but Grandemont's arms were about him, and
Grandemont was calling him "Victor!--Victor Fauquier! _Merci, merci,
mon Dieu!_"

Too far overcome by sleep and fatigue was the lost one to talk that
night. Days afterward, when the tropic _calentura_ had cooled in
his veins, the disordered fragments he had spoken were completed in
shape and sequence. He told the story of his angry flight, of toils
and calamities on sea and shore, of his ebbing and flowing fortune
in southern lands, and of his latest peril when, held a captive, he
served menially in a stronghold of bandits in the Sonora Mountains
of Mexico. And of the fever that seized him there and his escape and
delirium, during which he strayed, perhaps led by some marvellous
instinct, back to the river on whose bank he had been born. And of
the proud and stubborn thing in his blood that had kept him silent
through all those years, clouding the honour of one, though he knew
it not, and keeping apart two loving hearts. "What a thing is love!"
you may say. And if I grant it, you shall say, with me: "What a
thing is pride!"

On a couch in the reception chamber Victor lay, with a dawning
understanding in his heavy eyes and peace in his softened
countenance. Absalom was preparing a lounge for the transient
master of Charleroi, who, to-morrow, would be again the clerk of a
cotton-broker, but also--

"To-morrow," Grandemont was saying, as he stood by the couch of his
guest, speaking the words with his face shining as must have shone
the face of Elijah's charioteer when he announced the glories of
that heavenly journey--"To-morrow I will take you to Her."

XVIII

ON BEHALF OF THE MANAGEMENT

This is the story of the man manager, and how he held his own until
the very last paragraph.

I had it from Sully Magoon, _viva voce_. The words are indeed his;
and if they do not constitute truthful fiction my memory should be
taxed with the blame.

It is not deemed amiss to point out, in the beginning, the stress
that is laid upon the masculinity of the manager. For, according
to Sully, the term when applied to the feminine division of
mankind has precisely an opposite meaning. The woman manager (he
says) economizes, saves, oppresses her household with bargains and
contrivances, and looks sourly upon any pence that are cast to the
fiddler for even a single jig-step on life's arid march. Wherefore
her men-folk call her blessed, and praise her; and then sneak out
the backdoo