hours, perhaps, sir," the Little Chemist answered, with painful shyness.
+
+The Seigneur seemed to draw himself up a little, and his hand grasped his
+handkerchief tightly for an instant; then he said: "Soon.  Thank you."
+
+After a little, his eyes turned to Medallion and he seemed about to
+speak, but still kept silent.  His chin dropped on his breast, and for a
+time he was motionless and shrunken; but still there was a strange little
+curl of pride--or disdain--on his lips.  At last he drew up his head, his
+shoulders came erect, heavily, to the carved back of the chair, where,
+strange to say, the Stations of the Cross were figured, and he said, in a
+cold, ironical voice: "The Angel of Patience has lied!"
+
+The evening wore on, and there was no sound, save the ticking of the
+clock, the beat of rain upon the windows, and the deep breathing of the
+Seigneur.  Presently he started, his eyes opened wide, and his whole body
+seemed to listen.
+
+"I heard a voice," he said.
+
+"No one spoke, my master," said the housekeeper.
+
+"It was a voice without," he said.
+
+"Monsieur," said the Little Chemist, "it was the wind in the eaves."
+
+His face was almost painfully eager and sensitively alert.
+
+"Hush!" he said; "I hear a voice in the tall porch."
+
+"Sir," said Medallion, laying a hand respectfully on his arm, "it is
+nothing."
+
+With a light on his face and a proud, trembling energy, he got to his
+feet.  "It is the voice of my son," he said.  "Go--go, and bring him in."
+
+No one moved.  But he was not to be disobeyed.
+
+His ears had been growing keener as he neared the subtle atmosphere of
+that Brink where man strips himself to the soul for a lonely voyaging,
+and he waved the woman to the door.
+
+"Wait," he said, as her hand fluttered at the handle.  "Take him to
+another room.  Prepare a supper such as we used to have.  When it is
+ready I will come.  But, listen, and obey.  Tell him not that I have
+but four hours of life.  Go, good woman, and bring him in."
+
+It was as he said.  They found the son weak and fainting, fallen within
+the porch--a worn, bearded man, returned from failure and suffering and
+the husks of evil.  They clothed him and cared for him, and strengthened
+him with wine, while the woman wept over him and at last set him at the
+loaded, well-lighted table.  Then the Seigneur came in, leaning his arm
+very lightly on that of Medallion with a kind of kingly air; and,
+greeting his son before them all, as if they had parted yesterday, sat
+down.  For an hour they sat there, and the Seigneur talked gaily with a
+colour to his face, and his great eyes glowing.  At last he rose, lifted
+his glass, and said: "The Angel of Patience is wise.  I drink to my son!"
+
+He was about to say something more, but a sudden whiteness passed over
+his face.  He drank off the wine, and as he put the glass down, shivered,
+and fell back in his chair.
+
+"Two hours short, Chemist!" he said, and smiled, and was Still.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PARPON THE DWARF
+
+Parpon perched in a room at the top of the mill.  He could see every
+house in the village, and he knew people a long distance off.  He was a
+droll dwarf, and, in his way, had good times in the world.  He turned the
+misery of the world into a game, and grinned at it from his high little
+eyrie with the dormer window.  He had lived with Farette the miller for
+some years, serving him with a kind of humble insolence.
+
+It was not a joyful day for Farette when he married Julie.  She led him a
+pretty travel.  He had started as her master; he ended by being her slave
+and victim.
+
+She was a wilful wife.  She had made the Seigneur de la Riviere, of the
+House with the Tall Porch, to quarrel with his son Armand, so that Armand
+disappeared from Pontiac for years.
+
+When that happened she had already stopped confessing to the good Cure;
+so it may be guessed there were things she did not care to tell, and for
+which she had no repentance.  But Parpon knew, and Medallion the
+auctioneer guessed; and the Little Chemist's wife hoped that it was not
+so.  When Julie looked at Parpon, as he perched on a chest of drawers,
+with his head cocked and his eyes blinking, she knew that he read the
+truth.  But she did not know all that was in his head; so she said sharp
+things to him, as she did to everybody, for she had a very poor opinion
+of the world, and thought all as flippant as herself.  She took nothing
+seriously; she was too vain.  Except that she was sorry Armand was gone,
+she rather plumed herself on having separated the Seigneur and his son--
+it was something to have been the pivot in a tragedy.  There came others
+to the village, as, for instance, a series of clerks to the Avocat; but
+she would not decline from Armand upon them.  She merely made them
+miserable.
+
+But she did not grow prettier as time went on.  Even Annette, the sad
+wife of the drunken Benoit, kept her fine looks; but then, Annette's life
+was a thing for a book, and she had a beautiful child.  You cannot keep
+this from the face of a woman.  Nor can you keep the other: when the
+heart rusts the rust shows.
+
+After a good many years, Armand de la Riviere came back in time to see
+his father die.  Then Julie picked out her smartest ribbons, capered at
+the mirror, and dusted her face with oatmeal, because she thought that he
+would ask her to meet him at the Bois Noir, as he had done long ago.  The
+days passed, and he did not come.  When she saw Armand at the funeral--
+a tall man with a dark beard and a grave face, not like the Armand she
+had known, he seemed a great distance from her, though she could almost
+have touched him once as he turned from the grave.  She would have liked
+to throw herself into his arms, and cry before them all: "Mon Armand!"
+and go away with him to the House with the Tall Porch.  She did not care
+about Farette, the mumbling old man who hungered for money, having ceased
+to hunger for anything else--even for Julie, who laughed and shut her
+door in his face, and cowed him.
+
+After the funeral Julie had a strange feeling.  She had not much brains,
+but she had some shrewdness, and she felt her romance askew.  She stood
+before the mirror, rubbing her face with oatmeal and frowning hard.
+Presently a voice behind her said: "Madame Julie, shall I bring another
+bag of meal?"
+
+She turned quickly, and saw Parpon on a table in the corner, his legs
+drawn up to his chin, his black eyes twinkling.
+
+"Idiot!" she cried, and threw the meal at him.  He had a very long,
+quick arm.  He caught the basin as it came, but the meal covered him.  He
+blew it from his beard, laughing softly, and twirled the basin on a
+finger-point.
+
+"Like that, there will need two bags!" he said.
+
+"Imbecile!" she cried, standing angry in the centre of the room.
+
+"Ho, ho, what a big word!  See what it is to have the tongue of fashion!"
+
+She looked helplessly round the room.  "I will kill you!"
+
+"Let us die together," answered Parpon; "we are both sad."
+
+She snatched the poker from the fire, and ran at him.  He caught her
+wrists with his great hands, big enough for tall Medallion, and held her.
+
+"I said 'together,"' he chuckled; "not one before the other.  We might
+jump into the flume at the mill, or go over the dam at the Bois Noir; or,
+there is Farette's musket which he is cleaning--gracious, but it will
+kick when it fires, it is so old!"
+
+She sank to the floor.  "Why does he clean the musket?" she asked; fear,
+and something wicked too, in her eye.  Her fingers ran forgetfully
+through the hair on her forehead, pushing it back, and the marks of
+small-pox showed.  The contrast with her smooth cheeks gave her a weird
+look.  Parpon got quickly on the table again and sat like a Turk, with a
+furtive eye on her.  "Who can tell!" he said at last.  "That musket has
+not been fired for years.  It would not kill a bird; the shot would
+scatter: but it might kill a man--a man is bigger."
+
+"Kill a man!"  She showed her white teeth with a savage little smile.
+
+"Of course it is all guess.  I asked Farette what he would shoot, and he
+said, 'Nothing good to eat.'  I said I would eat what he killed.  Then he
+got pretty mad, and said I couldn't eat my own head.  Holy!  that was
+funny for Farette.  Then I told him there was no good going to the Bois
+Noir, for there would be nothing to shoot.  Well, did I speak true,
+Madame Julie?"
+
+She was conscious of something new in Parpon.  She could not define it.
+Presently she got to her feet and said: "I don't believe you--you're a
+monkey."
+
+"A monkey can climb a tree quick; a man has to take the shot as it
+comes."  He stretched up his powerful arms, with a swift motion as of
+climbing, laughed, and added: "Madame Julie, Farette has poor eyes; he
+could not see a hole in a ladder.  But he has a kink in his head about
+the Bois Noir.  People have talked--"
+
+"Pshaw!" Julie said, crumpling her apron and throwing it out; "he is a
+child and a coward.  He should not play with a gun; it might go off and
+hit him."
+
+Parpon hopped down and trotted to the door.  Then he turned and said,
+with a sly gurgle: "Farette keeps at that gun.  What is the good!  There
+will be nobody at the Bois Noir any more.  I will go and tell him."
+
+She rushed at him with fury, but seeing Annette Benoit in the road, she
+stood still and beat her foot angrily on the doorstep.  She was ripe for
+a quarrel, and she would say something hateful to Annette; for she never
+forgot that Farette had asked Annette to be his wife before herself was
+considered.  She smoothed out her wrinkled apron and waited.
+
+"Good day, Annette," she said loftily.
+
+"Good day, Julie," was the quiet reply.
+
+"Will you come in?"
+
+"I am going to the mill for flax-seed.  Benoit has rheumatism."
+
+"Poor Benoit!" said Julie, with a meaning toss of her head.
+
+"Poor Benoit," responded Annette gently.  Her voice was always sweet.
+One would never have known that Benoit was a drunken idler.
+
+"Come in.  I will give you the meal from my own.  Then it will cost you
+nothing," said Julie, with an air.
+
+"Thank you, Julie, but I would rather pay."
+
+"I do not sell my meal," answered Julie.  "What's a few pounds of meal to
+the wife of Farette?  I will get it for you.  Come in, Annette."
+
+She turned towards the door, then stopped all at once.  There was the
+oatmeal which she had thrown at Parpon, the basin, and the poker.  She
+wished she had not asked Annette in.  But in some things she had a quick
+wit, and she hurried to say: "It was that yellow cat of Parpon's.  It
+spilt the meal, and I went at it with the poker."
+
+Perhaps Annette believed her.  She did not think about it one way or the
+other; her mind was with the sick Benoit.  She nodded and said nothing,
+hoping that the flax-seed would be got at once.  But when she saw that
+Julie expected an answer, she said: "Cecilia, my little girl, has a black
+cat-so handsome.  It came from the house of the poor Seigneur de la
+Riviere a year ago.  We took it back, but it would not stay."
+
+Annette spoke simply and frankly, but her words cut like a knife.
+
+Julie responded, with a click of malice: "Look out that the black cat
+doesn't kill the dear Cecilia."  Annette started, but she did not believe
+that cats sucked the life from children's lungs, and she replied calmly:
+"I am not afraid; the good God keeps my child."  She then got up and came
+to Julie, and said: "It is a pity, Julie, that you have not a child.  A
+child makes all right."
+
+Julie was wild to say a fierce thing, for it seemed that Annette was
+setting off Benoit against Farette; but the next moment she grew hot,
+her eyes smarted, and there was a hint of trouble at her throat.
+She had lived very fast in the last few hours, and it was telling on her.
+She could not rule herself--she could not play a part so well as she
+wished.  She had not before felt the thing that gave a new pulse to her
+body and a joyful pain at her breasts.  Her eyes got thickly blurred so
+that she could not see Annette, and, without a word, she hurried to get
+the meal.  She was silent when she came back.  She put the meal into
+Annette's hands.  She felt that she would like to talk of Armand.  She
+knew now there was no evil thought in Annette.  She did not like her more
+for that, but she felt she must talk, and Annette was safe.  So she took
+her arm.  "Sit down, Annette," she said.  "You come so seldom."
+
+"But there is Benoit, and the child--"
+
+"The child has the black cat from the House!"  There was again a sly ring
+to Julie's voice, and she almost pressed Annette into a chair.
+
+"Well, it must only be a minute."
+
+"Were you at the funeral to-day?" Julie began.
+
+"No; I was nursing Benoit.  But the poor Seigneur!  They say he died
+without confession.  No one was there except M'sieu' Medallion, the
+Little Chemist, Old Sylvie, and M'sieu' Armand.  But, of course, you
+have heard everything."
+
+"Is that all you know?" queried Julie.
+
+"Not much more.  I go out little, and no one comes to me except the
+Little Chemist's wife--she is a good woman."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"Only something of the night the Seigneur died.  He was sitting in his
+chair, not afraid, but very sad, we can guess.  By-and-by he raised his
+head quickly.  'I hear a voice in the Tall Porch,' he said.  They thought
+he was dreaming.  But he said other things, and cried again that he heard
+his son's voice in the Porch.  They went and found M'sieu' Armand.  Then
+a great supper was got ready, and he sat very grand at the head of the
+table, but died quickly, when making a grand speech.  It was strange he
+was so happy, for he did not confess-he hadn't absolution."
+
+This was more than Julie had heard.  She showed excitement.
+
+"The Seigneur and M'sieu' Armand were good friends when he died?" she
+asked.
+
+"Quite."
+
+All at once Annette remembered the old talk about Armand and Julie.  She
+was confused.  She wished she could get up and run away; but haste would
+look strange.
+
+"You were at the funeral?" she added, after a minute.
+
+"Everybody was there."
+
+"I suppose M'sieu' Armand looks very fine and strange after his long
+travel," said Annette shyly, rising to go.
+
+"He was always the grandest gentleman in the province," answered Julie,
+in her old vain manner.  "You should have seen the women look at him
+to-day!  But they are nothing to him--he is not easy to please."
+
+"Good day," said Annette, shocked and sad, moving from the door.
+Suddenly she turned, and laid a hand on Julie's arm.  "Come and see my
+sweet Cecilia," she said.  "She is gay; she will amuse you."
+
+She was thinking again what a pity it was that Julie had no child.
+
+"To see Cecilia and the black cat?  Very well--some day."
+
+You could not have told what she meant.  But, as Annette turned away
+again, she glanced at the mill; and there, high up in the dormer window,
+sat Parpon, his yellow cat on his shoulder, grinning down at her.  She
+wheeled and went into the house.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+Parpon sat in the dormer window for a long time, the cat purring against
+his head, and not seeming the least afraid of falling, though its master
+was well out on the window-ledge.  He kept mumbling to himself:
+
+"Ho, ho, Farette is below there with the gun, rubbing and rubbing at the
+rust!  Holy mother, how it will kick!  But he will only meddle.  If she
+set her eye at him and come up bold and said: 'Farette, go and have your
+whiskey-wine, and then to bed,' he would sneak away.  But he has heard
+something.  Some fool, perhaps that Benoit--no, he is sick--perhaps the
+herb-woman has been talking, and he thinks he will make a fuss.  But it
+will be nothing.  And M'sieu' Armand, will he look at her?" He chuckled
+at the cat, which set its head back and hissed in reply.  Then he sang
+something to himself.
+
+Parpon was a poor little dwarf with a big head, but he had one thing
+which made up for all, though no one knew it--or, at least, he thought
+so.  The Cure himself did not know.  He had a beautiful voice.  Even in
+speaking it was pleasant to hear, though he roughened it in a way.  It
+pleased him that he had something of which the finest man or woman would
+be glad.  He had said to himself many times that even Armand de la
+Riviere would envy him.
+
+Sometimes Parpon went off away into the Bois Noir, and, perched there in
+a tree, sang away--a man, shaped something like an animal, with a voice
+like a muffled silver bell.
+
+Some of his songs he had made himself: wild things, broken thoughts, not
+altogether human; the language of a world between man and the spirits.
+But it was all pleasant to hear, even when, at times, there ran a weird,
+dark thread through the woof.  No one in the valley had ever heard the
+thing he sang softly as he sat looking down at Julie:
+
+         "The little white smoke blows there, blows here,
+            The little blue wolf comes down--
+                    C'est la!
+          And the hill-dwarf laughs in the young wife's ear,
+            When the devil comes back to town--
+                    C'est la!"
+
+It was crooned quietly, but it was distinct and melodious, and the cat
+purred an accompaniment, its head thrust into his thick black hair.  From
+where Parpon sat he could see the House with the Tall Porch, and, as he
+sang, his eyes ran from the miller's doorway to it.
+
+Off in the grounds of the dead Seigneur's manor he could see a man push
+the pebbles with his foot, or twist the branch of a shrub thoughtfully as
+he walked.  At last another man entered the garden.  The two greeted
+warmly, and passed up and down together.
+
+
+
+III
+
+"My good friend," said the Cure, "it is too late to mourn for those lost
+years.  Nothing can give them back.  As Parpon the dwarf said--you
+remember him, a wise little man, that Parpon--as he said one day, 'For
+everything you lose you get something, if only how to laugh at
+yourself."'
+
+Armand nodded thoughtfully and answered: "You are right--you and Parpon.
+But I cannot forgive myself; he was so fine a man: tall, with a grand
+look, and a tongue like a book.  Yes, yes, I can laugh at myself--for a
+fool."
+
+He thrust his hands into his pockets, and tapped the ground nervously
+with his foot, shrugging his shoulders a little.  The priest took off his
+hat and made the sacred gesture, his lips moving.  Armand caught off his
+hat also, and said: "You pray--for him?"
+
+"For the peace of a good man's soul."
+
+"He did not confess; he had no rites of the Church; he had refused you
+many years."
+
+"My son, he had a confessor."
+
+Armand raised his eyebrows.  "They told me of no one."
+
+"It was the Angel of Patience."
+
+They walked on again for a time without a word.  At last the Cure said:
+"You will remain here?"
+
+"I cannot tell.  This 'here' is a small world, and the little life may
+fret me.  Nor do I know what I have of this,"--he waved his hands towards
+the house,--"or of my father's property.  I may need to be a wanderer
+again."
+
+"God forbid!  Have you not seen the will?"
+
+"I have got no farther than his grave," was the sombre reply.
+
+The priest sighed.  They paced the walk again in silence.  At last the
+Cure said: "You will make the place cheerful, as it once was."
+
+"You are persistent," replied the young man, smiling.  "Whoever lives
+here should make it less gloomy."
+
+"We shall soon know who is to live here.  See, there is Monsieur Garon,
+and Monsieur Medallion also."
+
+"The Avocat to tell secrets, the auctioneer to sell them--eh?"  Armand
+went forward to the gate.  Like most people, he found Medallion
+interesting, and the Avocat and he were old friends.
+
+"You did not send for me, monsieur," said the Avocat timidly, "but I
+thought it well to come, that you might know how things are; and Monsieur
+Medallion came because he is a witness to the will, and, in a case--"here
+the little man coughed nervously--"joint executor with Monsieur le Cure."
+
+They entered the house.  In a business-like way Armand motioned them to
+chairs, opened the curtains, and rang the bell.  The old housekeeper
+appeared, a sorrowful joy in her face, and Armand said: "Give us a bottle
+of the white-top, Sylvie, if there is any left."
+
+"There is plenty, monsieur," she said; "none has been drunk these twelve
+years."
+
+The Avocat coughed, and said hesitatingly to Armand: "I asked Parpon the
+dwarf to come, monsieur.  There is a reason."
+
+Armand raised his eyebrows in surprise.  "Very good," he said.  "When
+will he be here?"
+
+"He is waiting at the Louis Quinze hotel."
+
+"I will send for him," said Armand, and gave the message to Sylvie, who
+was entering the room.
+
+After they had drunk the wine placed before them, there was silence for a
+moment, for all were wondering why Parpon should be remembered in the
+Seigneur's Will.
+
+"Well," said Medallion at last, "a strange little dog is Parpon.  I could
+surprise you about him--and there isn't any reason why I should keep the
+thing to myself.  One day I was up among the rocks, looking for a strayed
+horse.  I got tired, and lay down in the shade of the Rock of Red
+Pigeons--you know it.  I fell asleep.  Something waked me.  I got up and
+heard the finest singing you can guess: not like any I ever heard; a
+wild, beautiful, shivery sort of thing.  I listened for a long time.  At
+last it stopped.  Then something slid down the rock.  I peeped out, and
+saw Parpon toddling away."
+
+The Cure stared incredulously, the Avocat took off his glasses and tapped
+his lips musingly, Armand whistled softly.
+
+"So," said Armand at last, "we have the jewel in the toad's head.  The
+clever imp hid it all these years--even from you, Monsieur le Cure."
+
+"Even from me," said the Cure, smiling.  Then, gravely: "It is strange,
+the angel in the stunted body."  "Are you sure it's an angel?" said
+Armand.
+
+"Who ever knew Parpon do any harm?" queried the Cure.
+
+"He has always been kind to the poor," put in the Avocat.
+
+"With the miller's flour," laughed Medallion: "a pardonable sin."  He
+sent a quizzical look at the Cure.  "Do you remember the words of
+Parpon's song?" asked Armand.
+
+"Only a few lines; and those not easy to understand, unless one had an
+inkling."
+
+"Had you the inkling?"
+
+"Perhaps, monsieur," replied Medallion seriously.  They eyed each other.
+
+"We will have Parpon in after the will is read," said Armand suddenly,
+looking at the Avocat.  The Avocat drew the deed from his pocket.  He
+looked up hesitatingly, and then said to Armand: "You insist on it being
+read now?"
+
+Armand nodded coolly, after a quick glance at Medallion.  Then the Avocat
+began, and read to that point where the Seigneur bequeathed all his
+property to his son, should he return--on a condition.  When the Avocat
+came to the condition Armand stopped him.
+
+"I do not know in the least what it may be," he said, "but there is only
+one by which I could feel bound.  I will tell you.  My father and I
+quarrelled"--here he paused for a moment, clinching his hands before him
+on the table--"about a woman; and years of misery came.  I was to blame
+in not obeying him.  I ought not to have given any cause for gossip.
+Whatever the condition as to that matter may be, I will fulfil it.  My
+father is more to me than any woman in the world; his love of me was
+greater than that of any woman.  I know the world--and women."
+
+There was a silence.  He waved his hand to the Avocat to go on, and as he
+did so the Cure caught his arm with a quick, affectionate gesture.  Then
+Monsieur Garon read the conditions: "That Farette the miller should have
+a deed of the land on which his mill was built, with the dam of the mill
+--provided that Armand should never so much as by a word again address
+Julie, the miller's wife.  If he agreed to the condition, with solemn
+oath before the Cure, his blessing would rest upon his dear son, whom he
+still hoped to see before he died."
+
+When the reading ceased there was silence for a moment, then Armand stood
+up, and took the will from the Avocat; but instantly, without looking at
+it, handed it back.  "The reading is not finished," he said.  "And if I
+do not accept the condition, what then?"
+
+Again Monsieur Garon read, his voice trembling a little.  The words of
+the will ran: "But if this condition be not satisfied, I bequeath to my
+son Armand the house known as the House with the Tall Porch, and the
+land, according to the deed thereof; and the residue of my property--with
+the exception of two thousand dollars, which I leave to the Cure of the
+parish, the good Monsieur Fabre--I bequeath to Parpon the dwarf."
+
+Then followed a clause providing that, in any case, Parpon should have in
+fee simple the land known as the Bois Noir, and the hut thereon.
+
+Armand sprang to his feet in surprise, blurting out something, then sat
+down, quietly took the will, and read it through carefully.  When he had
+finished he looked inquiringly, first at Monsieur Garon, then at the
+Cure.  "Why Parpon?" he said searchingly.
+
+The Cure, amazed, spread out his hands in a helpless way.  At that moment
+Sylvie announced Parpon.  Armand asked that he should be sent in.  "We'll
+talk of the will afterwards," he added.
+
+Parpon trotted in, the door closed, and he stood blinking at them.
+Armand put a stool on the table.  "Sit here, Parpon," he said.  Medallion
+caught the dwarf under the arms and lifted him on the table.
+
+Parpon looked at Armand furtively.  "The wild hawk comes back to its
+nest," he said.  "Well, well, what is it you want with the poor Parpon?"
+
+He sat down and dropped his chin in his hands, looking round keenly.
+Armand nodded to Medallion, and Medallion to the priest, but the priest
+nodded back again.  Then Medallion said: "You and I know the Rock of Red
+Pigeons, Parpon.  It is a good place to perch.  One's voice is all to
+one's self there, as you know.  Well, sing us the song of the little
+brown diver."
+
+Parpon's hands twitched in his beard.  He looked fixedly at Medallion.
+Presently he turned towards the Cure, and shrank so that he looked
+smaller still.
+
+"It's all right, little son," said the Cure kindly.  Turning sharply on
+Medallion, Parpon said: "When was it you heard?"
+
+Medallion told him.  He nodded, then sat very still.  They said nothing,
+but watched him.  They saw his eyes grow distant and absorbed, and his
+face took on a shining look, so that its ugliness was almost beautiful.
+All at once he slid from the stool and crouched on his knees.  Then he
+sent out a low long note, like the toll of the bell-bird.  From that time
+no one stirred as he sang, but sat and watched him.  They did not even
+hear Sylvie steal in gently and stand in the curtains at the door.
+
+The song was weird, with a strange thrilling charm; it had the slow
+dignity of a chant, the roll of an epic, the delight of wild beauty.  It
+told of the little good Folk of the Scarlet Hills, in vague allusive
+phrases: their noiseless wanderings; their sojourning with the eagle, the
+wolf, and the deer; their triumph over the winds, the whirlpools, and the
+spirits of evil fame.  It filled the room with the cry of the west wind;
+it called out of the frozen seas ghosts of forgotten worlds; it coaxed
+the soft breezes out of the South; it made them all to be at the whistle
+of the Scarlet Hunter who ruled the North.
+
+Then, passing through veil after veil of mystery, it told of a grand
+Seigneur whose boat was overturned in a whirlpool, and was saved by a
+little brown diver.  And the end of it all, and the heart of it all, was
+in the last few lines, clear of allegory:
+
+"And the wheel goes round in the village mill, And the little brown diver
+he tells the grain.  .  .  And the grand Seigneur he has gone to meet The
+little good Folk of the Scarlet Hills!"
+
+At first, all were so impressed by the strange power of Parpon's voice,
+that they were hardly conscious of the story he was telling.  But when he
+sang of the Seigneur they began to read his parable.  Their hearts
+throbbed painfully.
+
+As the last notes died away Armand got up, and standing by the table,
+said: "Parpon, you saved my father's life once?"
+
+Parpon did not answer.
+
+"Will you not tell him, my son?" said the Cure, rising.  Still Parpon
+was silent.
+
+"The son of your grand Seigneur asks you a question, Parpon," said
+Medallion soothingly.
+
+"Oh, my grand Seigneur!" said Parpon, throwing up his hands.  "Once he
+said to me, 'Come, my brown diver, and live with me.'  But I said, 'No,
+I am not fit.  I will never go to you at the House with the Tall Porch.'
+And I made him promise that he would never tell of it.  And so I have
+lived sometimes with old Farette."  Then he laughed strangely again, and
+sent a furtive look at Armand.
+
+"Parpon," said Armand gently, "our grand Seigneur has left you the Bois
+Noir for your own.  So the hills and the Rock of Red Pigeons are for you
+--and the little good people, if you like."
+
+Parpon, with fiery eyes, gathered himself up with a quick movement, then
+broke out: "Oh, my grand Seigneur--my grand Seigneur!" and fell forward,
+his head in his arms, laughing and sobbing together.
+
+Armand touched his shoulder.  "Parpon!"  But Parpon shrank away.
+
+Armand turned to the rest.  "I do not understand it, gentlemen.  Parpon
+does not like the young Seigneur as he liked the old."
+
+Medallion, sitting in the shadow, smiled.  He understood.  Armand
+continued: "As for this 'testament, gentlemen, I will fulfil its
+conditions; though I swear, were I otherwise minded regarding the woman"
+--here Parpon raised his head swiftly--"I would not hang my hat for an
+hour in the Tall Porch."
+
+They rose and shook hands, then the wine was poured out, and they drank
+it off in silence.  Parpon, however, sat with his head in his hands.
+
+"Come, little comrade, drink," said Medallion, offering him a glass.
+
+Parpon made no reply, but caught up the will, kissed it, put it into
+Armand's hand, and then, jumping down from the table, ran to the door and
+disappeared through it.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The next afternoon the Avocat visited old Farette.  Farette was polishing
+a gun, mumbling the while.  Sitting on some bags of meal was Parpon, with
+a fierce twinkle in his eye.  Monsieur Garon told Farette briefly what
+the Seigneur had left him.  With a quick, greedy chuckle Farette threw
+the gun away.
+
+"Man alive!" said he; "tell me all about it.  Ah, the good news!"
+
+"There is nothing to tell: he left it; that is all."
+
+"Oh, the good Seigneur," cried Farette, "the grand Seigneur!"
+
+Some one laughed scornfully in the doorway.  It was Julie.
+
+"Look there," she cried; "he gets the land, and throws away the gun!
+Brag and coward, miller!  It is for me to say 'the grand Seigneur!'"
+
+She tossed her head: she thought the old Seigneur had relented towards
+her.  She turned away to the house with a flaunting air, and got her hat.
+At first she thought she would go to the House with the Tall Porch, but
+she changed her mind, and went to the Bois Noir instead.  Parpon followed
+her a distance off.  Behind, in the mill, Farette was chuckling and
+rubbing his hands.
+
+Meanwhile, Armand was making his way towards the Bois Noir.  All at once,
+in the shade of a great pine, he stopped.  He looked about him
+astonished.
+
+"This is the old place.  What a fool I was, then!" he said.
+
+At that moment Julie came quickly, and lifted her hands towards him.
+"Armand--beloved Armand!" she said.
+
+Armand looked at her sternly, from her feet to her pitted forehead, then
+wheeled, and left her without a word.
+
+She sank in a heap on the ground.  There was a sudden burst of tears, and
+then she clinched her hands with fury.
+
+Some one laughed in the trees above her--a shrill, wild laugh.  She
+looked up frightened.  Parpon presently dropped down beside her.
+
+"It was as I said," whispered the dwarf, and he touched her shoulder.
+This was the full cup of shame.  She was silent.
+
+"There are others," he whispered again.  She could not see his strange
+smile; but she noticed that his voice was not as usual.  "Listen," he
+urged, and he sang softly over her shoulder for quite a minute.  She was
+amazed.
+
+"Sing again," she said.
+
+"I have wanted to sing to you like that for many years," he replied; and
+he sang a little more.  "He cannot sing like that," he wheedled, and he
+stretched his arm around her shoulder.
+
+She hung her head, then flung it back again as she thought of Armand.
+
+"I hate him!" she cried; "I hate him!"
+
+"You will not throw meal on me any more, or call me idiot?" he pleaded.
+
+"No, Parpon," she said.
+
+He kissed her on the cheek.  She did not resent it.  But now he drew
+away, smiled wickedly at her, and said: "See, we are even now, poor
+Julie!"  Then he laughed, holding his little sides with huge hands.
+"Imbecile!" he added, and, turning, trotted away towards the Rock of Red
+Pigeons.
+
+She threw herself, face forward, in the dusty needles of the pines.
+
+When she rose from her humiliation, her face was as one who has seen the
+rags of harlequinade stripped from that mummer Life, leaving only naked
+being.  She had touched the limits of the endurable; her sordid little
+hopes had split into fragments.  But when a human soul faces upon its
+past, and sees a gargoyle at every milestone where an angel should be,
+and in one flash of illumination--the touch of genius to the smallest
+mind--understands the pitiless comedy, there comes the still stoic
+outlook.
+
+Julie was transformed.  All the possible years of her life were gathered
+into the force of one dreadful moment--dreadful and wonderful.  Her mean
+vanity was lost behind the pale sincerity of her face--she was sincere at
+last.  The trivial commonness was gone from her coquetting shoulders and
+drooping eyelids; and from her body had passed its flexuous softness.
+She was a woman; suffering, human, paying the price.
+
+She walked slowly the way that Parpon had gone.  Looking neither to right
+nor left, she climbed the long hillside, and at last reached the summit,
+where, bundled in a steep corner, was the Rock of Red Pigeons.  As she
+emerged from the pines, she stood for a moment, and leaned with
+outstretched hand against a tree, looking into the sunlight.  Slowly her
+eyes shifted from the Rock to the great ravine, to whose farther side the
+sun was giving bastions of gold.  She was quiet.  Presently she stepped
+into the light and came softly to the Rock.  She walked slowly round it
+as though looking for some one.  At the lowest side of the Rock, rude
+narrow hollows were cut for the feet.  With a singular ease she climbed
+to the top of it.  It had a kind of hollow, in which was a rude seat,
+carved out of the stone.  Seeing this, a set look came to her face: she
+was thinking of Parpon, the master of this place.  Her business was with
+him.
+
+She got down slowly, and came over to the edge of the precipice.
+Steadying herself against a sapling, she looked over.  Down below was a
+whirlpool, rising and falling-a hungry funnel of death.  She drew back.
+Presently she peered again, and once more withdrew.  She gazed round, and
+then made another tour of the hill, searching.  She returned to the
+precipice.  As she did so she heard a voice.  She looked and saw Parpon
+seated upon a ledge of rock not far below.  A mocking laugh floated up to
+her.  But there was trouble in the laugh too--a bitter sickness.  She did
+not notice that.  She looked about her.  Not far away was a stone, too
+heavy to carry but perhaps not too heavy to roll!
+
+Foot by foot she rolled it over.  She looked.  He was still there.  She
+stepped back.  As she did so a few pebbles crumbled away from her feet
+and fell where Parpon perched.  She did not see or hear them fall.  He
+looked up, and saw the stone creeping upon the edge.  Like a flash he was
+on his feet, and, springing into the air to the right, caught a tree
+steadfast in the rock.  The stone fell upon the ledge, and bounded off
+again.  The look of the woman did not follow the stone.  She ran to the
+spot above the whirlpool, and sprang out and down.
+
+From Parpon there came a wail such as the hills of the north never heard
+before.  Dropping upon a ledge beneath, and from that to a jutting tree,
+which gave way, he shot down into the whirlpool.  He caught Julie's body
+as it was churned from life to death: and then he fought.  There was a
+demon in the whirlpool, but God and demon were working in the man.
+Nothing on earth could have unloosed that long, brown arm from Julie's
+drenched body.  The sun lifted an eyelid over the yellow bastions of
+rock, and saw the fight.  Once, twice, the shaggy head was caught beneath
+the surface--but at last the man conquered.
+
+Inch by inch, foot by foot, Parpon, with the lifeless Julie clamped in
+one arm, climbed the rough wall, on, on, up to the Rock of Red Pigeons.
+He bore her to the top of it.  Then he laid her down, and pillowed her
+head on his wet coat.
+
+The huge hands came slowly down Julie's soaked hair, along her blanched
+cheek and shoulders, caught her arms and held them.  He peered into her
+face.  The eyes had the film which veils Here from Hereafter.  On the
+lips was a mocking smile.  He stooped as if to kiss her.  The smile
+stopped him.  He drew back for a time, then he leaned forward, shut his
+eyes, and her cold lips were his.
+
+Twilight-dusk-night came upon Parpon and his dead--the woman whom an
+impish fate had put into his heart with mockery and futile pain.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Can't get the company I want, so what I can get I have
+Capered at the mirror, and dusted her face with oatmeal
+For everything you lose you get something
+No trouble like that which comes between parent and child
+Old clock in the corner "ticking" life, and youth, and hope away
+She had not much brains, but she had some shrewdness
+Take the honeymoon himself, and leave his wife to learn cooking
+The laughter of a ripe summer was upon the land
+Thought all as flippant as herself
+Turned the misery of the world into a game, and grinned at it
+When the heart rusts the rust shows
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LANE HAD NO TURNING, PARKER, V3 ***
+
+********** This file should be named 6239.txt or 6239.zip **********
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