phin and Rosalie at the post-office door. The memory of his
talk with Rosalie was vivid to him at the moment. He was thinking also
that he had not a penny in the world to pay for the rest of the paper he
had bought. He turned round and put on his coat slowly.

"What are you doing that for?" asked the old man, with a kind of snarl,
yet with trepidation.

"I don't think I'll work any more to-day."

"Not work! Smoke of the devil, isn't Sunday enough to play in? You're
not put out by that fool wife of Dauphin's?"

"Oh no--not that! I want an understanding about wages."

To Louis the dread crisis had come. He turned a little green, for he was
very miserly-for the love of God.

He had scarcely realised what was happening when Charley first sat down
on the bench beside him. He had been taken by surprise. Apart from the
excitement of the new experience, he had profited by the curiosity of
the public, for he had orders enough to keep him busy until summer, and
he had had to give out work to two extra women in the parish, though
he had never before had more than one working for him. But his ruling
passion was strong in him. He always remembered with satisfaction that
once when the Cure was absent and he was supposed to be dying, a priest
from another parish came, and, the ministrations over, he had made an
offering of a gold piece. When the young priest hesitated, his fingers
had crept back to the gold piece, closed on it, and drawn it back
beneath the coverlet again. He had then peacefully fallen asleep. It was
a gracious memory.

"I don't need much, I don't want a great deal," continued Charley when
the tailor did not answer, "but I have to pay for my bed and board, and
I can't do it on nothing."

"How have you done it so far?" peevishly replied the tailor.

"By working after hours at carpentering up there"--he made a gesture
towards Vadrome Mountain. "But I can't go on doing that all the time, or
I'll be like you too soon."

"Be like me!" The voice of the tailor rose shrilly.

"Be like me! What's the matter with me?"

"Only that you're in a bad way before your time, and that you mayn't
get out of this hole without stepping into another. You work too hard,
Monsieur Trudel."

"What do you want--wages?"

Charley inclined his head. "If you think I'm worth them."

The tailor viciously snipped a piece of cloth. "How can I pay you wages,
if you stand there doing nothing?" "This is my day for doing nothing,"
Charley