t page, and handed it back
silently. Medallion read:

Quebec, September 13th, 18-. It is one year since. I shall learn to
laugh some day.

Medallion looked up at him. The old man threw back his head, spread out
the last page in the book which he had just written, and said defiantly,
as though expecting contradiction to his self-deception--"I have
learned."

Then he laughed, but the laugh was dry and hollow and painful. It
suddenly passed from his wrinkled lips, and he sat down again; but now
with an air as of shy ness and shame. "Let us talk," he said, "of--of
the Code Napoleon."

The next morning Medallion visited St. Jean in the hills. Five years
before he had sold to a new-comer at St. Jean-Madame Lecyr--the
furniture of a little house, and there had sprung up between them a
quiet friendship, not the less admiring on Medallion's part because
Madame Lecyr was a good friend to the poor and sick. She never tired,
when they met, of hearing him talk of the Cure, the Little Chemist,
and the Avocat; and in the Avocat she seemed to take the most
interest, making countless inquiries--countless when spread over many
conversations--upon his life during the time Medallion had known him.
He knew also that she came to Pontiac, occasionally, but only in the
evening; and once of a moonlight night he had seen her standing before
the window of the Avocat's house. Once also he had seen her veiled in
the little crowded court-room of Pontiac when an interesting case was
being tried, and noticed how she watched Monsieur Garon, standing so
very still that she seemed lifeless; and how she stole out as soon as he
had done speaking.

Medallion had acute instincts, and was supremely a man of self-counsel.
What he thought he kept to him self until there seemed necessity to
speak. A few days before the momentous one herebefore described he had
called at Madame Lecyr's house, and, in course of conversation, told her
that the Avocat's health was breaking; that the day before he had got
completely fogged in court over the simplest business, and was quite
unlike his old, shrewd, kindly self. By this time he was almost prepared
to see her turn pale and her fingers flutter at the knitting-needles she
held. She made an excuse to leave the room for a moment. He saw a little
book lying near the chair from which she had risen. Perhaps it had
dropped from her pocket. He picked it up. It was a book of French
songs--Beranger's and others less notable.