world? Why had his brain and
senses lain fallow all these months, a vacuous vegetation, an empty
consciousness? Was it fate? Did it not seem probable that the Great
Machine had, in its automatic movement, tossed him up again on the
shores of Time because he had not fallen on the trap-door predestined
for his eternal exit?

It was clear to him that death by his own hand was futile, and that if
there were trap-doors set for him alone, it were well to wait until he
trod upon them and fell through in his appointed hour in the movement of
the Great Machine.

What to do--where to live--how to live?

He got slowly to his feet and took a step forward half blindly. The man
on the bench stirred. Crossing the room he dropped a hand on the man's
shoulder. "Open the blind, my friend."

Jo Portugais got to his feet quickly, eyes averted--he did not dare look
into Charley's face--and went over and drew back the deer-skin blind.
The clear, crisp sunlight of a frosty morning broke gladly into the
room. Charley turned and blew out the candle on the table where he had
eaten, then walked feebly to the window. Standing on the crest of the
mountain the hut looked down through a clearing, flanked by forest
trees.

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

Charley mechanically fixed his eye-glass and stood with hands resting on
the window-sill, looking, looking out upon a new world.

At length he turned.

"Is there anything I can do for you, M'sieu'?" said Jo huskily.

Charley held out his hand and clasped Jo's. "Tell me about all these
months," he said.

CHAPTER XII. THE COMING OF ROSALIE

Charley Steele saw himself as he had been through the eyes of another.
He saw the work that he had done in the carpentering shed, and had no
memory of it. The real Charley Steele had been enveloped in oblivion for
seven months. During that time a mild phantom of himself had wandered,
as it were in a somnambulistic dream, through the purlieus of life.
Open-eyed, but with the soul asleep, all idiosyncrasy laid aside, all
acquired impressions and infl