ng.
"Good-bye-leper," he answered.

Pomfrette's arm flew out to throw the pitcher at the mealman's head,
but Duclosse, with a grunt of terror, flung up in front of his face
the small bag of meal that he carried, the contents pouring over
his waistcoat from a loose corner. The picture was so ludicrous that
Pomfrette laughed with a devilish humour, and flinging the pitcher
at the bag, he walked away towards his own house. Duclosse, pale and
frightened, stepped from among the fragments of crockery, and with
backward glances towards Pomfrette joined his comrade.

"Lime-burner," he said, sitting down on the bag of meal, and
mechanically twisting tight the loose, leaking corner, "the devil's in
that leper."

"He was a good enough fellow once," answered Garotte, watching
Pomfrette.

"I drank with him at five o'clock yesterday," said Duclosse
philosophically. "He was fit for any company then; now he's fit for
none."

Garotte looked wise. "Mealman," said he, "it takes years to make folks
love you; you can make them hate you in an hour. La! La! it's easier to
hate than to love. Come along, m'sieu' dusty-belly."

Pomfrette's life in Pontiac went on as it began that day. Not once a
day, and sometimes not once in twenty days, did any human being speak to
him. The village baker would not sell him bread; his groceries he had to
buy from the neighbouring parishes, for the grocer's flighty wife called
for the constable when he entered the bake-shop of Pontiac. He had
to bake his own bread, and do his own cooking, washing, cleaning, and
gardening. His hair grew long and his clothes became shabbier. At last,
when he needed a new suit--so torn had his others become at woodchopping
and many kinds of work--he went to the village tailor, and was promptly
told that nothing but Luc Pomfrette's grave-clothes would be cut and
made in that house.

When he walked down to the Four Corners the street emptied at once, and
the lonely man with the tinkling bell of honour at his knee felt the
whole world falling away from sight and touch and sound of him. Once
when he went into the Louis Quinze every man present stole away in
silence, and the landlord himself, without a word, turned and left
the bar. At that, with a hoarse laugh, Pomfrette poured out a glass
of brandy, drank it off, and left a shilling on the counter. The next
morning he found the shilling, wrapped in a piece of paper, just inside
his door; it had been pushed underneath. On the