You would not then meddle
with the home of Jean Jacques Barbille," sneered Jean Jacques. The note
was savage yet.

"Ah, for sure, for sure! It is so. And if I lived I would marry at
once."

Desperate as his condition was, the master-carpenter could almost have
laughed at the idea of marriage preventing him from following the bent
of his nature. He was the born lover. If he had been as high as the
Czar, or as low as the ditcher, he would have been the same; but it
would be madness to admit that to Jean Jacques now.

"But, as you say, let me get on. My time has come--"

Jean Jacques jerked his head angrily. "Enough of this. You keep on
saying 'Wait a little,' but your time has come. Now take it so, and
don't repeat."

"A man must get used to the idea of dying, or he will die hard," replied
the master-carpenter, for he saw that Jean Jacques' hands were not
so tightly clenched on the lever now; and time was everything. He had
already been near five minutes, and every minute was a step to a chance
of escape--somehow.

"I said you were to blame," he continued. "Listen, Jean Jacques
Barbille. You, a man of mind, married a girl who cared more for a touch
of your hand than a bucketful of your knowledge, which every man in the
province knows is great. At first you were almost always thinking of
her and what a fine woman she was, and because everyone admired her,
you played the peacock, too. I am not the only peacock. You are a good
man--no one ever said anything against your character. But always,
always, you think most of yourself. It is everywhere you go as if you
say, 'Look out. I am coming. I am Jean Jacques Barbille.

"'Make way for Jean Jacques. I am from the Manor Cartier. You have heard
of me.'... That is the way you say things in your mind. But all the time
the people say, 'That is Jean Jacques Barbille, but you should see his
wife. She is a wonder. She is at home at the Manor with the cows and the
geese. Jean Jacques travels alone through the parish to Quebec, to Three
Rivers, to Tadousac, to the great exhibition at Montreal, but madame,
she stays at home. M'sieu' Jean Jacques is nothing beside her'--that
is what the people say. They admire you for your brains, but they would
have fallen down before your wife, if you had given her half a chance."

"Ah, that's bosh--what do you know!" exclaimed Jean Jacques fiercely,
but he was fascinated too by the argument of the man whose life he was
going to take.

"I kno