rs before,
when the little Clerk of the Court had remarked an obvious thing about
the case of Jean Jacques.

And Jean Jacques said only the obvious thing when he made up his mind to
do the obvious thing--to kill George Masson, the master-carpenter.

This was evidence that he was no genius. Anybody could think of killing
a man who had injured him, as the master-carpenter had done Jean
Jacques. It is the solution of the problem of the Patagonian. It is old
as Rameses.

Yet in his own way Jean Jacques did what he felt he had to do. The thing
he was going to do was hopelessly obvious, but the doing of it was Jean
Jacques' own; and it was not obvious; and that perhaps was genius after
all. There are certain inevitable things to do, and for all men to do;
and they have been doing them from the beginning of time; but the way it
is done--is not that genius? There is no new story in the world; all the
things that happen have happened for untold centuries; but the man who
tells the story in a new way, that is genius, so the great men say. If,
then, Jean Jacques did the thing he had to do with a turn of his own, he
would justify to some degree the opinion he had formed of himself.

As he walked back to his desecrated home he set himself to think. How
should it be done? There was the rifle with which he had killed deer in
the woods beyond the Saguenay and bear beyond the Chicoutimi. That was
simple--and it was obvious; and it could be done at once. He could soon
overtake the man who had spoiled the world for him.

Yet he was a Norman, and the Norman thinks before he acts. He is the
soul of caution; he wants to get the best he can out of his bargain. He
will throw nothing away that is to his advantage. There should be other
ways than the gun with which to take a man's life--ways which might give
a Norman a chance to sacrifice only one life; to secure punishment where
it was due, but also escape from punishment for doing the obvious thing.

Poison? That was too stupid even to think of once. A pitch-fork and a
dung-heap? That had its merits; but again there was the risk of more
than one life.

All the way to his house, Jean Jacques, with something of the rage of
passion and the glaze of horror gone from his eyes, and his face not now
so ghastly, still brooded over how, after he had had his say, he was
to put George Masson out of the world. But it did not come at once. All
makers of life-stories find their difficulty at times. T