paper was written: "It
is cursed." Presently his dog died, and the day afterwards he suddenly
disappeared from Pontiac, and wandered on to Ste. Gabrielle, Ribeaux,
and Ville Bambord. But his shame had gone before him, and people shunned
him everywhere, even the roughest. No one who knew him would shelter
him. He slept in barns and in the woods until the winter came and snow
lay thick upon the ground. Thin and haggard, and with nothing left of
his old self but his deep brown eyes and curling hair, and his unhappy
name and fame, he turned back again to Pontiac. His spirit was sullen
and hard, his heart closed against repentance. Had not the Church and
Pontiac and the world punished him beyond his deserts for a moment's
madness brought on by a great shock!

One bright, sunshiny day of early winter, he trudged through the
snow-banked street of Pontiac back to his home. Men he once knew well,
and had worked with, passed him in a sled on their way to the great
shanty in the backwoods. They halted in their singing for a moment when
they saw him; then, turning their heads from him, dashed off, carolling
lustily:

"Ah, ah, Babette,
We go away;
But we will come
Again, Babette,
Again back home,
On Easter Day,
Back home to play
On Easter Day,
Babette! Babette!"

"Babette! Babette!" The words followed him, ringing in his ears long
after the men had become a mere fading point in the white horizon behind
him.

This was not the same world that he had known, not the same Pontiac.
Suddenly he stopped short in the road.

"Curse them! Curse them! Curse them all!" he cried in a cracked, strange
voice. A woman hurrying across the street heard him, and went the
faster, shutting her ears. A little boy stood still and looked at him
in wonder. Everything he saw maddened him. He turned sharp round and
hurried to the Louis Quinze. Throwing open the door, he stepped inside.
Half-a-dozen men were there with the landlord. When they saw him, they
started, confused and dismayed. He stood still for a moment, looking at
them with glowering brows.

"Good-day," he said. "How goes it?"

No one answered. A little apart from the others sat Medallion the
auctioneer. He was a Protestant, and the curse on his baptism uttered
by Pomfrette was not so heinous in his sight. For the other oath, it was
another matter. Still, he was s