and read something written
on the fly-leaf. He spelled it out with some difficulty and slowly, and
yet he looked at it as if the page were a familiar vision to him. Then
he remained immovable for a long time, gazing out to sea, with the
little book crunched to a shapeless mass in his huge fist. When at last
he turned to ascend the cliff again, his face was ashen pale, and his
step was that of an old man. He trudged heavily across the common and
along the road inland, five or six miles, till he reached the town,
inquired for a certain auberge, entered the kitchen, and found himself
face to face with the man he sought. A spasm of fear passed swiftly over
the face of Jacques, as he beheld Peter, and he instinctively started up
from the bench on which he was sitting, and shrank backwards. As he did
so, he showed himself a disfigured paralytic, one side of his face being
partly drawn, and one leg crooked. He was an undersized man, with sandy
hair, quick, intelligent, grey eyes, and a well-cut profile.

"Jacques Fauchon," said Peter, "have no fear of me."

Jacques kept his eyes on him, still distrustfully.

"I did not know," continued Peter, speaking thickly and slowly, "the
other day, what I know now. I had never seen you but once--and you have
changed."

"It is not my wish to cause trouble," said Jacques, still glancing
furtively round. "Things being as they are, to my thinking, there's
nought for it but to let 'em be."

"I have not said yet," said Peter, "what it is I've come to say. This
little prayer-book with her name writ in it, and yours below,--'tis the
one she always took to church, as a girl--has shown me the path I've got
to take. How you came back from the dead, I don't know: 'twas the hand
of the Lord. But here you are, and you are her husband, and not I." He
stopped.

"Well, Mr. Girard, I know my legal rights," began Jacques, "but
considering--and I've no wish to cause unpleasantness, of that you may
be sure. 'Tis why I never wrote, not knowing how the land might lie, and
for four years I was helpless on my back."

"Never mind the past, man," interrupted Peter, "It's the future that's
to be thought of. What you've got to do is to take her away to a
distance, and settle in some place where nobody knows what's gone by."

Fauchon considered for a moment, a slight, deprecatory smile stealing
over his face.

"I suppose," he remarked, "she hasn't got any little purse of her own by
this time; considering,