t for want of trouble to
make him, and you say that that state of things ought to be only his own
affair?"

"Eh?"

"Well, I say that you and I, or at least I, have something to do with
it. You know very well I might go round here for miles, and offer a
hundred pounds, and I couldn't get a single man to go and work for
Bates; they're all scared. Well, if they're scared of a ghost, let them
stay away; but _I'm_ not frightened, and I suppose I could learn to chop
down trees as well as any of them. He's offered good wages; I can take
his wages and do his work, and save him from turning into a blethering
idiot."

Probably, in his heat to argue, he had spoken too quickly for the
Frenchman to take in all his words. That his drift was understood and
pondered on was evident from the slow answer.

"It would be good for Monsieur Bates, but poor for you."

"I'm not going to turn my back on this country and leave the fellow in
that pickle. I should feel as if his blood were on my head."

"Since?"

"How since?"

"Since what day did you have his care on you? Last time you came you did
not mean sen to help him." It was true, but so strongly did Trenholme
see his point that he had not realised how new was the present aspect of
the case to him.

"Well," said he, meaning that this was not a matter of importance.

"But why?" said Turrif again.

"Oh, I don't know." Trenholme looked down at his moccasined feet. "I
thought" (he gave a laugh as if he were ashamed) "I'd turn over a new
leaf this year, and do something that's more worth doing. I was well
enough off here so far as looking out for myself was concerned."

Turrif looked at him with kind and serious disapproval.

"And when will you begin to live se life of a _man_?"

"How do you mean--'a man'?"

"When will you make money and get married?"

"Do you think time is all wasted when one isn't making money and getting
married?"

"For a _boy_, no; for a _man_, yes."

Trenholme rose. "Good-bye, and thank you for all your hospitality," said
he. "I'll come back in spring and tell you what I'm going to do next."

He was moving out, when he looked again at the little shrine in the
middle of the wall, the picture of the Virgin, and, below, the little
altar shelf, with its hideous paper roses. He looked back as it caught
his eye, arrested, surprised, by a difference of feeling in him towards
it.

Noticing the direction of Trenholme's glance, the Frenchman crossed
himself