readed to
have the good priest fall into the strain of argument he was about to
begin. A stray sheep, no matter how refractory, feels a touch of
longing when it hears the shepherd's voice. M. Roussillon was a
Catholic, but a straying one, who avoided the confessional and often
forgot mass. Still, with all his reckless independence, and with all
his outward show of large and breezy self-sufficiency, he was not
altogether free from the hold that the church had laid upon him in
childhood and youth. Moreover, he was fond of Father Beret and had done
a great deal for the little church of St. Xavier and the mission it
represented; but he distinctly desired to be let alone while he pursued
his own course; and he had promised the dying woman who gave Alice to
him that the child should be left as she was, a Protestant, without
undue influence to change her from the faith of her parents. This
promise he had kept with stubborn persistence and he meant to keep it
as long as he lived. Perhaps the very fact that his innermost
conscience smote him with vague yet telling blows at times for this
departure from the strict religion of his fathers, may have intensified
his resistance of the influence constantly exerted upon Alice by Father
Beret and Madame Roussillon, to bring her gently but surely to the
church. Perverseness is a force to be reckoned with in all original
characters.

A few weeks had passed after M. Roussillon's return, when that
big-hearted man took it into his head to celebrate his successful
trading ventures with a moonlight dance given without reserve to all
the inhabitants of Vincennes. It was certainly a democratic function
that he contemplated, and motley to a most picturesque extent.

Rene de Ronville called upon Alice a day or two previous to the
occasion and duly engaged her as his partenaire; but she insisted upon
having the engagement guarded in her behalf by a condition so obviously
fanciful that he accepted it without argument.

"If my wandering knight should arrive during the dance, you promise to
stand aside and give place to him," she stipulated. "You promise that?
You see I'm expecting him all the time. I dreamed last night that he
came on a great bay horse and, stooping, whirled me up behind the
saddle, and away we went!"

There was a childish, half bantering air in her look; but her voice
sounded earnest and serious, notwithstanding its delicious timbre of
suppressed playfulness.

"You promise me