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+The Project Gutenberg EBook The Right of Way, by G. Parker, v3
+#72 in our series by Gilbert Parker
+
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+Title: The Right of Way, Volume 3.
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: August, 2004  [EBook #6245]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 24, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIGHT OF WAY, PARKER, V3 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT OF WAY
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+Volume 3.
+
+
+
+XIX.      THE SIGN FROM HEAVEN
+XX.       THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR
+XXI.      THE CURE HAS AN INSPIRATION
+XXII.     THE WOMAN WHO SAW
+XXIII.    THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT TELL
+XXIV.     THE SEIGNEUR TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME
+XXV.      THE COLONEL TELLS HIS STORY
+XXVI.     A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST
+XXVII.    OUT ON THE OLD TRAIL
+XXVIII.   THE SEIGNEUR GIVES A WARNING
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE SIGN FROM HEAVEN
+
+The agitation and curiosity possessing Rosalie all day held her in the
+evening when the wooden shutters of the tailor's shop were closed and
+only a flickering light showed through the cracks.  She was restless and
+uneasy during supper, and gave more than one unmeaning response to the
+remarks of her crippled father, who, drawn up for supper in his wheel-
+chair, was more than usually inclined to gossip.
+
+Damase Evanturel's mind was stirred concerning the loss of the iron
+cross; the threat made by Filion Lacasse and his companions troubled him.
+The one person beside the Cure, Jo Portugais, and Louis Trudel, to whom
+M'sieu' talked much, was the postmaster, who sometimes met him of an
+evening as he was taking the air.  More than once he had walked behind
+the wheel-chair and pushed it some distance, making the little crippled
+man gossip of village matters.
+
+As the two sat at supper the postmaster was inclined to take a serious
+view of M'sieu's position.  He railed at Filion Lacasse; he called the
+suspicious habitants clodhoppers, who didn't know any better--which was
+a tribute to his own superior birth; and at last, carried away by a
+feverish curiosity, he suggested that Rosalie should go and look through
+the cracks in the shutters of the tailor-shop and find out what was going
+on within.  This was indignantly rejected by Rosalie, but the more she
+thought, the more uneasy she became.  She ceased to reply to her father's
+remarks, and he at last relapsed into gloom, and said that he was tired
+and would go to bed.  Thereupon she wheeled him inside his bedroom, bade
+him good-night, and left him to his moodiness, which, however, was soon
+absorbed in a deep sleep, for the mind of the little grey postmaster
+could no more hold trouble or thought than a sieve.
+
+Left alone, Rosalie began to be tortured.  What were they doing in the
+house opposite?
+
+Go and look through the windows?  But she had never spied on people in
+her life!  Yet would it be spying?  Would it not be pardonable?  In the
+interest of the man who had been attacked in the morning by the tailor,
+who had been threatened by the saddler, and concerning whom she had seen
+a signal pass between old Louis and Filion Lacasse, would it not be a
+humane thing to do?  It might be foolish and feminine to be anxious, but
+did she not mean well, and was it not, therefore, honourable?
+
+The mystery inflamed her imagination.  Charley's passiveness when he was
+assaulted by old Louis and afterwards threatened by the saddler seemed to
+her indifference to any sort of danger--the courage of the hopeless life,
+maybe.  Instantly her heart overflowed with sympathy.  Monsieur was not a
+Catholic perhaps?  Well, so much the more he should be befriended, for he
+was so much the more alone and helpless.  If a man was born a Protestant
+--or English--he could not help it, and should not be punished in this
+world for it, since he was sure to be punished in the next.
+
+Her mind became more and more excited.  The postoffice had been long
+since closed, and her father was asleep--she could hear him snoring.  It
+was ten o'clock, and there was still a light in the tailor's shop.
+Usually the light went out before nine o'clock.  She went to the post-
+office door and looked out.  The streets were empty; there was not a
+light burning anywhere, save in the house of the Notary.  Down towards
+the river a sleigh was making its way over the thin snow of spring, and
+screeching on the stones.  Some late revellers, moving homewards from the
+Trois Couronnes, were roaring at the top of their voices the habitant
+chanson, 'Le Petit Roger Bontemps':
+
+                   "For I am Roger Bontemps,
+                         Gai, gai, gai!
+                    With drink I am full and with joy content,
+                         Gai, gaiment!"
+
+The chanson died away as she stood there, and still the light was burning
+in the shop opposite.  A thought suddenly came to her.  She would go over
+and see if the old housekeeper, Margot Patry, had gone to bed.  Here was
+the solution to the problem, the satisfaction of modesty and propriety.
+
+She crossed the street quickly, hurried round the corner of the house,
+and was passing the side-window of the shop, when a crack in the shutters
+caught her eye.  She heard something fall on the floor within.  Could it
+be that the tailor and M'sieu' were working at so late an hour?  She had
+an irresistible impulse, and glued her eye to the crack.
+
+But presently she started back with a smothered cry.  There by the great
+fireplace stood Louis Trudel picking up a red-hot cross with a pair of
+pincers.  Grasping the iron firmly just below the arms of the cross, the
+tailor held it up again.  He looked at it with a wild triumph, yet with a
+malignancy little in keeping with the object he held--the holy relic he
+had stolen from the door of the parish church.  The girl gave a low cry
+of dismay.
+
+She saw old Louis advance stealthily towards the door of the shop leading
+into the house.  In bewilderment, she stood still an instant, then, with
+a sudden impulse, she ran to the kitchen-door and tried it softly.  It
+was not locked.  She opened it, entered quickly, and found old Margot
+standing in the middle of the room in her night-dress.
+
+"Oh, Rosalie, Rosalie!" cried the old woman, "something's going to
+happen.  M'sieu' Trudel has been queer all evening.  I peeped in the key-
+hole of the shop just now, and--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I've seen too.  Come!" said Rosalie, and going quickly to the
+door, opened it, and passed through to another room.  Here she opened
+another door, leading into the hall between the shop and the house.
+Entering the hall, she saw a glimmer of light above.  It was the reddish
+glow of the iron cross held by old Louis.  She crept softly up the stone
+steps.  She heard a door open very quietly.  She hurried now, and came to
+the landing.  She saw the door of Charley's room open--all the village
+knew what room he slept in--and the moonlight was streaming in at the
+window.
+
+She saw the sleeping man on the bed, and the tailor standing over him.
+Charley was lying with one arm thrown above his head; the other lay over
+the side of the bed.
+
+As she rushed forward, divining old Louis' purpose, the fiery cross
+descended, and a voice cried: "'Show me a sign from Heaven, tailor-man!'"
+
+This voice was drowned by that of another, which, gasping with agony out
+of a deep sleep, as the body sprang upright, cried: "God-oh God!"
+Rosalie's hand grasped old Louis' arm too late.  The tailor sprang back
+with a horrible laugh, striking her aside, and rushed out to the landing.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur!" cried Rosalie, and, snatching a scarf from her
+bosom, thrust it in upon the excoriated breast, as Charley, hardly
+realising what had happened, choked back moans of pain.
+
+"What did he do?" he gasped.
+
+"The iron cross from the church door!" she answered.  "A minute, one
+minute, Monsieur!"
+
+She rushed out upon the landing in time to see the tailor stumble on the
+stairs and fall head forwards to the bottom, at the feet of Margot Patry.
+
+Rosalie paid no heed to the fallen man.  "Oil!  flour!  Quick!" she
+cried.  "Quick!  Quick!"  She stepped over the body of the tailor,
+snatched at Margot's arm, and dragged her into the kitchen.  "Quick-oil
+and flour!"
+
+The old woman showed her where they were, moaning and whining.
+
+"He tried to kill Monsieur," cried Rosalie,  "burned him on the breast
+with the holy cross!"
+
+With oil and flour she hurried back, over the body of the tailor, up the
+stairs, and into Charley's room.  Charley was now out of bed and half
+dressed, though choking with pain, and preserving consciousness only by a
+great effort.
+
+"Good Mademoiselle!" he said.
+
+She took the scarf off gently, soaked it in oil and splashed it with
+flour, and laid it quickly back on the burnt flesh.
+
+Margot came staggering into the room.
+
+"I cannot rouse him.  I cannot rouse him.  He is dead!  He is dead!" she
+whimpered.
+
+"He--"
+
+Charley swayed forward towards the woman, recovered himself, and said:
+
+"Now not a word of what he did to me, remember.  Not one word, or you
+will go to jail with him.  If you keep quiet, I'll say nothing.  He
+didn't know what he was doing."  He turned to Rosalie.  "Not a word of
+this, please," he moaned.  "Hide the cross."
+
+He moved towards the door.  Rosalie saw his purpose, and ran out ahead of
+him and down the stairs to where the tailor lay prone on his face, one
+hand still holding the pincers.  The little iron cross lay in a dark
+corner.  Stooping, she lifted up the tailor's head, then felt his heart.
+
+"He is not dead," she cried.  "Quick, Margot, some water," she added, to
+the whimpering woman.  Margot tottered away, and came again presently
+with the water.
+
+"I will go for some one to help," Rosalie said, rising to her feet, as
+she saw Charley come slowly down the staircase, his face white with
+misery.  She ran and took his arm to help him down.
+
+"No, no, dear Mademoiselle," he said; "I shall be all right presently.
+You must get help to carry him up stairs.  Bring the Notary; he and I can
+carry him up."
+
+"You, Monsieur!  You--it would kill you!  You are terribly hurt."
+
+"I must help to carry him, else people will be asking questions," he
+answered painfully.  "He is going to die.  It must not be known--you
+understand!"  His eyes searched the floor until they found the cross.
+Rosalie picked it up with the pincers.  "It must not be known what he did
+to me," Charley said to the muttering and weeping old woman.  He caught
+her shoulder with his hand, for she seemed scarcely to heed.
+
+She nodded.  "Yes, yes, M'sieu', I will never speak."  Rosalie was
+standing in the door.  "Go quickly, Mademoiselle," he said.  She
+disappeared with the iron cross, and flying across the street, thrust it
+inside the post-office, then ran to the house of the Notary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE RETURN OF THE TAILOR
+
+Twenty minutes later the tailor was lying in his bed, breathing, but
+still unconscious, the Notary, M'sieu', and the doctor of the next
+parish, who by chance was in Chaudiere, beside him.  Charley's face was
+drawn and haggard with pain, for he had helped to carry old Louis to bed,
+though every motion of his arms gave him untold agony.  In the doorway
+stood Rosalie and Margot Patry.
+
+"Will he live?" asked the Notary.
+
+The doctor shook his head.  "A few hours, perhaps.  He fell downstairs?"
+
+Charley nodded.  There was silence for some time, as the doctor went on
+with his ministrations, and the Notary sat drumming his fingers on the
+little table beside the bed.  The two women stole away to the kitchen,
+where Rosalie again pressed secrecy on Margot.  In the interest of the
+cause she had even threatened Margot with a charge of complicity.  She
+had heard the phrase "accessory before the fact," and she used it now
+with good effect.
+
+Then she took some fresh flour and oil, and thrust them inside the
+bedroom door where Charley now sat clinching his hands and fighting down
+the pain.  Careful as ever of his personal appearance, however, he had
+brushed every speck of flour from his clothes, and buttoned his coat up
+to the neck.
+
+Nearly an hour passed, and then the Cure appeared.  When he entered the
+sick man's room, Charley followed, and again Rosalie and old Margot came
+and stood within the doorway.
+
+"Peace be to this house!" said the Cure.  He had a few minutes of
+whispered conversation with the doctor, and then turned to Charley.
+
+"He fell down-stairs, Monsieur?  You saw him fall?"
+
+"I was in my room--I heard him fall, Cure."
+
+"Had he been ill during the day?"
+
+"He appeared to be feeble, and he seemed moody."
+
+"More than usual, Monsieur?"  The Cure had heard of the incident of the
+morning when Filion Lacasse accused Charley of stealing the cross.
+
+"Rather more than usual, Monsieur."
+
+The Cure turned towards the door.  "You, Mademoiselle Rosalie, how came
+you to know?"
+
+"I was in the kitchen with Margot, who was not well."
+
+The Cure looked at Margot, who tearfully nodded.  "I was ill," she said,
+"and Rosalie was here with me.  She helped M'sieu' and me.  Rosalie is a
+good girl, and kind to me," she whimpered.
+
+The Cure seemed satisfied, and after looking at the sick man for a
+moment, he came close to Charley.  "I am deeply pained at what happened
+to-day," he said courteously.  "I know you have had nothing to do with
+the beloved little cross."
+
+The Notary tried to draw near and listen, but the Cure's look held him
+back.  The doctor was busy with his patient.
+
+"You are only just, Monsieur," said Charley in response, wishing that
+these kind eyes were fixed anywhere than on his face.
+
+All at once the Cure laid a hand upon his arm.  "You are ill," he said
+anxiously.  "You look very ill indeed.  See, Vaudrey," he added to the
+doctor, "you have another patient here!"
+
+The friendly, oleaginous doctor came over and peered into Charley's face.
+"Ill-sure enough!" he said.  "Look at this sweat!" he pointed to the
+drops of perspiration on Charley's forehead.  "Where do you suffer?"
+
+"Severe pains all through my body," Charley answered simply, for it
+seemed easier to tell the truth, as near as might be.
+
+"I must look to you," said the doctor.  "Go and lie down, and I will come
+to you."
+
+Charley bowed, but did not move.  Just then two things drew the attention
+of all: the tailor showed returning consciousness, and there was noise of
+many voices outside the house and the tramping of feet below-stairs.
+
+"Go and tell them no one must come up," said the doctor to the Notary,
+and the Cure made ready to say the last offices for the dying.
+
+Presently the noise below-stairs diminished, and the priest's voice rose
+in the office, vibrating and touching.  The two women sank to their
+knees, the doctor followed, his eyes still fixed on the dying man.
+Presently, however, Charley did the same; for something penetrating and
+reasonable in the devotion touched him.
+
+All at once Louis Trudel opened his eyes.  Staring round with acute
+excitement, his eyes fell on the Cure, then upon Charley.
+
+"Stop--stop, M'sieu' le Cure!" he cried.  "There's other work to do."
+He gasped and was convulsed, but the pallor of his face was alive with
+fire from the distempered eyes.  He snatched from his breast the paper
+Charley had neglected to burn.  He thrust it into the Curb's hand.
+
+"See--see!" he croaked.  "He is an infidel--black infidel--from hell!"
+His voice rose in a kind of shriek, piercing to every corner of the
+house.  He pointed at Charley with shaking finger.
+
+"He wrote it there--on that paper.  He doesn't--believe in God."
+
+His strength failed him, his hand clutched tremblingly at the air.  He
+laughed, a dry, crackling laugh, and his mouth opened twice or thrice to
+speak, but gasping breaths only came forth.  With a last effort, however-
+-as the priest, shocked, stretched out his hand and said: "Have done,
+have done, Trudel!"--he cried, in a voice that quavered shrilly:
+
+"He asked--tailor-man--sign--from--Heaven.  Look-look!"  He pointed
+wildly at Charley.  "I--gave him--sign of--"
+
+But that was the end.  With a shudder the body collapsed in a formless
+heap, and the tailor-man was gone to tell of the work he had done for his
+faith on earth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CURE HAS AN INSPIRATION
+
+White and malicious faces peered through the doorway.  There was an ugly
+murmur coming up the staircase.  Many habitants had heard Louis Trudel's
+last words, and had passed them on with vehement exaggeration.
+
+Chaudiere had been touched in its most superstitious corner.
+Protestantism was a sin, but atheism was a crime against humanity.
+The Protestant might be the victim of a mistake, but the atheist was the
+deliberate son of darkness, the source of fearful dangers.  An atheist in
+their midst was like a scorpion in a flower-bed--no one could tell when
+and where he would sting.  Rough misdemeanours among them had been many,
+there had once been a murder in the parish, but the undefined horrors of
+infidelity were more shameful than crimes the eye could see.
+
+To the minds of these excited people the tailor-man's death was due to
+the infidel before them.  They were ready to do all that might become a
+Catholic intent to avenge the profaned honour of the Church and the
+faith.  Bodily harm was the natural form for their passion to take.
+
+"Bring him out--let us have him!" they cried with fierce gestures, to
+which Rosalie Evanturel turned a pained, indignant face.
+
+As the Curb stood with the paper in his hand, his face set and bitter,
+Rosalie made a step forward.  She meant to tell the truth about Louis
+Trudel, and show how good this man was, who stood charged with an
+imaginary crime.  But she met the warning eye of the man himself, calm
+and resolute, she saw the suffering in the face, endured with what
+composure! and she felt instantly that she must obey him, and that--who
+could tell?--his plan might be the best in the end.  She looked at the
+Cure anxiously.  What would he say and do?  In the Cure's heart and
+mind a great struggle was going on.  All his inherent prejudice, the
+hereditary predisposition of centuries, the ingrain hatred of atheism,
+were alive in him, hardening his mind against the man before him.  His
+first impulse was to let Charley take his fate at the hands of the people
+of Chaudiere, whatever it might be.  But as he looked at the man, as he
+recalled their first meeting, and remembered the simple, quiet life he
+had lived among them--charitable, and unselfish--the barriers of creed
+and habit fell down, and tears unbidden rushed into his eyes.
+
+The Cure had, all at once, the one great inspiration of his life--its one
+beautiful and supreme imagining.  For thus he reasoned swiftly:
+
+Here he was, a priest who had shepherded a flock of the faithful passed
+on to him by another priest before him, who again had received them from
+a guardian of the fold--a family of faithful Catholics whose thoughts
+never strayed into forbidden realms.  He had done no more than keep them
+faithful and prevent them from wandering--counselling, admonishing,
+baptising, and burying, giving in marriage and blessing, sending them on
+their last great journey with the cachet of Holy Church upon them.  But
+never once, never in all his life, had he brought a lost soul into the
+fold.  If he died to-night, he could not say to St. Peter, when he
+arrived at Heaven's gate: "See, I have saved a soul!"  Before
+the Throne he could not say to Him who cried: "Go ye into all the world
+and preach the gospel to every creature"--he could not say: "Lord,
+by Thy grace I found this soul in the wilderness, in the dark and the
+loneliness, having no God to worship, denial and rebellion in his heart;
+and behold, I took him to my breast, and taught him in Thy name, and led
+him home to Thy haven, the Church!"
+
+Thus it was that the Cure dreamed a dream.  He would set his life to
+saving this lost soul.  He would rescue him from the outer darkness.
+
+His face suffused, he handed the paper in his hand back to the man who
+had written the words upon it.  Then he lifted his hand against the
+people at the door and the loud murmuring behind them.
+
+"Peace--peace!" he said, as though from the altar.  "Leave this room of
+death, I command you.  Go at once to your homes.  This man"--he pointed
+to Charley--"is my friend.  Who seeks to harm him, would harm me.  Go
+hence and pray.  Pray for yourselves, pray for him, and for me; and pray
+for the troubled soul of Louis Trudel.  Go in peace."
+
+Soon afterwards the house was empty, save for the Cure, Charley, old
+Margot, and the Notary.
+
+That night Charley sat in the tailor's bedroom, rigid and calm, though
+racked with pain, and watched the candles flickering beside the dead
+body.  He was thinking of the Cure's last words to the people.
+
+"I wonder--I wonder," he said, and through his eyeglass he stared at the
+crucifix that threw a shadow on the dead man's face.  Morning found him
+there.  As dawn crept in he rose to his feet.  "Whither now?" he said,
+like one in a dream.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE WOMAN WHO SAW
+
+Up to the moment of her meeting with Charley, Rosalie Evanturel's life
+had been governed by habit, which was lightly coloured by temperament.
+Since the eventful hour on Vadrome Mountain it had become a life of
+temperament, in which habit was involuntary and mechanical.  She did her
+daily duties with a good heart, but also with a sense superior to the
+practical action.  This grew from day to day, until, in the tragical days
+wherein she had secretly played a great part, she moved as in a dream,
+but a dream so formal that no one saw any change taking place in her,
+or associated her with the events happening across the way.
+
+She had been compelled to answer many questions, for it was known she was
+in the tailor's house when Louis Trudel fell down-stairs, but what more
+was there to tell than that she had run for the Notary, and sent word to
+the Cure, and that she was present when the tailor died, charging M'sieu'
+with being an infidel?  At first she was ill disposed to answer any
+questions, but she soon felt that attitude would only do harm.  For the
+first time in her life she was face to face with moral problems--the
+beginning of sorrow, of knowledge, and of life.
+
+In all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they
+may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve.  Secrecy means
+evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind.  To the primitive
+mind, with its direct yes and no, there is danger of it becoming a
+tragical problem ere it is realised that truth is various and diverse.
+Perhaps even with that Mary who hid the matter in her heart--the
+exquisite tragedy and glory of Christendom--there was a delicate feeling
+of guilt, the guilt of the hidden though lofty and beautiful thing.
+
+If secrecy was guilt, then Charley and Rosalie were bound together by a
+bond as strong as death: Rosalie held the key to a series of fateful days
+and doings.
+
+In ordinary course, they might have known each other for five years and
+not have come to this sensitive and delicate association.  With one great
+plunge she had sprung into the river of understanding.  In the moment
+that she had thrust her scarf into his scorched breast, in that little
+upper room, the work of years had been done.
+
+As long as he lived, that mark must remain on M'sieu's breast--the red,
+smooth scar of a cross!  She had seen the sort of shining scar a bad burn
+makes, and at thought of it she flushed, trembled, and turned her head
+away, as though some one were watching her.  Even in the night she
+flushed and buried her face in the pillow when the thought flashed
+through her mind; though when she had soaked the scarf in oil and flour
+and laid it on the angry wound she had not flushed at all, was
+determined, quiet, and resourceful.
+
+That incident had made her from a girl into a woman, from a child of the
+convent into a child of the world.  She no longer thought and felt as she
+had done before.  What she did think or feel could not easily have been
+set down, for her mind was one tremulous confusion of unusual thoughts,
+her heart was beset by new feelings, her imagination, suddenly finding
+itself, was trying its wings helplessly.  The past was full of wonder and
+event, the present full of surprises.
+
+There was M'sieu' established already in Louis Trudel's place, having
+been granted a lease of the house and shop by the Curte, on the part of
+the parish, to which the property had been left; receiving also a gift of
+the furniture and of old Margot, who remained where she had been so many
+years.  She could easily see Charley at work--pale and suffering still
+--for the door was generally open in the sweet April weather, with the
+birds singing, and the trees bursting into blossom.  Her wilful
+imagination traced the cross upon his breast--it almost seemed as if it
+were outside upon his clothes, exposed to every eye, a shining thing all
+fire, not a wound inside, for which old Margot prepared oiled linen now.
+
+The parish was as perturbed as her own mind, for the mystery of the
+stolen cross had never been cleared up, and a few still believed that
+M'sieu' had taken it.  They were of those who kept hinting at dark things
+which would yet be worked upon the infidel in the tailor's shop.  These
+were they to whom the Curb's beautiful ambition did not appeal.  He had
+said that if the man were an infidel, then they must pray that he be
+brought into the fold; but a few were still suspicious, and they said in
+Rosalie's presence: "Where is the little cross?  M'sieu' knows."
+
+He did know.  That was the worst of it.  The cross was in her possession.
+Was it not necessary, then, to quiet suspicion for his sake?  She had
+locked the relic away in a cupboard in her bedroom, and she carried the
+key of it always in her pocket.  Every day she went and looked at it, as
+at some ghostly token.  To her it was a symbol, not of supernatural
+things, but of life in its new reality to her.  It was M'sieu', it was
+herself, it was their secret--she chafed inwardly that Margot should
+share a part of that secret.  If it were only between their two selves--
+between M'sieu' and herself!  If Margot--she paused suddenly, for she was
+going to say, If Margot would only die!  She was not wicked enough to
+wish that; yet in the past few weeks she had found herself capable of
+thinking things beyond the bounds of any past experience.
+
+She found a solution at last.  She would go to-night secretly and nail
+the cross again on the church door, and so stop the chatter of evil
+tongues.  The moon set very early now, and as every one in Chaudiere was
+supposed to be in bed by ten o'clock, the chances of not being seen were
+in her favour.  She received the final impetus to her resolution by a
+quarrelsome and threatening remark of Jo Portugais to some sharp-tongued
+gossip in the post-office.  She was glad that Jo should defend M'sieu',
+but she was jealous of his friendship for the tailor.  Besides, did there
+not appear to be a secret between Jo and M'sieu'?  Was it not possible
+that Jo knew where M'sieu' came from, and all about him?  Of late Jo had
+come in and gone out of the shop oftener than in the past, had even
+brought her bunches of mosses for her flower-pots, the first budding
+lilacs, and some maple-sugar made from the trees on Vadrome Mountain.
+She remembered that when she was a girl at school, years ago--ten years
+ago--Jo Portugais, then scarcely out of his teens, a cheerful, pleasant,
+quick-tempered lad, had brought her bunches of the mountain-ash berry;
+that once he had mended the broken runner of her sled; and yet another
+time had sent her a birch-bark valentine at the convent, where it was
+confiscated by the Mother Superior.  Since those days he had become a
+dark morose figure, living apart from men, never going to confession,
+seldom going to Mass, unloving and unlovable.
+
+There was only one other person in the parish more unloved.  That was the
+woman called Paulette Dubois, who lived in the little house at the outer
+gate of the Manor.  Paulette Dubois had a bad name in the parish--so bad
+that all women shunned her, and few men noticed her.  Yet no one could
+say that at the present time she did not live a careful life, justifying,
+so far as eye could see, the protection of the Seigneur, M. Rossignol,
+a man of queer habits and queerer dress, a dabbler in physical science,
+a devout Catholic, and a constant friend of the Cure.  He it was who,
+when an effort was made to drive Paulette out of the parish, had said
+that she should not go unless she wished; that, having been born in
+Chaudiere, she had a right to live there and die there; and if she had
+sinned there, the parish was in some sense to blame.  Though he had no
+lodge-gates, and though the seigneury was but a great wide low-roofed
+farmhouse, with an observatory, and a chimney-piece dating from the time
+of Louis the Fourteenth, the Seigneur gave Paulette Dubois a little hut
+at his outer gate, which had been there since the great Count Frontenac
+visited Chaudiere.  Probably Rosalie spoke to Paulette Dubois more often
+than did any one else in the parish, but that was because the woman came
+for little things at the shop, and asked for letters, and every week sent
+one--to a man living in Montreal.  She sent these letters, but not more
+than once in six months did she get a reply, and she had not had one in
+a whole year.  Yet every week she asked, and Rosalie found it hard to
+answer her politely, and sometimes showed it.
+
+So it was that the two disliked each other without good cause, save that
+they were separated by a chasm as wide as a sea.  The one disliked the
+other because she must recognise her; the other chafed because she could
+be recognised by Rosalie officially only.
+
+The late afternoon of the day in which Rosalie decided to nail the cross
+on the church door again, Paulette arrived to ask for letters at the
+moment that the office wicket was closed, and Rosalie had answered that
+it was after office hours, and had almost closed the door in her face.
+As she turned away Jo Portugais came out of the tailor-shop opposite.  He
+saw Paulette, and stood still an instant.  She did the same.  A strange
+look passed across the face of each, then they turned and went in
+opposite directions.
+
+Never in her life had time gone so slowly with Rosalie.  She watched the
+clock.  A dozen times she went to the front door and looked out.  She
+tried to read--it was no use; she tried to spin-her fingers trembled; she
+sorted the letters in the office again, and rearranged every letter and
+parcel and paper in its little pigeonhole--then did it all over again.
+She took out again the letter Paulette had dropped in the letter-box; it
+was addressed in the name of the man at Montreal.  She looked at it in a
+kind of awe, as she had ever done the letters of this woman who was
+without the pale.  They had a sense of mystery, an air of forbidden
+imagination.
+
+She put the letter back, went to the door again, and looked out.  It was
+now time to go.  Drawing a hood over her head, she stepped out into the
+night.  There was a little frost, though spring was well forward, and the
+smell of the rich earth and the budding trees was sweet to the sense.
+The moon had just set, but the stars were shining, and here and there
+patches of snow on the hillside and in the fields added to the light.
+Yet it was not bright enough to see far, and as Rosalie moved down the
+street she did not notice a figure at a little distance behind, walking
+on the new-springing grass by the roadside.  All was quiet at the tavern;
+there was no light in the Notary's house--as a rule, he sat up late,
+reading; and even the fiddle of Maximilian Cour, the baker, was silent.
+The Cure's windows were dark, and the church with its white tin spire
+stood up sentinel-like above the village.
+
+Rosalie had the fateful cross in her hand as she softly opened the gate
+of the churchyard and approached the great oak doors.  Taking a screw-
+driver and some screws from her pocket, she felt with a finger for the
+old screw-holes in the door.  Then she began her work, looking fearfully
+round once or twice at first.  Presently, however, because the screws
+were larger than the old ones, it became much harder; the task called
+forth more strength, and drove all thought of being seen out of her mind
+for a space.  At last, however, she gave the final turn to the handle,
+and every screw was in its place, its top level and smooth with the iron
+of the cross.  She stopped and looked round again with an uneasy feeling.
+She could see no one, hear no one, but she began to tremble, and,
+overcome, she fell on her knees before the door, and, with her fingers on
+the foot of the little cross, prayed passionately; for herself, for
+Monsieur.
+
+Suddenly she heard footsteps inside the church.  They were coming towards
+the doorway, nearer and nearer.  At first she was so struck with terror
+that she could not move.  Then with a little cry she sprang to her feet,
+rushed to the gate, threw it open, ran out into the road, ind wildly on
+towards home.  She did not stop for at least three hundred yards.
+Turning and looking back she saw at the church door a pale round light.
+With another cry she sped on, and did not pause till she reached the
+house.  Then, bursting in and locking the door, she hurried to her room,
+undressed quickly, got into bed without saying her prayers, and buried
+her face in the pillow, shivering and overwrought.
+
+The footsteps she had heard were those of the Cure and Jo Portugais.  The
+Cure had sent for Jo to do some last work upon a little altar, to be used
+the next day for the first time.  The carpenter and the carver in wood
+who were responsible for the work had fallen victims to white whiskey on
+the very last day of their task, and had been driven from the church by
+the Cure, who then sent for Jo.  Rosalie had not seen the light at the
+shrine, as it was on the side of the church farthest from the village.
+
+Their labour finished, the two came towards the front door, the Cure's
+lantern in his hand.  Opening the door, Jo heard the sound of footsteps
+and saw a figure flying down the road.  As the Cure came out
+abstractedly, he glanced sorrowfully towards the place where the little
+cross was used to be.  He gave a wondering cry, and almost dropped the
+lantern.
+
+"See, see, Portugais," he said, "our little cross again!" Jo nodded.
+"So it seems, Monsieur," he said.
+
+At that instant he saw a hood lying on the ground, and as the Cure held
+up the lantern, peering at the little cross, he hastily picked it up and
+thrust it inside his coat.
+
+"Strange--very strange!" said the Cure.  "It must have been done while
+we were inside.  It was not there when we entered."
+
+"We entered by the vestry door," said Jo.
+
+"Ah, true-true," responded the Cure.
+
+"It comes as it went," said Jo.  "You can't account for some things."
+
+The Cure turned and looked at Jo curiously.  "Are you then so
+superstitious, Jo?  Nonsense; it is the work of human hands--very human
+hands," he added sadly.
+
+"There is nothing to show," said the Cure, seeing Jo's glance round.
+
+"As you see, M'sieu' le Cure."
+
+"Well, it is a mystery which time no doubt will clear up.  Meanwhile, let
+us be thankful to God," said the Cure.
+
+They parted, the Cure going through a side-gate into his own garden,
+Jo passing out of the churchyard-gate through which Rosalie had gone.
+He looked down the road towards the village.
+
+"Well!" said a voice in his ear.  Paulette Dubois stood before him.
+
+"It was you, then," he said, with a glowering look.  "What did you want
+with it?"
+
+"What do you want with the hood in your coat there?"  She threw her head
+back with a spiteful laugh.  "Whose do you think it is?" he said
+quietly.
+
+"You and the schoolmaster made verses about her once."
+
+"It was Rosalie Evanturel?" he asked, with aggravating composure.
+
+"You have the hood-look at it!  You saw her running down the road; I saw
+her come, watched her, and saw her go.  She is a thief--pretty Rosalie--
+thief and postmistress!  No doubt she takes letters too."
+
+"The ones you wait for, and that never come--eh?"  Her face darkened with
+rage and hatred.  "I will tell the world she's a thief," she sneered.
+
+"Who will believe you?"
+
+"You will."  She was hard and fierce, and looked him in the eyes
+squarely.  "You'll give evidence quick enough, if I ask you."
+
+"I wouldn't do anything you asked me to-nothing, if it was to save my
+life."
+
+"I'll prove her a thief without you.  She can't deny it."
+
+"If you try it, I'll--"  He stopped, husky and shaking.
+
+"You'll kill me, eh?  You killed him, and you didn't hang.  Oh no, you
+wouldn't kill me, Jo," she added quickly, in a changed voice.  "You've
+had enough of that kind of thing.  If I'd been you, I'd rather have hung
+--ah, sure!"  She suddenly came close to him.  "Do you hate me so bad,
+Jo?" she said anxiously.  "It's eight years--do you hate me so bad as
+then?"
+
+"You keep your tongue off Rosalie Evanturel," he said, and turned on his
+heel.
+
+She caught his arm.  "We're both bad, Jo.  Can't we be friends?" she
+said eagerly, her voice shaking.
+
+He did not reply.
+
+"Don't drive a woman too hard," she said between her teeth.
+
+"Threats!  Pah!" he rejoined.  "What do you think I'm made of?"
+
+"I'll find that out," she said, and, turning on her heel, ran down the
+road towards the Manor House.  "What had Rosalie to do with the cross?"
+Jo said to himself.  "This is her hood."  He took it out and looked at
+it.  "It's her hood--but what did she want with the cross?"
+
+He hurried on, and as he neared the post-office he saw the figure of a
+woman in the road.  At first he thought it might be Rosalie, but as he
+came nearer he saw it was not.  The woman was muttering and crying.  She
+wandered to and fro bewilderedly.  He came up, caught her by the arm, and
+looked into her face.
+
+It was old Margot Patry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT TELL
+
+"Oh, M'sieu', I am afraid."
+
+"Afraid of what, Margot?"
+
+"Of the last moment, M'sieu' le Cure."
+
+"There will be no last moment to your mind--you will not know it when it
+comes, Margot."
+
+The woman trembled.  "I am not sorry to die.  But I am afraid; it is so
+lonely, M'sieu' le Cure."
+
+"God is with us, Margot."
+
+"When we are born we do not know.  It is on the shoulders of others.
+When we die we know, and we have to answer."
+
+"Is the answering so hard, Margot?"
+
+The woman shook her head feebly and sadly, but did not speak.
+
+"You have been a good mother, Margot."  She made no sign.
+
+"You have been a good neighbour; you have done unto others as you would
+be done by."
+
+She scarcely seemed to hear.
+
+"You have been a good servant--doing your duty in season and out of
+season; honest and just and faithful."
+
+The woman's fingers twitched on the coverlet, and she moved her head
+restlessly.
+
+The Curb almost smiled, for it seemed as if Margot were finding herself
+wanting.  Yet none in Chaudiere but knew that she had lived a blameless
+life--faithful, friendly, a loving and devoted mother, whose health had
+been broken by sleepless attendance at sick-beds by night, while doing
+her daily work at the house of the late Louis Trudel.
+
+"I will answer for the way you have done your duty, Margot," said the
+Cure.  "You have been a good daughter of the Church."
+
+He paused a minute, and in the pause some one rose from a chair by the
+window and looked out on the sunset sky.  It was Charley.  The woman
+heard, and turned her eyes towards him.  "Do you wish him to go?" asked
+the Cure.
+
+"No, no--oh no, M'sieu'!" she said eagerly.  She had asked all day that
+either Rosalie or M'sieu' should be in the room with her.  It would seem
+as though she were afraid she had not courage enough to keep the secret
+of the cross without their presence.  Charley had yielded to her request,
+while he shrank from granting it.  Yet, as he said to himself, the woman
+was keeping his secret--his and Rosalie's--and she had some right to make
+demand.
+
+When the Cure asked the question of old Margot, he turned expectantly,
+and with a sense of relief.  He thought it strange that the Cure should
+wish him to remain.  The Cure, on his part, was well pleased to have him
+in the influence of a Christian death-bed.  A time must come when the
+last confidences of the dying woman could be given to no ears but his
+own, but meanwhile it was good that M'sieu' should be there.
+
+"M'sieu' le Cure," said the dying woman, "must I tell all?"
+
+"All what, Margot?"
+
+"All that is sin?"
+
+"There is no must, Margot."
+
+"If you should ask me, M'sieu'--"
+
+She paused, and the man at the window turned and looked curiously at her.
+He saw the problem in the woman's mind: had she the right to die with the
+secret of another's crime upon her mind?
+
+"The priest does not ask, Margot: it is you who confess your sins.  That
+is between you and God."
+
+The Cure spoke firmly, for he wanted the man at the window to clearly
+understand.
+
+"But if there are the sins of others, and you know, and they trouble your
+soul, M'sieu'?"
+
+"You have nothing to do with the sins of others; it is enough to repent
+of your own sins.  The priest has nothing to do with any sins but those
+confessed by the sinner to himself.  Your own sins are your sole concern
+to-night, Margot."
+
+The woman's face seemed to clear a little, and her eyes wandered to the
+man at the window with less anxiety.  Charley was wondering whether,
+after all, she would have the courage to keep her word, whether spiritual
+terror would surmount the moral attitude of honour.  He was also
+wondering how much right he had to put the strain upon the woman in her
+desperate hour.  "How long did the doctor say I could live?" the woman
+asked presently.
+
+"Till morning, perhaps, Margot."
+
+"I should like to live till sunrise," she answered, "till after
+breakfast.  Rosalie makes good tea," she added musingly.
+
+The Cure almost smiled.  "There is the Living Bread, my daughter."
+
+She nodded.  "But I should like to see the sunrise and have Rosalie bring
+me tea," she persisted.
+
+"Very well, Margot.  We will ask God for that."
+
+Her mind flew back again to the old question.
+
+"Is it wrong to keep a secret?" she asked, her face turned away from the
+man at the window.
+
+"If it is the secret of a sin, and the sin is your own--yes, Margot."
+
+"And if the sin is not your own?"
+
+"If you share the sin, and if the secret means injury to others, and a
+wrong is being done, and the law can right that wrong, then you must go
+to the law, not to your priest."
+
+The Cure's look was grave, even anxious, for he saw that the old woman's
+mind was greatly disturbed.  But her face cleared now, and stayed so.
+"It has all been a mix and a muddle," she answered; "and it hurt my poor
+head, M'sieu' le Cure, but now I think I under stand.  I am not afraid;
+I will confess."
+
+The Cure had made it clear to her that she could carry to her grave the
+secret of the little cross and the work it had done, and so keep her word
+and still not injure her chances of salvation.  She was content.  She no
+longer needed the helpful presence of M'sieu' or Rosalie.  Charley
+instinctively felt what was in her mind, and came towards the bed.
+
+"I will tell Mademoiselle Rosalie about the tea," he said to her.
+
+She looked up at him, almost smiling.  "Thank you, good M'sieu'," she
+said.
+
+"I will confess now, M'sieu' le Cure" she continued.  Charley left the
+room.
+
+Towards morning Margot waked out of a brief sleep, and found the Cure and
+his sister and others about her bed.
+
+"Is it near sunrise?" she whispered.
+
+"It is just sunrise.  See; God has been good," answered the Cure, drawing
+open the blind and letting in the first golden rays.
+
+Rosalie entered the room with a cup of tea, and came towards the bed.
+
+Old Margot looked at the girl, at the tea, and then at the Cure.
+
+"Drink the tea for me, Rosalie," she whispered.  Rosalie did as she was
+asked.
+
+She looked round feebly; her eyes were growing filmy.  "I never gave--so
+much--trouble--before," she managed to say.  "I never had--so much--
+attention....  I can keep--a secret too," she said, setting her lips
+feebly with pride.  "But I--never--had--so much--attention--before; have
+I--Rosalie?"
+
+Rosalie did not need to answer, for the woman was gone.  The crowning
+interest of her life had come all at the last moment, as it were, and she
+had gone away almost gladly and with a kind of pride.
+
+Rosalie also had a hidden pride: the secret was now her very own--hers
+and M'sieu's.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE SEIGNEUR TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME
+
+It was St. Jean Baptiste's day, and French Canada was en fete.  Every
+seigneur, every cure, every doctor, every notary--the chief figures in a
+parish--and every habitant was bent for a happy holiday, dressed in his
+best clothes, moved in his best spirits, in the sweet summer weather.
+
+Bells were ringing, flags were flying, every road and lane was filled
+with caleches and wagons, and every dog that could draw a cart pulled big
+and little people, the old and the blind and the mendicant, the happy and
+the sour, to the village, where there were to be sports and speeches,
+races upon the river, and a review of the militia, arranged by the member
+of the Legislature for the Chaudiere-half of the county.  French soldiers
+in English red coats and carrying British flags were straggling along the
+roads to join the battalion at the volunteers' camp three miles from the
+town, and singing:
+
+                   "Brigadier, respondez Pandore--
+                    Brigadier, vous avez raison."
+
+It was not less incongruous and curious when one group presently broke
+out into 'God save the Queen', and another into the 'Marseillaise', and
+another still into 'Malbrouck s'en va t'en guerre'.  At last songs and
+soldiers were absorbed in the battalion at the rendezvous, and 1the long
+dusty march to the village gave a disciplined note to the gaiety of the
+militant habitant.
+
+At high noon Chaudiere was filled to overflowing.  There were booths and
+tents everywhere--all sorts of cheap-jacks vaunted their wares, merry-go-
+rounds and swings and shooting-galleries filled the usual spaces in the
+perspective.  The Cure, M. Rossignol the Seigneur, and the Notary stood
+on the church steps viewing the scene and awaiting the approach of the
+soldier-citizens.  The Seigneur and the Cure had ceased listening to the
+babble of M. Dauphin, who seemed not to know that his audience closed its
+ears and found refuge in a "Well, well!" or "Think of that!" or an
+abstracted "You surprise me!"
+
+The Notary talked on with eager gesture and wreathing smile, shaking back
+his oiled ringlets as though they trespassed on his smooth, somewhat
+jaundiced cheeks, until it began to dawn upon him that there was no coin
+of real applause to be got at this mint.  Fortune favoured him at the
+critical juncture, for the tailor walked slowly past them, looking
+neither to right nor to left, his eyes cast upon the ground, apparently
+oblivious to all round him.  Almost opposite the church door, however,
+Charley was suddenly stopped by Filion Lacasse, who ran out from a group
+before the tavern, and, standing in front of him with outstretched hand,
+said loudly:
+
+"M'sieu', it's all right.  What you said done it, sure!  I'm a thousand
+dollars richer to-day.  You may be an infidel, but you have a head, and
+you save me money, and you give away your own, and that's good enough for
+me,"--he wrung Charley's hand,--"and I don't care who knows it--sacre!"
+
+Charley did not answer him, but calmly withdrew his hand, smiled, raised
+his hat at the lonely cheer the saddler raised, and passed on, scarce
+conscious of what had happened.  Indeed he was indifferent to it, for he
+had a matter on his mind this day which bitterly absorbed him.
+
+But the Notary was not indifferent.  "Look there, what do you think of
+that?" he asked querulously.  "I am glad to see that Lacasse treats
+Monsieur well," said the Cure.
+
+"What do you think of that, Monsieur?" repeated the Notary excitedly to
+the Seigneur.
+
+The Seigneur put his large gold-handled glass to his eye and looked
+interestedly after Charley for a moment, then answered: "Well, Dauphin,
+what?"
+
+"He's been giving Filion Lacasse advice about the old legacy business,
+and Filion's taken it; and he's got a thousand dollars; and now there's
+all that fuss.  And four months ago Filion wanted to tar and feather him
+for being just what he is to-day--an infidel--an infidel!"
+
+He was going to say something else, but he did not like the look the Cure
+turned on him, and he broke off short.
+
+"Do you regret that he gave Lacasse good advice?" asked the Cure.
+
+"It's taking bread out of other men's mouths."
+
+"It put bread into Filion's mouth.  Did you ever give Lacasse advice?
+The truth now, Dauphin!" said the Seigneur drily.
+
+"Yes, Monsieur, and sound advice too, within the law-precedent and code
+and every legal fact behind."  The Seigneur was a man of laconic speech.
+"Tut, tut, Dauphin; precedent and code and legal fact are only good when
+there's brain behind 'em.  The tailor yonder has brains."
+
+"Ah, but what does he know about the law?" answered Dauphin, with
+acrimonious voice but insinuating manner, for he loved to stand well with
+the Seigneur.
+
+"Enough for the saddler evidently," sharply rejoined the Seigneur.
+
+Dauphin was fighting for his life, as it were.  His back was to the wall.
+If this man was to be allowed to advise the habitants of Chaudiere on
+their disputes and "going to law," where would his own prestige be?
+His vanity had been deeply wounded.
+
+"It's guesswork with him.  Let him stick to his trade as I stick to mine.
+That sort of thing only does harm."
+
+"He puts a thousand dollars into the saddler's pocket: that's a positive
+good.  He may or may not take thereby ten dollars out of your pocket:
+that's a negative injury.  In this case there was no injury, for you had
+already cost Lacasse--how much had you cost him, Dauphin?" continued the
+Seigneur, with a half-malicious smile.  "I've been out of Chaudiere for
+near a year; I don't know the record--how much, eh, Dauphin?"
+
+The Notary was too offended to answer.  He shook his ringlets back
+angrily, and a scarlet spot showed on each straw-coloured cheek.
+
+"Twenty dollars is what Lacasse paid our dear Dauphin," said the Cure
+benignly, "and a very proper charge.  Lacasse probably gave Monsieur
+there quite as much, and Monsieur will give it to the first poor man he
+meets, or send it to the first sick person of whom he hears."
+
+"My own opinion is, he's playing some game here," said the Notary.
+
+"We all play games," said the Seigneur.  "His seems to give him hard work
+and little luxury.  Will you bring him to see me at the Manor, my dear
+Cure?" he added.  "He will not go.  I have asked him."
+
+"Then I shall visit him at his tailor-shop," said the Seigneur.  "I need
+a new suit."
+
+"But you always had your clothes made in Quebec, Monsieur," said the
+Notary, still carping.
+
+"We never had such a tailor," answered the Seigneur.
+
+"We'll hear more of him before we're done with him," obstinately urged
+the Notary.
+
+"It would give Dauphin the greatest pleasure if our tailor proved to be a
+murderer or a robber.  I suppose you believe that he stole our little
+cross here," the Cure added, turning to the church door, where his eye
+lingered lovingly on the relic, hanging on a pillar just inside, whither
+he had had it removed.
+
+"I'm not sure yet he hadn't something to do with it," was the stubborn
+response.
+
+"If he did, may it bring him peace at last!" said the Cure piously.
+"I have set my heart on nailing him to our blessed faith as that cross
+is fixed to the pillar yonder--'I will fasten him like a nail in a sure
+place,' says the Book.  I take it hard that my friend Dauphin will not
+help me on the way.  Suppose the man were evil, then the Church should
+try to snatch him like a brand from the burning.  But suppose that in his
+past there was no wrong necessary to be hidden in the present--and this
+I believe with all my heart; suppose that he was wronged, not wronging:
+then how much more should the Church strive to win him to the light!
+Why, man, have you no pride in Holy Church?  I am ashamed of you,
+Dauphin, with your great intelligence, your wide reading.  With our
+knowledge of the world we should be broader."
+
+The Seigneur's eyes were turned away, for there was in them at once
+humour and a suspicious moisture.  Of all men in the world he most
+admired the Cure, for his utter truth and nobility; but he could not
+help smiling at his enthusiasm--his dear Cure turned evangelist like any
+"Methody"!--and at the appeal of the Notary on the ground of knowledge
+of the world.  He was wise enough to count himself an old fogy, a
+provincial, and "a simon-pure habitant," but of the three he only had any
+knowledge of life.  As men of the world the Cure and the Notary were sad
+failures, though they stood for much in Chaudiere.  Yet this detracted
+nothing from the fine gentlemanliness of the Cure or the melodramatic
+courtesy of the Notary.
+
+Amused and touched as the Seigneur had been at the Cure's words, he
+turned now and said: "Always on the weaker side, Cure; always hoping the
+best from the worst of us."
+
+"I am only following an example at my door--you taught us all charity and
+justice," answered M. Loisel, looking meaningly at the Seigneur.  There
+was silence a little while, for all three were thinking of the woman of
+the hut, at the gate of the Seigneur's manor.
+
+On this topic M. Dauphin was not voluble.  His original kindness to the
+woman had given him many troubled hours at home, for Madame Dauphin had
+construed his human sympathy into the dark and carnal desires of the
+heart, and his truthful eloquence had made his case the worse.  A
+miserable sentimentalist, the Notary was likely to be misunderstood for
+ever, and one or two indiscretions of his extreme youth had been a weapon
+against him through the long years of a blameless married life.
+
+He heaved a sigh of sympathy with the Cure now.  "She has not come back
+yet?" he said to the Seigneur.  "No sign of her.  She locked up and
+stepped out, so my housekeeper says, about the time--"
+
+"The day of old Margot's funeral," interposed the Notary.  "She'd had a
+letter that day, a letter she'd been waiting for, and abroad she went--
+alas! the flyaway--from bad to worse, I fear--ah me!"
+
+The Seigneur turned sharply on him.  "Who told you she had a letter that
+day, for which she had been waiting?" he said.
+
+"Monsieur Evanturel."
+
+The Seigneur's face became sterner still.  "What business had he to know
+that she received a letter that day?"
+
+"He is postmaster," innocently replied the Notary.  "He is the devil!"
+said the Seigneur tartly.  "I beg your pardon, Cure; but it is
+Evanturel's business not to know what letters go to and fro in that
+office.  He should be blind and dumb, so far as we all are concerned."
+
+"Remember that Evanturel is a cripple," the Cure answered gently.  "I am
+glad, very glad it was not Rosalie."
+
+"Rosalie has more than usual sense for her sex," gruffly but kindly
+answered the Seigneur, a look of friendliness in his eyes.  "I shall talk
+to her about her father; I can't trust myself to speak to the man."
+
+"Rosalie is down there with Madame Dauphin," said the Notary, pointing.
+"Shall I ask her to come?"
+
+The Seigneur nodded.  He was magistrate and magnate, and he was the
+guarantor of the post-office, and of Rosalie and her father.  His eyes
+fixed in reverie on Rosalie; he and the Cure passively waited her
+approach.
+
+She came over, pale and a little anxious, but with a courageous look.
+She had a vague sense of trouble, and she feared it might be the little
+cross, that haunting thing of all these months.
+
+When she came near, the Cure greeted her courteously, and then, taking
+the Notary by the arm, led him away.
+
+The Seigneur and Rosalie being left alone, the girl said: "You wish to
+speak with me, Monsieur?"
+
+The Seigneur scrutinised her sharply.  Though her colour came and went,
+her look was frank and fearless.  She had had many dark hours since that
+fateful month of April.  At night, trying to sleep, she had heard the
+ghostly footsteps in the church, which had sent her flying homeward.
+Then, there was the hood.  She had waited on and on, fearing word would
+come that it had been found in the churchyard, and that she had been seen
+putting the cross back upon the church door.  As day after day passed she
+had come at length to realise that, whatever had happened to the hood,
+she was not suspected.  Yet the whole train of circumstances had a
+supernatural air, for the Cure and Jo Portugais had not made public their
+experience on the eventful night; she had been educated in a land of
+legend and superstition, and a deep impression had been made upon her
+mind, giving to her other new emotions a touch of pathos, of imagination,
+and adding character to her face.  The old Seigneur stroked his chin as
+he looked at her.  He realised that a change had come upon her, that she
+had developed in some surprising way.
+
+"What has happened--who has happened, Mademoiselle Rosalie?" he asked.
+He had suddenly made up his mind about that look in her face--he thought
+it the woman in her which answers to the call of man, not perhaps any
+particular man, but man the attractive influence, the complement.
+
+Her eyes dropped, then raised frankly to his.  "I don't know,"--adding,
+with a quick humour, for he had been very friendly with her, and joked
+with her in his dry way all her life; "do you, Monsieur?"
+
+He pulled his nose with a quick gesture habitual to him, and answered
+slowly and meaningly: "The government's a good husband and pays regular
+wages, Mademoiselle.  I'd stick to government."
+
+"I am not asking for a divorce, Monsieur."
+
+He pulled his nose again delightedly--so many people were pathetically
+in earnest in Chaudiere--even the Cure's humour was too mediaeval and
+obvious.  He had never before thought Rosalie so separate from them all.
+All at once he had a new interest in her.  His cheek flushed a little,
+his eye kindled, humour relaxed his lips.
+
+"No other husband would intrude so little," he rejoined.
+
+"True, there's little love lost between us, Monsieur."  She felt
+exhilaration in talking with him, a kind of joy in measuring word against
+word; yet a year ago she would have done no more than smile respectfully
+and give a demure reply if the Seigneur had spoken to her like this.
+
+The Seigneur noted the mixed emotions in her face and the delicate
+alertness of expression.  As a man of the world, he was inclined to
+believe that only one kind of experience can bring such looks to a
+woman's face.  He saw in her the awakening of the deeper interests of
+life, the tremulous apprehension of nascent emotions and passions which,
+at some time or other, give beauty and importance to the nature of every
+human being.  It did not occur to him that the tailor--the mysterious
+figure in the parish--might be responsible.  He was observant, but not
+imaginative; he was moved by what he saw, in a quiet, unexplainable
+manner.
+
+"The government is the best sort of husband.  From the other sort you
+would get more kisses and less ha'pence," he continued.
+
+"That might be a satisfactory balance-sheet, Monsieur."
+
+"Take care, Mademoiselle Rosalie," he rejoined, half seriously, "that you
+don't miss the ha'pence before you get the kisses."
+
+She turned pale in very fear.  What was he going to say?  Was the post-
+office to be taken from them?  She came straight to the point.
+
+"What have I done wrong, Monsieur?  I've never kept the mail-stage
+waiting; I've never left the mailbag unlocked; I've never been late in
+opening the wicket; I've never been careless, and no one's ever
+complained of a lost letter."
+
+The Seigneur saw her agitation, and was sorry for her.  He came to the
+point as she had done:
+
+"We will have you made postmistress--you alone, Rosalie Evanturel.  I've
+made up my mind to that.  But you'll promise not to get married--eh?
+Anyhow, there's no one in the parish for you to marry.  You're too well-
+born and you've been too well educated for a habitant's wife--and the
+Cure or I can't marry you."
+
+He was not taken back to see her flush deeply, and it pleased him to see
+this much life rising to his own touch, this much revelation to give his
+mind a new interest.  He had come to that age when the mind is surprised
+to find that the things that once charmed charm less, and the things once
+hated are less acutely repulsive.  He saw her embarrassment.  He did not
+know that this was the first time that she had ever thought of marriage
+since it ceased to be a dream of girlhood, and, by reason of thinking
+much on a man, had become a possibility, which, however, she had never
+confessed to herself.  Here she was faced by it now in the broad open
+day: a plain, hard statement, unrelieved by aught save the humour of the
+shrewd eyes bent upon her.
+
+She did not answer him at once.  "Do you promise not to marry so useless
+a thing as man, and to remain true to the government?" he continued.
+
+"If I wished to marry a man, I should not let the government stand in my
+way," she said, in brave confusion.
+
+"But do you wish to marry any man?" he asked abruptly, even petulantly.
+
+"I have not asked myself that question, Monsieur, and--should you ask it,
+unless--" she said, and paused with as pretty and whimsical a glance of
+merriment as could well be.
+
+He burst out laughing at the swift turn she had given her reply, and at
+the double suggestion.  Then he suddenly changed.  A curious expression
+filled his eyes.  A smile, almost beautiful, came to his lips.
+
+"'Pon my honour," he said, in a low tone, "you have me caught!  And I beg
+to say--I beg to say," he added, with a flush mounting in his own face, a
+sudden inspiration in his look, "that if you do not think me too old and
+crabbed and ugly, and can endure me, I shall be profoundly happy if you
+will marry me, Rosalie."
+
+He stood upright, holding himself very hard, for this idea had shot into
+his mind all in an instant, though, unknown to himself, it had been
+growing for years, cherished by many a kind act to her father and by a
+simple gratitude on her part.  He had spoken without feeling the
+absurdity of the proposal.  He had never married, and he was unprepared
+to make any statement on such a theme; but now, having made it somehow,
+he would stand by it, in spite of any and all criticism.  He had known
+Rosalie since her birth, her education was as good as a convent could
+secure, she was the granddaughter of a notable seigneur, and here she
+was, as fine a type of health, beauty and character as man could wish--
+and he was only fifty!  Life was getting lonelier for him every day,
+and, after all, why should he leave distant relations and the Church his
+worldly goods?  All this flashed through his mind as he waited for her
+answer.  Now it seemed to him that he had meant to say this thing for
+many years.  He had seen an awakening in her--he had suddenly been
+awakened himself.
+
+"Monsieur, Monsieur," she said in a bewildered way, "do not amuse
+yourself at my expense."
+
+"Would it be that, then?" he said, with a smile, behind which there was
+determination and self-will.  "I want you to marry me; I do with all my
+heart.  You shall have those ha'pence, and the kisses too, if so be you
+will take them--or not, as you will, Rosalie."
+
+"Monsieur," she gasped, for something caught her in the throat, and the
+tears started to her eyes, "ask me to forget that you have ever said
+those words.  Oh, Monsieur, it is not possible, it never could be
+possible!  I am only the postmaster's daughter."
+
+"You are my wife, if you will but say the word," he answered, "and I as
+proud a husband as the land holds!"
+
+"You were always kind to me, Monsieur," she rejoined, her lips trembling;
+"won't you be so still?"
+
+"I am too old?" he asked.
+
+"Oh no, it is not that," she replied.
+
+"You have as good manners as my mother had.  You need not fear comparison
+with any lady in the land.  Have I not known you all your life?  I know
+the way you have come, and your birth is as good as mine."
+
+"Ah, it is not that, Monsieur!"
+
+"I give you my word that I do not come to you because no one else would
+have me," he said with a curious simplicity.  "I never asked a woman to
+marry me--never!  You are the first.  There was talk once--but it was all
+false.  I never meant to ask any one to marry me.  But I have the wish
+now which I never had in my youth.  I thought best of myself always; now,
+I think--I think better of you than--"
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, I beg of you, no more!  I cannot; oh, I cannot--"
+
+"You--but no; I will not ask you, Mademoiselle.  If you have some one
+else in your heart, or want some one else there, that is your affair, not
+mine--undoubtedly.  I would have tried to make you happy; you would have
+had peace and comfort all your life; you could have trusted me--but there
+it is.  .  .  ."  He felt all at once that he was unfair to her, that he
+had thrust upon her too hard a problem in too troubled an hour.
+
+"I could trust you with my life, Monsieur Rossignol," she replied.  "And
+I love you in a way that a man may be loved to no one's harm or sorrow:
+it is true that!"  She raised her eyes to his simply, trustingly.
+
+He looked at her steadily for a moment.  "If you change your mind--"
+
+She shook her head sadly.
+
+"Good, then," he went on, for he thought it wise not to press her now,
+though he had no intention of taking her no as final.  "I'll keep an eye
+on you.  You'll need me some day soon; I can do things that the Cure
+can't, perhaps."  His manner changed still more.  "Now to business," he
+continued.  "Your father has been talking about letters received and sent
+from the post-office.  That is punishable.  I am responsible for you
+both, and if it is reported, if the woman were to report it--you know
+the letter I mean--there would be trouble.  You do not talk.  Now I am
+going to ask the government to make you sole postmistress, with full
+responsibility.  Then you must govern your father--he hasn't as much
+sense as you."
+
+"Monsieur, we owe you so much!  I am deeply grateful, and, whatever you
+do for us, you may rely on me to do my duty."
+
+They could scarcely hear each other speak now, for the soldiers were
+coming nearer, and the fife-and-drum bands were screeching, 'Louis the
+King was a Soldier'.
+
+"Then you will keep the government as your husband?" he asked, with
+forced humour, as he saw the Cure and the Notary approaching.
+
+"It is less trouble, Seigneur," she answered, with a smile of relief.
+
+M. Rossignol turned to the Cure and the Notary.  "I have just offered
+Mademoiselle a husband she might rule in place of a government that rules
+her, and she has refused," he said in the Cure's ear, with a dry laugh.
+
+"She's a sensible girl, is Rosalie," said the Cure, not apprehending.
+
+The soldiers were now opposite the church, and riding at their head was
+the battalion Colonel, also member of the Legislature.
+
+They all moved down, and Rosalie disappeared in the crowd.  As the
+Seigneur and the Cure greeted the Colonel, the latter said:
+
+"At luncheon I'll tell you one of the bravest things ever seen.  Happened
+half-hour ago at the Red Ravine.  Man who did it wore an eye-glass--said
+he was a tailor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE COLONEL TELLS HIS STORY
+
+The Colonel had lunched very well indeed.  He had done justice to every
+dish set before him; he had made a little speech, congratulating himself
+on having such a well-trained body of men to command, and felicitating
+Chaudiere from many points of view.  He was in great good-humour with
+himself, and when the Notary asked him--it was at the Manor, with the
+soldiers resting on the grass without--about the tale of bravery he had
+promised them, he brought his fist down on the table with great intensity
+but little noise, and said:
+
+"Chaudiere may well be proud of it.  I shall refer to it in the
+Legislature on the question of roads and bridges--there ought to be a
+stone fence on that dangerous road by the Red Ravine--Have I your
+attention?"
+
+He stood up, for he was an excitable and voluble Colonel, and he loved
+oration as a cat does milk.  With a knife he drew a picture of the locale
+on the table cloth.  "Here I was riding on my sorrel, all my noble
+fellows behind, the fife and drums going as at Louisburg--that day!
+Martial ardour united to manliness and local pride--follow me?  Here we
+were, Red Ravine left, stump fences and waving fields of grain right.
+From military point of view, bad position--ravine, stump fence, brave
+soldiers in the middle, food for powder--catch it?--see?"
+
+He emptied his glass, drew a long breath, and again began, the carving-
+knife cutting a rhetorical path before him.  "I was engaged upon the
+military problem--demonstration in force, no scouts ahead, no rearguard,
+ravine on the right, stump fence on the left, red coats, fife-and-drum
+band, concealed enemy--follow me?  Observant mind always sees problems
+everywhere--unresting military genius accustoms intelligence to all
+possible contingencies--'stand what I mean?"
+
+The Seigneur took a pinch of snuff, and the Cure, whose mind was
+benevolent, listened with the gravest interest.
+
+"At the juncture when, in my mind's eye, I saw my gallant fellows
+enfiladed with a terrible fire, caught in a trap, and I, despairing,
+spurring on to die at their headhave I your attention?--just at that
+moment there appeared between the ravine and the road ahead a man.  He
+wore an eye-glass; he seemed an unconcerned spectator of our movements
+--so does the untrained, unthinking eye look out upon destiny!  Not far
+away was a wagon, in it a man.  Wagon bisecting our course from a cross-
+road--"
+
+He drew a line on the table-cloth with the carvingknife, and the Notary
+said: "Yes, yes, the concession road."
+
+"So, Messieurs.  There were we, a battalion and a fife-and-drum band;
+there was the man with the eyeglass, the indifferent spectator, yet the
+engine of fate; there was the wagon, a mottled horse, and a man driving--
+catch it?  The mottled horse took fright at our band, which at that
+instant strikes up 'The Chevalier Drew his Sabre'.  He shies from the
+road with a leap, the man falls backwards into the wagon, and the reins
+drop.  The horse dashes from the road into the open, and rushes on to the
+ravine.  What good now to stop the fifes and drums-follow me?  What can
+we, an armed force, bandoleered, knapsacked, sworded, rifled, impetuous,
+brave, what can we do before this tragedy?  The man in the wagon
+senseless, the flying horse, the ravine, death!  How futile the power of
+man--'stand what I mean?"
+
+"Why didn't your battalion shoot the horse?" said the Seigneur drily,
+taking a pinch of snuff.  "Monsieur," said the Colonel, "see the irony,
+the implacable irony of fate--we had only blank cartridge!  But see you,
+here was this one despised man with an eye-glass, a tailor--takes nine
+tailors to make a man!--between the ravine and the galloping tragedy.
+His spirit arrayed itself like an army with banners, prepared to wrestle
+with death as Jacob wrestled with his shadow all the night 'sieur le
+Cure!"
+
+The Cure bowed; the Notary shook back his oiled locks in excitement.
+
+"Awoke a whole man--nine-ninths, as in Adam--in the obscure soul of the
+tailor, and, rushing forward, he seized the mottled horse by the bridle
+as he galloped upon the chasm:  The horse dragged him on--dragged him on
+--on--on.  We, an army, so to speak, stood and watched the Tailor and the
+Tragedy!  All seemed lost, but, by the decree of fate--"
+
+"The will of God," said the Cure softly.
+
+"By the great decree, the man was able to stop the horse, not a half-
+dozen feet from the ravine.  The horse and the insensible driver were
+spared death--death.  So, Messieurs, does bravery come from unexpected
+places--see?"
+
+The Seigneur, the Cure, and even the Notary clapped their hands, and
+murmured praises of the tailor-man.  But the Colonel did not yet take his
+seat.
+
+"But now, mark the sequel," he said.  "As I galloped over, I saw the
+tailor look into the wagon, and turn away quickly.  He waited by the
+horse till I came near, and then walked off without a word.  I rode up,
+and tapped him with my sword upon the shoulder.  'A noble deed, my good
+man,' said I.  'I approve of your conduct, and I will remember it in the
+Legislature when I address the committee of the whole house on roads and
+bridges.'  What do you think was his reply to my affable words?  When I
+tapped him approvingly on the shoulder a second time, he screwed his eye-
+glass in his eye, and, with no emotion, though my own eyes were full of
+tears, he said, in a tone of affront, 'Look after the man there,
+constable,' and pointed to the wagon.  Constable--mon Dieu!  Gross
+manners even for a tailor!"
+
+"I had not thought his manners bad," said the Cure, as the Colonel sat
+down, gulped a glass of brandy-andwater, and mopped his forehead.
+
+"A most remarkable tailor," said the Seigneur, peering into his snuff-
+box.
+
+"And the driver of the mottled horse?" asked the Notary.
+
+"Knocked senseless.  One of my captains soon restored him.  He followed
+us into the village.  He is a quack-doctor.  I suppose he is now selling
+tinctures, pulling teeth, and driving away rheumatics.  He gave me his
+card.  I told him he should leave one on the tailor."
+
+With a flourish he threw a professional card upon the table, before the
+Cure.
+
+The Cure picked it up and read:
+
+                         JOHN BROWN, B.A., M.D.,
+
+          Healer of Ailments that Defy the Ordinary Skill of Ordinary
+          Medical Men.  Rheumatism, Sciatica, Headache, Toothache,
+          Asthma, Ague, Pleurisy, Gout, and all Chronic Diseases Yield
+          Instantly to the Power of his Medicines.
+
+     Dr. Brown will publicly treat the most stubborn cases, laying
+     himself open to the derision of mankind if he does not instantly
+     give relief and benefit.  His whole career has been a blessing to
+     his fellows, and his journey now through this country, fresh from
+     his studies in the Orient, is to introduce his remedies to a
+     suffering world, for the conquest of malady, not for personal
+     profit.
+
+                         JOHN BROWN, B.A., M.D.,
+
+          Specialist in Chronic Diseases and General Practitioner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A SONG, A BOTTLE, AND A GHOST
+
+All day John Brown, ex-clergyman and quack-doctor, harangued the people
+of Chaudiere from his gaily-painted wagon.  He had the perfect gift of
+the charlatan, and he had discovered his metier.  Inclined to the
+picturesque by nature, melodramatic and empirical, his earlier career had
+been the due fruit of habit and education.  As a dabbler in mines he had
+been out of his element.  He lacked the necessary reticence, and arsenic
+had not availed him, though it had tempted Billy Wantage to forgery; and
+because Billy hid himself behind the dismal opportunity of silence, had
+ruined the name of a dead man called Charley Steele.  Since Charley's
+death John Brown had never seen Billy: he had left the town one woful
+day an hour after Billy had told him of the discovery Charley had made.
+From a far corner of the country he had read the story of Charley's
+death; of the futile trial of the river-drivers afterwards, ending in
+acquittal, and the subsequent discovery of the theft of the widows' and
+orphans' trust-moneys.
+
+On this St. Jean Baptiste's day he was thinking of anything and
+everything else but Charley Steele.  Nothing could have been a better
+advertisement for him than the perilous incident at the Red Ravine.
+Falling backwards when the horse suddenly bolted, his head had struck the
+medicine-chest, and he had lain insensible till brought back to
+consciousness by the good offices of the voluble Colonel.  He had not,
+therefore, seen Charley.  It was like him that his sense of gratitude
+to the unknown tailor should be presently lost in exploiting the interest
+he created in the parish.  His piebald horse, his white "plug" hat, his
+gaily painted wagon, his flamboyant manner, and, above all, the
+marvellous tale of his escape from death, were more exciting to the
+people of Chaudiere than the militia, the dancing-bears, the shooting-
+galleries, or the boat-races.  He could sing extremely well--had he not
+trained his own choir when he was a parson? had not Billy approved his
+comic songs?--and these comic songs, now sandwiched between his cures
+and his sales, created much laughter.  He cured headaches, toothaches,
+rheumatism, and all sorts of local ailments "with despatch."
+He miraculously juggled away pains by what he called his Pain Paint,
+and he stopped a cough by a laugh and a dose of his Golden Pectoral.
+In the exuberance of trade, which steadily increased till sundown,
+he gave no thought to the tailor, to whom, however, he had sent by a
+messenger a two-dollar bill and two bottles of Pain Paint, with the
+lordly announcement that he would call in the evening and "present his
+compliments and his thanks."  The messenger left the Pain Paint on the
+door-step of the tailor-shop, and the two dollars he promptly spent at
+the Trois Couronnes.
+
+Rosalie Evanturel rescued the bottles from the doorstep and awaited
+Charley's return to his shop, that she might take them over to him, and
+so have an excuse to speak with him; for to-day her heart and mind were
+full of him.  He had done a brave thing for the medicine-man, and had
+then fled from public gaze as a brave man should.  There was no one to
+compare with him.  Not even the Cure was his superior in ability, and
+certainly he was a greater man--though seemingly only a tailor--than M.
+Rossignol.  M. Rossignol--she flushed.  Who could have believed that the
+Seigneur would say those words to her this morning--to her, Rosalie
+Evanturel, who hadn't five hundred dollars to her name?  That she should
+be asked to be Madame Rossignol!  Confusion mingled with her simple
+pride, and she ran out into the street, to where her father sat listening
+to the medicine-man singing, in doubtful French:
+
+                   "I am a waterman bold,
+                    Oh, I'm a waterman bold:
+                    But for my lass I have great fear,
+                    Yes, in the isles I have great fear,
+                    For she is young, and I am old,
+                    And she is bien gentille!"
+
+It was night now.  The militia had departed, their Colonel roaring
+commands at them out of a little red drill-book; the older people had
+gone to their homes, but festive youth hovered round the booths and
+sideshows, the majority enjoying themselves at some expense in the
+medicine-man's encampment.
+
+As Rosalie ran towards the crowd she turned a wistful glance to the
+tailor-shop.  Not a sign of life there!  She imagined M'sieu' to be at
+Vadrome Mountain, until, glancing round the crowd at the quack-doctor's
+wagon, she saw Jo Portugais gloomily watching the travelling tinker of
+human bodies.  Evidently M'sieu' was not at Vadrome Mountain.
+
+He was not far from her.  At the side of the road, under a huge maple-
+tree with wide-spreading branches, Charley stood and watched John Brown
+performing behind the flaring oil-lights stuck on poles round his wagon,
+his hat now on, now off; now singing a comic song in English---'I found
+Y' in de Honeysuckle Paitch;' now a French chanson--'En Revenant de St.
+Alban;' now treating a stiff neck or a bent back, or giving momentary
+help to the palsy of an old man, or again making a speech.
+
+Charley was in touch again with the old life, but in a kind of fantasy
+only--a staring, high-coloured dream.  This man--John Brown--had gone
+down before his old ironical questioning, had been, indirectly, the means
+of disgracing his name.  A step forward to that wagon, a word uttered,
+a look, and he would have to face again the life he had put by for ever,
+would have to meet a hard problem and settle it--to what misery and
+tragedy, who might say?  Under this tree he was M. Mallard, the infidel
+tailor, whose life was slowly entering into the life of this place called
+Chaudiere, slowly being acted upon by habit, which, automatically
+repeated, at length becomes character.  Out in that red light, before
+that garish wagon, he would be Charley Steele, barrister, 'flaneur', and
+fop, who, according to the world, had misused a wife, misled her brother,
+robbed widows and orphans, squandered a fortune, become drunkard and
+wastrel, and at last had lost his life in a disorderly tavern at the Cote
+Dorion.  This man before him had contributed to his disgrace; but once he
+had contributed to John Brown's disgrace; and to-day he had saved John
+Brown's life.  They were even.
+
+All the night before, all this morning, he had fought a fierce battle
+with his past--with a raging thirst.  The old appetite had swept over him
+fiercely.  All day he had moved in a fevered conflict, which had lifted
+him away from the small movements of everyday life into a region where
+only were himself and one strong foe, who tirelessly strove with him.
+In his old life he had never had a struggle of any sort.  His emotions
+had been cloaked, his soul masked, there had been a film before his eyes,
+he had worn an armour of selfishness on a life which had no deep
+problems, because it had no deep feelings--a life never rising to the
+intellectual prowess for which it was fitted, save when under the
+stimulus of liquor.
+
+From the moment he had waked from a long seven months' sleep in the hut
+on Vadrome Mountain, new deep feelings had come to him as he faced
+problems of life.  Fighting had begun from that hour--a fighting which
+was putting his nature through bitter mortal exercises, yet, too, giving
+him a sense of being he had never known.  He had now the sweetness of
+earning daily bread by the work of his hands; of giving to the poor, the
+needy, and the afflicted; of knowing for the first time in his life that
+he was not alone in the world.  Out of the grey dawn of life a woman's
+voice had called to him; the look of her face had said to him: "Viens
+ici!  Viens ici!"--"Come to me!  Come to me!"
+
+But with that call there was the answer of his soul, the desolating cry
+of the dispossessed Lear-" Never--never--never--never--never!"
+
+He had not questioned himself concerning Rosalie--had dared not to do so.
+But now, as he stood under the great tree, within hand-touch of the old
+life, in imminent danger of being thrust back into it, the question of
+Rosalie came upon him with all the force of months of feeling behind it.
+Thus did he argue with himself:
+
+"Do I love her?  And if I love her, what is to be done?  Marry her, with
+a wife living?  Marry her while charged with a wretched crime?  Would
+that be love?  But suppose I never were discovered, and we might live
+here for ever, I as 'Monsieur Mallard,' in peace and quiet all the days
+of our life?  Would that be love?  .  .  .  Could there be love with a
+vital secret, like, a cloud between, out of which, at any hour, might
+spring discovery?  Could I build our life upon a silence which must be a
+lie?  Would I not have to face the question, Does any one know cause or
+just impediment why this woman should not be married to this man?  Tell
+Rosalie all, and let the law separate myself and Kathleen?  That would
+mean Billy's ruin and imprisonment, and Kathleen's shame, and it might
+not bring Rosalir.  She is a Catholic, and her Church would not listen to
+it.  Would I have the right to bring trouble into her life?  To wrong one
+woman should seem enough for one lifetime!"
+
+At that instant Rosalie, who had been on the outskirts of the crowd,
+moved into his line of vision.  The glare from the lights fell on her
+face as she stood by her father's chair, looking curiously at the quack-
+doctor who, having sold many bottles of his medicines, noy picked up a
+guitar and began singing an old dialect chanson of Saintonge:
+
+                   "Voici, the day has come
+                    When Rosette leaves her home!
+                    With fear she walks in the sun,
+                    For Raoul is ninety year,
+                    And she not twenty-one.
+                    La petit' Rosette,
+                    She is not twenty-one.
+
+                   "He takes her by the hand,
+                    And to the church they go;
+                    By parents 'twas well meant,
+                    But is Rosette content?
+                    'Tis gold and ninety year
+                    She walks in the sun with fear,
+                    La petit' Rosette,
+                    Not twenty-one as yet!"
+
+Charley's eyes, which had watched her these months past, noted the
+deepening colour of the face, the glow in the eyes, the glances of keen
+but agitated interest towards the singer.  He could not translate her
+looks; and she, on her part, had she been compelled to do so, could only
+have set down a confusion of sensations.
+
+In Rosette she saw herself, Rosalie Evanturel; in the man "de quatre-
+vingt-dix ans," who was to marry this Rosette of Saintonge, she saw M.
+Rossignol.  Disconcerting pictures of a possible life with the Seigneur
+flitted before her mind.  She beheld herself, young, fresh-cheeked, with
+life beating high and all the impulses of youth panting to use, sitting
+at the head of the seigneury table.  She saw herself in the great pew at
+Mass, stiff with dignity, old in the way of manorial pride--all laughter
+dead in her, all spring-time joy overshadowed by the grave decorum of the
+Manor, all the imagination of her dreaming spirit chilled by the presence
+of age, however kindly and quaint and cheerful.
+
+She shuddered, and dropped her eyes upon the ground, as, to the laughter
+and giggling of old and young gathered round the wagon, the medicine-man
+sang:
+
+                   "He takes her by the hand,
+                    And to her chamber fair--"
+
+Then, suddenly turning, she vanished into the night, followed by the
+feeble inquiry of her father's eyes, the anxious look in Charley's.
+
+Charley could not read her tale.  He had, however, a hot impulse to
+follow and ask her if she would vanish from the scene if the medicine-man
+should sing of Rosette and a man of thirty, not ninety, years.  The fight
+he had had all day with his craving for drink had made him feverish, and
+all his emotions--unregulated, under the command of his will only--were
+in high temperature.  A reckless feeling seized him.  He would go to
+Rosalie, look into her eyes, and tell her that he loved her, no matter
+what the penalty of fate.  He had never loved a human being, and the
+sudden impulse to cry out in the new language was driving him to follow
+the girl whose spirit for ever called to him.
+
+He made a step forward to follow her, but stopped short, recalled to
+caution and his danger by the voice of the medicine-man:
+
+"I had a friend once--good fellow, bad fellow, cleverest chap I ever
+knew.  Tremendous fop--ladies loved him--cheeks like roses--tongue like
+sulphuric acid.  Beautiful to look at.  Clothes like a fashion-plate--got
+any fashion-plates in Chaudiere? 'who's your tailor?'" he added, in the
+slang of the hour, with a loud laugh, then stopped suddenly and took off
+his hat.  "I forgot," he added, with upturned eyes and a dramatic
+seriousness, "your tailor saved my life to-day-henceforth I am the friend
+of all tailors.  Well, to continue.  My friend that was--I call him my
+friend, though he ruined me and ruined others,--didn't mean to, but he
+did just the same,--he came to a bad end.  But he was a great man while
+he lived.  And what I'm coming to is this, the song he used to sing when,
+in youthful exuberance, we went on the war-path like our young friend
+over there"--he pointed to a young habitant farmer, who was trying hard
+to preserve equilibrium--"Brown's Golden Pectoral will cure that cough,
+my friend!" he added, as the young man, gloomily ashamed of the laughter
+of the crowd, hiccoughed and turned away to the tree under which Charley
+Steele stood.  "Well," he went on, "I was going to say that my friend's
+name was Charley, and the song he used to sing when the roosters waked
+the morn was called 'Champagne Charlie.'  He was called 'Champagne
+Charlie'--till he came to a bad end."
+
+He twanged his guitar, cleared his throat, winked at Maximilian Cour the
+baker, and began:
+
+         "The way I gained my title's by a hobby which I've got
+          Of never letting others pay, however long the shot;
+          Whoever drinks at my expense is treated all the same;
+          Whoever calls himself my friend, I make him drink champagne.
+          Some epicures like Burgundy, Hock, Claret, and Moselle,
+          But Moet's vintage only satisfies this champagne swell.
+          What matter if I go to bed and head is muddled thick,
+          A bottle in the morning sets me right then very quick.
+          Champagne Charlie is my name;
+          Champagne Charlie is my name.
+          Who's the man with the heart so young,
+          Who's the man with the ginger tongue?
+          Champagne Charlie is his name!"
+
+Under the tree, Charley Steele listened to this jaunty epitaph on his old
+self.  At the first words of the coarse song there rushed on him the
+dreaded thirst.  He felt his veins beating with desire, with anger,
+disgust, and shame; for there was John Brown, to the applause of the
+crowd, imitating his old manner, his voice, his very look.  He started
+forward, but the drunken young habitant lurched sideways under the tree
+and collapsed upon the ground, a bottle of whiskey falling out of his
+pocket and rolling almost to his own feet.
+
+                    "Champagne Charlie is my name,"
+
+sang the medicine-man.  All Charley's old life surged up in him as dyked
+water suddenly bursts bounds and spreads destruction.  He had an
+uncontrollable impulse.  As a starving animal snatches at the first food
+offered it, he stooped, with a rattle in his throat, seized the bottle,
+uncorked it, put it to his lips, and drank--drank--drank.
+
+Then he turned and plunged away into the trees.  The sound of the song
+followed him.  It came to him, the last refrain, sung loudly to the
+laughter of the crowd, in imitation of his own voice as it used to be
+--it had been a different voice during this past year.  He turned with
+headlong intention, and, as the last notes of the song and the applause
+that followed it, died away, threw back his head and sang out of the
+darkness:
+
+                    "Champagne Charlie is my name--"
+
+With a shrill laugh, like the half-mad cry of an outcast soul, he flung
+away farther into the trees.
+
+There was a sudden silence.  The crowd turned with half-apprehensive
+laughter to the trees.  Upon John Brown the effect was startling.  His
+face blanched, his eyes grew large with terror, his mouth opened in
+helpless agitation.  Charley Steele was lying under the waters of the
+great river, his bones rotting there for a year, yet here was his voice
+coming out of the night, in response to his own grotesque imitation of
+the dead man.  Seeing his agitation, women turned pale, men felt their
+flesh creep, imagination gave a thrilling coldness to the air.  For a
+moment the silence was unbroken.  Then John Brown stretched out his hand
+and said, in a hoarse whisper:
+
+"It was his voice--Charley's voice, and he's been dead a year!"
+
+Within half-an-hour, in utter collapse and fright, he was being driven to
+the next parish by two young habitants whom he paid to accompany him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+OUT ON THE OLD TRAIL
+
+There was one person in the crowd surrounding the medicine-man's wagon
+who had none of that superstitious thrill which had scattered the
+habitants into little awe-stricken groups, and then by twos and threes to
+their homes; none of that fear which had reduced the quack-doctor to such
+nervous collapse that he would not spend the night in the village.  Jo
+Portugais had recognised the voice--that of Charley Steele the lawyer who
+had saved him from hanging years ago.  It was little like the voice of
+M'sieu'!  There was that in it which frightened him.  He waited until he
+had seen the quackdoctor start for the next parish, then he went slowly
+down the street.  There were people still about, so he walked on towards
+the river.  When he returned, the street was empty.  Keeping in the
+shadow of the trees, he went to Charley's house.  There was a light in a
+window.  He went to the back door and tried it.  It was not locked, and,
+without knocking, he stepped inside the kitchen.  Here was no light, and
+he passed into the hallway and on to a little room opening from the
+tailorshop.  He knocked; then, not waiting for response, opened the door
+and entered.
+
+Charley was standing before a mirror, holding a pair of scissors.  He
+turned abruptly, and said forbiddingly: "I am at my toilet!"
+
+Then, turning again to the mirror, with a shrug of the shoulders, he
+raised the shears to his beard.  Before he could use them, Jo's hand was
+on his arm.
+
+"Stop that, M'sieu'!" he said huskily.
+
+Charley had drunk nearly a whole bottle of cheap whiskey within an hour.
+He was intoxicated, but, as had ever been the case with him, his brain
+was working clearly, his hand was steady; he was in that wide dream of
+clear-seeing and clear-knowing which, in old days, had given him glimpses
+of the real life from which, in the egotism of the non-intime, he had
+been shut out.  Looking at Jo now, he was possessed by a composed
+intoxication like that in which he had moved during that last night at
+the Cote Dorion.
+
+But now, with the baleful crust of egotism gone, with every nerve of
+life exposed, with conscience struggling to its feet from the torpor of
+thirty-odd vacant years, he was as two men in one, with different lives
+and different souls, yet as inseparable in their misery as those poor
+victims of Gallic tyranny, chained back to back and thrown into the
+Seine.
+
+Jo's words, insistent and eager, suddenly roused in him some old memory,
+which stayed his hand.
+
+"Why should I stop?" he asked quietly, and smiling that smile which had
+infuriated the river-drivers at the Cote Dorion.
+
+"Are you going back, M'sieu?"
+
+"Back where?"  Charley's eyes were fixed on Jo with a penetrating
+intensity, heightened to a strange abstraction, as though he saw not Jo
+alone, but something great distances beyond.
+
+Jo did not answer this question directly.  "Some one came to-day--he is
+gone; some one may come to-morrow--and stay," he said meaningly.
+
+Charley went over to the fire and sat down on a bench, opening and
+shutting the scissors mechanically.  Jo was in the light, and Charley's
+eyes again studied him hard.
+
+His memory was industriously feeling its way into the baffling distance.
+
+"What if some one did come-and stay?" he urged quietly.
+
+"You might be recognised without the beard."
+
+"What difference would it make?"  Charley's memory was creeping close to
+the hidden door.  It was feeling-feeling for the latch.
+
+"You know best, M'sieu'."
+
+"But what do you know?"  Charley's face now had a strained look, and he
+touched his lips with his tongue.  "What John Brown knows, M'sieu'."
+
+There flashed across Charley's mind the fatal newspaper he had read on
+the day he awakened to memory again in the but on Vadrome Mountain.  He
+remembered that he had put it in the fire.  But Jo might have read it
+before it was spread upon the bench-put it there of purpose for him to
+read.  Yet what reason could Jo have for being silent, for hiding his
+secret?
+
+There was silence for a space, in which Charley's eyes were like unmoving
+sparks of steel.  He did not see Jo's face--it was in a mist--he was
+searching, searching, searching.  All at once he felt the latch of the
+hidden door under his finger; he saw a court-room, a judge and jury, and
+hundreds of excited faces, himself standing in the midst.  He saw twelve
+men file slowly into the room and take their seats-all save one, who
+stood still in his place and said: "Not guilty, your Honour!"  He saw the
+prisoner leave the box and step down a free man.  He saw himself coming
+out into the staring summer day.  He watched the prisoner come to him and
+touch his arm, and say: "Thank you, M'sieu'.  You have saved my life."
+He saw himself turn to this man:
+
+He roused from his trance, he staggered to his feet, the shears rattled
+to the floor.  Lurching forward, he caught Jo Portugais by the throat,
+and said, as he had said outside the court-room years ago:
+
+"Get out of my sight.  You're as guilty as hell!"
+
+His grip tightened--tightened on Jo's throat.  Jo did not move, though
+his face grew black.  Then, suddenly, the hands relaxed, a bluish
+paleness swept over the face, and Charley fell sidewise to the floor
+before Jo could catch him.
+
+All night, alone, the murderer struggled with death over the body of the
+lawyer who had saved his life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE SEIGNEUR GIVES A WARNING
+
+Rosalie had watched a shut door for five days--a door from which, for
+months past, had come all the light and glow of her life.  It framed a
+figure which had come to represent to her all that meant hope and soul
+and conscience-and love.  The morning after St. Jean Baptiste's day she
+had awaited the opening door, but it had remained closed.  Ensued
+watchful hours, and then from Jo Portugais she had learned that M'sieu'
+had been ill and near to death.  She had been told the weird story of the
+medicine-man and the ghostly voice, and, without reason, she took the
+incident as a warning, and associated it with the man across the way.
+She was come of a superstitious race, and she herself had heard and seen
+things of which she never had been able to speak--the footsteps in the
+church the night she had screwed the little cross to the door again; the
+tiny round white light by the door of the church; the hood which had
+vanished into the unknown.  One mystery fed another.  It seemed to her as
+if some dreadful event were forward; and all day she kept her eyes fixed
+on the tailor's door.
+
+Dead--if M'sieu' should die!  If M'sieu' should die--it needed all her
+will to prevent herself from going over and taking things in her own
+hands, being his nurse, his handmaid, his slave.  Duty--to the
+government, to her father?  Her heart cried out that her duty lay where
+all her life was eddying to one centre.  What would the world say?  She
+was not concerned for that, save for him.  What, then, would M'sieu' say?
+That gave her pause.  The Seigneur's words the day before had driven her
+back upon a tide of emotions which carried her far out upon that sea
+where reason and life's conventions are derelicts, where Love sails with
+reckless courage down the shoreless main.
+
+"If I could only be near him!" she kept saying to herself.  "It is my
+right.  I would give my life, my soul for his.  I was with him before
+when his life was in danger.  It was my hand that saved him.  It was my
+love that tended him.  It was my soul that kept his secret.  It was my
+faith that spoke for him.  It was my heart that ached for him.  It is my
+heart that aches for him now as none other in all the world can.  No one
+on earth could care as I care.  Who could there be?"  Something whispered
+in her ear, "Kathleen!"  The name haunted her, as the little cross had
+done.  Misery and anger possessed her, and she fought on with herself
+through dark hours.
+
+Thus five days had gone, until at last a wagon was brought to the door of
+the tailor-shop, and M'sieu' came out, leaning on the arm of Jo
+Portugais.  There were several people in the street at the time, and they
+kept whispering that M'sieu' had been at death's door.  He was pale and
+haggard, with dark hollows under the eyes.  Just as he got into the wagon
+the Cure came up.  They shook hands.  The Cure looked him earnestly in
+the face, his lips moved, but no one could have told what he said.  As
+the wagon started, Charley looked across to the post-office.  Rosalie was
+standing a little back from the door, but she stepped forward now.  Their
+eyes met.  Her heart beat faster, for there was a look in his eyes she
+had never seen before--a look of human helplessness, of deep anxiety.  It
+was meant for her--for herself alone.  She could not trust herself to go
+and speak to him.  She felt that she must burst into tears.  So, with a
+look of pity and pain, she watched the wagon go down the street.
+
+Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!--the Seigneur's gold-headed cane rattled on the
+front door of the tailor-shop.  It was plain to be seen his business was
+urgent.
+
+Madame Dauphin came hurrying from the postoffice, followed by Maximilian
+Cour and Filion Lacasse.  "Ah, M'sieu', the tailor will not answer.
+There's no use knocking--not a bit, M'sieu' Rossignol," said Madame.
+
+The Seigneur turned querulously upon the Notary's wife, yet with a glint
+of hard humour in his eye.  He had no love for Madame Dauphin.  He
+thought she took unfair advantages of M. Dauphin, whom also he did not
+love, but whose temperament did him credit.
+
+"How should Madame know whether or no the gentleman will answer?  Does
+Madame share the gentleman's confidence, perhaps?" he remarked.
+
+Madame did not reply at once.  She turned on the saddler and the baker.
+"I hope you'll learn a lesson," she cried triumphantly.  "I've always
+said the tailor was quite the gentleman; and now you see how your betters
+call him.  No, M'sieu', the gentleman will not answer," she added to the
+Seigneur.
+
+"He is in bed yet, Madame?"
+
+"His bed is empty there, M'sieu'," she said, impressively, and pointing.
+
+"I suppose I should trust you in this matter; I suppose you should know.
+But, Dauphin--what does Dauphin say?"
+
+The saddler laughed outright.  Maximilian Cour suddenly blushed in
+sympathy with Madame Dauphin, who now saw the drift of the Seigneur's
+remarks, and was sensibly agitated, as the Seigneur had meant her to be.
+Had she not turned Dauphin's human sympathies into a crime?  Had not the
+Notary supported the Seigneur in his friendly offices to Paulette Dubois;
+and had not Madame troubled her husband's life because of it?  Madame
+bridled up now--with discretion, for it was not her cue to offend the
+Seigneur.
+
+"All the village knows his bed's empty there, M'sieu'," she said, with
+tightening lips.
+
+"I am subtracted from the total, then?" he asked drily.
+
+"You have been away for the last five days--"
+
+"Come, now, how did you know that?"
+
+"Everybody knows it.  You went away with the Colonel and the soldiers on
+St.  Jean Baptiste's day.  Since then M'sieu' the tailor has been ill.  I
+should think Mrs. Flynn would have told you that, M'sieu'."
+
+"H'm!  Would you?  Well, Mrs. Flynn has been away too--and you didn't
+know that!  What is the matter with Monsieur Mallard?"
+
+"Some kind of fever.  On St. Jean Baptiste's day he was taken ill, and
+that animal Portugais took care of him all night--I wonder how M'sieu'
+can have the creature about!  That St. Jean Baptiste's night was an awful
+night.  Have you heard of what happened, M'sieu'?  Ghost or no ghost--"
+
+"Come, come, I want to know about the tailor, not of ghosts," impatiently
+interrupted the Seigneur.  "Tiens!  M'sieu', the tailor was ill for three
+days here, and he would let no one except the Cure and Jo Portugais near
+him.  I went myself to clean up and make some broth, but that toad of a
+Portugais shut the door in my face.  The Cure told us to go home and
+leave M'sieu' with Portugais.  He must be very sick to have that black
+sheep about him--and no doctor either."
+
+The saddler spoke up now.  "I took him a bottle of good brandy and some
+buttermilk-pop and seed cake--I would give him a saddle if he had a
+horse--he got my thousand dollars for me!  Well, he took them, but what
+do you think?  He sent them right off to the shantyman, Gugon, who has a
+broken leg.  Infidel or no, I'm on his side for sure.  And God blesses a
+cheerful giver, I'm told."
+
+It was the baker's chance, and he took it.  "I played 'The Heart Bowed
+Down'-it is English-under his window, two nights ago, and he sent word
+for me to come and play it again in the kitchen.  Ah, that is a good
+song, 'The Heart Bowed Down.'"
+
+"You'd be a better baker if you fiddled less," said Madame Dauphin,
+annoyed at being dropped out of the conversation.
+
+"The soul must be fed, Madame," rejoined the baker, with asperity.
+
+"Where is the tailor now?" said the Seigneur shortly.  "At Portugais's
+on Vadrome Mountain.  They say he looked like a ghost when he went.
+Rosalie Evanturel saw him, but she has no tongue in her head this
+morning," added Madame.
+
+The Seigneur moved away.  "Good-bye to you--I am obliged to you, Madame.
+Good-bye, Lacasse.  Come and fiddle to me some night, Cour."
+
+He bowed to the obsequious three, and then bent his steps towards the
+post-office.  They seemed about to follow him, but he stopped them with a
+look.  The men raised their bonnets-rouges, the woman bowed low, and the
+Seigneur entered the post-office door.
+
+From the shadows of the office Rosalie had watched the little group
+before the door of the tailor-shop.  She saw the Seigneur coming across
+the street.  Suddenly she flushed deeply, for there came to her mind the
+song the quack-doctor sang:
+
+                        "Voila, the day has come
+                         When Rosette leaves her home!
+                         With fear she walks in the sun,
+                         For Raoul is ninety year,
+                         And she not twenty-one."
+
+As M. Rossignol's figure darkened the doorway, she pretended to be busy
+behind the wicket, and not to see him.  He was not sure, but he thought
+it quite possible that she had seen him coming, and he put her
+embarrassment down to shyness.  Naturally the poor child was not given
+the chance every day to receive an offer of marriage from a seigneur.
+He had made up his mind that she would be sure to accept him if he asked
+her a second time.
+
+"Ah, Ma'm'selle Rosalie," he said gaily, "what have you to say that you
+should not come before a magistrate at once?"
+
+"Nothing, if Monsieur Rossignol is to be the magistrate," she replied,
+with forced lightness.
+
+"Good!"  He looked at her quizzically through his gold-handled glass.
+"I can't frighten you, I see.  Well, you must wait a little; you shall be
+sworn in postmistress in three days."  His voice lowered, became more
+serious.  "Tell me," he said, "do you know what is the matter with the
+gentleman across the way?"  Turning, he looked across to the tailor-shop,
+as though he expected "the gentleman" to appear, and he did not see her
+turn pale.  When his look fell on her again, she was self-controlled.
+
+"I do not know, Monsieur."
+
+"You have been opposite him here these months past--did you ever see
+anything not--not as it should be?"
+
+"With him, Monsieur?  Never."
+
+"It is as though the infidel behaved like a good Catholic and a
+Christian?"
+
+"There are good Catholics in Chaudiere who do not behave like
+Christians."
+
+"What would you say, for instance, about his past?"
+
+"What should I say about his past, Monsieur?  What should I know?"
+
+"You should know more than any one else in Chaudiere.  The secrets of his
+breast might well be bared to you."
+
+She started and crimsoned.  Before her eyes there came a mist obscuring
+the Seigneur, and for an instant shutting out the world.  The secrets of
+his breast--what did he mean?  Did he know that on Monsieur's breast was
+the red scar which .  .  .
+
+M. Rossignol's voice seemed coming from an infinite distance, and as it
+came, the mist slowly passed from her eyes.
+
+"You will know, Mademoiselle Rosalie," he was saying, "that while I
+suggested that the secrets of his breast might well be bared to you, I
+meant that as an honest lady and faithful postmistress they were not.  It
+was my awkward joke--a stupid gambolling by an old man who ought to know
+better."
+
+She did not answer, and he continued:
+
+"You know that you are trusted.  Pray accept my apologies."
+
+She was herself again.  "Monsieur," she said quietly; "I know nothing of
+his past.  I want to know nothing.  It does not seem to me that it is my
+business.  The world is free for a man to come and go in, if he keeps the
+law and does no ill--is it not?  But, in any case, I know nothing.  Since
+you have said so much, I shall say this, and betray no 'secrets of his
+breast'--that he has received no letter through this office since the day
+he first came from Vadrome Mountain."
+
+The Seigneur smiled.  "A wonderful tailor!  How does he carry on business
+without writing letters?"
+
+"There was a large stock of everything left by Louis Trudel, and not long
+ago a commercial traveller was here with everything."
+
+"You think he has nothing to hide, then?"
+
+"Have not we all something to hide--with or without shame?" she asked
+simply.
+
+"You have more sense than any woman in Chaudiere, Mademoiselle."
+
+She shook her head, yet she raised her eyes gratefully to him.
+
+"I put faith in what you say," he continued.  "Now listen.  My brother,
+the Abbe, chaplain to the Archbishop, is coming here.  He has heard of
+'the infidel' of our parish.  He is narrow and intolerant--the Abbe.  He
+is going to stir up trouble against the tailor.  We are a peaceful people
+here, and like to be left alone.  We are going on very well as we are.
+So I wanted to talk to Monsieur to-day.  I must make up my own mind how
+to act.  The tailor-shop is the property of the Church.  An infidel
+occupies it, so it is said; the Abbe does not like that.  I believe there
+are other curious suspicions about Monsieur: that he is a robber, or
+incendiary, or something of the sort.  The Abbe may take a stand, and the
+Cure's position will be difficult.  What is more, my brother has friends
+here, fanatics like himself.  He has been writing to them.  They are men
+capable of doing unpleasant things--the Abbe certainly is.  It is fair to
+warn the tailor.  Shall I leave it to you?  Do not frighten him.  But
+there is no doubt he should be warned--fair play, fair play!  I hear
+nothing but good of him from those whose opinions I value.  But, you see,
+every man's history in this parish and in every parish of the province is
+known.  This man, for us, has no history.  The Cure even admits there are
+some grounds for calling him an infidel, but, as you know, he would keep
+the man here, not drive him out from among us.  I have not told the Cure
+about the Abbe yet.  I wished first to talk with you.  The Abbe may come
+at any moment.  I have been away, and only find his letters to-day."
+
+"You wish me to tell Monsieur?" interrupted Rosalie, unable to hold
+silence any longer.  More than once during the Seigneur's disclosure she
+had felt that she must cry out and fiercely repel the base insinuations
+against the man she loved.
+
+"You would do it with discretion.  You are friendly with him, are you
+not?--you talk with him now and then?"
+
+She inclined her head.  "Very well, Monsieur.  I will go to Vadrome
+Mountain to-morrow," she said quietly.  Anger, apprehension, indignation,
+possessed her, but she held herself firmly.  The Seigneur was doing a
+friendly thing; and, in any case, she could have no quarrel with him.
+There was danger to the man she loved, however, and every faculty was
+alive.
+
+"That's right.  He shall have his chance to evade the Abbe if he wishes,"
+answered M. Rossignol.
+
+There was silence for a moment, in which she was scarcely conscious of
+his presence; then he leaned over the counter towards her, and spoke in a
+low voice.
+
+"What I said the other day I meant.  I do not change my mind--I am too
+old for that.  Yet I'm young enough to know that you may change yours."
+
+"I cannot change, Monsieur," she said tremblingly.
+
+"But you will change.  I knew your mother well, I know how anxious she
+was for your future.  I told her once that I should keep an eye on you
+always.  Her father was my father's good friend.  I knew you when you
+were in the cradle--a little brown-haired babe.  I watched you till you
+went to the convent.  I saw you come back to take up the duties which
+your mother laid down, alas!--"
+
+"Monsieur--!" she said choking, and with a troubled little gesture.
+
+"You must let me speak, Rosalie.  We got your father this post-office.
+It is a poor living, but it keeps a roof over your head.  You have never
+failed us you have always fulfilled our hopes.  But the best years of
+your life are going, and your education and your nature have not their
+chance.  Oh, I've not watched you all these years for nothing.  I never
+meant to ask you to marry me.  It came to me, though, all at once, and
+I know that it has been in my mind all these years--far back in my mind.
+I don't ask you for my own sake alone.  Your father may grow very ill--
+who can tell what may happen!"
+
+"I should be postmistress still," she said sadly.
+
+"As a young girl you could not have the responsibility here alone.  And
+you should not waste your life it is a fine, full spirit; let the lean,
+the poor-spirited, go singly.  You should be mated.  You can't marry any
+of the young farmers of Chaudiere.  'Tis impossible.  I can give you
+enough for any woman's needs--the world may be yours to see and use to
+your heart's content.  I can give, too"--he drew himself up proudly--"
+the unused emotions of a lifetime."  This struck him as a very fine and
+important thing to say.
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, that is not enough," she responded.  "What more can you
+want?"
+
+She looked up with a tearful smile.  "I will tell you one day, Monsieur."
+
+"What day?"
+
+"I have not picked it out in the calendar."
+
+"Fix the day, and I will wait till then.  I will not open my mouth again
+till then."
+
+"Michaelmas day, then, Monsieur," she answered mechanically and at
+haphazard, but with an urged gaiety, for a great depression was on her.
+
+"Good.  Till Michaelmas day, then!"  He pulled his long nose, laughing
+silently.  .  .  .  "I leave the tailor in your hands.  Give every man
+his chance, I say.  The Abbe is a hard man, but our hearts are soft--eh,
+eh, very soft!"  He raised his hat and turned to the door.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Always hoping the best from the worst of us
+Have not we all something to hide--with or without shame?
+In all secrets there is a kind of guilt
+Pathetically  in earnest
+Things that once charmed charm less
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIGHT OF WAY, PARKER, V3 ***
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