big tear in his eye and hear him choke in
his throat."

"It's played out and old-fashioned, this letting old folks manage young
folks that way just to satisfy old grudges," scoffed Farr. "If they are
in love they ought to get married and tell the old folks to go hang!"

Etienne stopped and gazed quizzically at the young man who thus
expounded the law for lovers.

"I think you have in you none of the understanding of the French
habitants who have live the three generation on one farm so that a young
man, no matter if he love a mam'selle so very much that all the bread
he eat taste ashes in his mouth--ah, he cannot say 'I will leave--I
will go!' For then that young man must turn himself to be anodder young
man--and the habitant does not so change."

"I may be a poor judge," acknowledged Farr. "I have never yet taken root
in the soil of any one place."

"And I think, mebbe, the girl you do not understand! Is it to stay in
the home and hear every day about you love the pig of a Leroux, bah? No,
no, m'sieu'! That's too proud, is Zelie Dionne. And so is Zelie Dionne
too proud to take a son from a home that do not want her. So they wait."

"It's a tough old world, Uncle Etienne," said Farr. "Why, even I, lord
of my own affairs as I am, don't know where I'm going to sleep to-night.
Do you have a boarding-place?"

"I have my little room on the block up there--my room and my place at
the big table. It is not grand. But there is place for you--and anodder
little room. If you like you shall come and I will speak good for you."

"All right, Etienne! Take me along and speak good for me."

It was another such place as Block Ten. It was a crowded and stuffy
warren, and the basement kitchen advertised itself with stale odors in
all the corridors. But Farr was glad to stretch himself upon the narrow
bed. He owned up to himself that he was a very weary bird of passage and
confessed to his own heart, just as frankly, that he was a captive in
the frail grasp of a little girl--and he did not try to understand.

X

POISON FOR THE POOR

It proved to be an amicable and satisfactory partnership between Etienne
Provancher and Walker Farr and dark-eyed Zelie Dionne.

When the days were pleasant the old man kept the little girl with him
out of doors on the canal bank. She did not trouble him by running
about. Her long days of confinement in the attic room had accustomed
her to remain quietly in one place. She sat contentedly in