tten in his diary might in some way come to her. Perhaps if it
were left here in the bower of honeysuckles where they had so often sat
together, it might be a sign and omen of the meeting of these two souls
that had lost each other in the dark of the world. Perhaps,--ah, who
can tell that it is not so?--for those who truly love, with all their
errors, with all their faults, there is no "irrevocable"--there is
"another field."

As I turned from the garden, the tense note of the surf vibrated through
the night. The pattering drops of dew rustled as they fell from the
leaves of the honeysuckle. But underneath these sounds it seemed as if
I heard a deep voice saying "Claire!" and a woman's lips whispering
"Temple!"

VII. A YEAR OF NOBILITY

I

ENTER THE MARQUIS

The Marquis sat by the camp-fire peeling potatoes.

To look at him, you never would have taken him for a marquis. His
costume was a pair of corduroy trousers; a blue flannel shirt, patched
at elbows with gray; lumberman's boots, flat-footed, shapeless, with
loose leather legs strapped just below the knee, and wrinkled like the
hide of an ancient rhinoceros; and a soft brown hat with several holes
in the crown, as if it had done duty, at some time in its history, as an
impromptu target in a shooting-match. A red woollen scarf twisted about
his loins gave a touch of colour and picturesqueness.

It was not exactly a court dress, but it sat well on the powerful sinewy
figure of the man. He never gave a thought to his looks, but peeled his
potatoes with a dexterity which betrayed a past-master of the humble
art, and threw the skins into the fire.

"Look you, m'sieu'," he said to young Winthrop Alden, who sat on a
fallen tree near him, mending the fly-rod which he had broken in the
morning's fishing, "look you, it is an affair of the most strange, yet
of the most certain. We have known always that ours was a good family.
The name tells it. The Lamottes are of la haute classe in France. But
here, in Canada, we are poor. Yet the good blood dies not with the
poverty. It is buried, hidden, but it remains the same. It is like these
pataques. You plant good ones for seed: you get a good crop. You plant
bad ones: you get a bad crop. But we did not know about the title in our
family. No. We thought ours was a side-branch, an off-shoot. It was a
great surprise to us. But it is certain,--beyond a doubt."

Jean Lamotte's deep voice was quiet and steady. It had