was out and
dressing. Five minutes later he was on his way to the parish church.
When he reached it he took a tool from his pocket and unscrewed a small
iron cross from the front door. It was a cross which had been blessed by
the Pope, and had been brought to Chaudiere by the beloved mother of the
Cure, now dead.

"When I have done with it I will put it back," he said, as he thrust it
inside his shirt, and hurried stealthily back to his house. As he got
into bed he gave a noiseless, mirthless laugh. All night he lay with
his yellow eyes wide open, gazing at the ceiling. He was up at dawn,
hovering about the fire in the shop.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE STEALING OF THE CROSS

If Charley had been less engaged with his own thoughts, he would have
noticed the curious baleful look in the eyes of the tailor; but he was
deeply absorbed in a struggle that had nothing to do with Louis Trudel.

The old fever of thirst and desire was upon him. All morning the door of
Jolicoeur's saloon was opening and shutting before his mind's eye, and
there was a smell of liquor everywhere. It was in his nostrils when the
hot steam rose from the clothes he was pressing, in the thick odour of
the fulled cloth, in the melting snow outside the door.

Time and again he felt that he must run out of the shop and away to the
little tavern where white whiskey was sold to unwise habitants. But he
fought on. Here was the heritage of his past, the lengthening chain
of slavery to his old self--was it his real self? Here was what would
prevent him from forgetting all that he had been and not been, all
the happiness he might have had, all that he had lost--the ceaseless
reminder. He was still the victim to a poison which gave not only a
struggle of body, but a struggle of soul--if he had a soul.

"If he had a soul!" The phrase kept repeating itself to him even as he
fought the fever in his throat, resisting the temptation to take that
medicine which the Curb's brother had sent him.

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

"If he had a soul!" He looked at Louis Trudel, silent and morose, the
clammy yellow of a great sickness in his face and hands, but his mind
only intent on making a waistcoat--and the end of al