own room and shut and locked the door.

It was a pity, a measureless pity, as Mary the Mother must have seen,
if she could see mortal life at all, that Zoe did not hear him. It might
have altered the future. As it was, the Devil of Estrangement might well
be content with his night's work.

CHAPTER XV. BON MARCHE

Vilray was having its market day, and everyone was either going to or
coming from market, or buying and selling in the little square by
the Court House. It was the time when the fruits were coming in, when
vegetables were in full yield, when fish from the Beau Cheval were to be
had in plenty--from mud-cats and suckers, pike and perch, to rock-bass,
sturgeon and even maskinonge. Also it was the time of year when butter
and eggs, chickens and ducks were so cheap that it was a humiliation
not to buy. There were other things on sale also, not for eating
and drinking, but for wear and household use--from pots and pans to
rag-carpets and table-linen, from woollen yarn to pictures of the Virgin
and little calvaries.

These were side by side with dried apples, bottled fruits, jars of maple
syrup, and cordials of so generous and penetrating a nature that the
currant and elderberry wine by which they were flanked were tipple for
babes beside them. Indeed, when a man wanted to forget himself quickly
he drank one of these cordials, in preference to the white whisky so
commonly imbibed in the parishes. But the cordials being expensive, they
were chiefly bought for festive occasions like a wedding, a funeral, a
confirmation, or the going away of some young man or young woman to
the monastery or the convent to forget the world. Meanwhile, if these
spiritual argonauts drank it, they were likely to forget the world on
the way to their voluntary prisons. It was very seldom that a man or
woman bought the cordials for ordinary consumption, and when that was
done, it would almost make a parish talk! Yet cordials of nice brown,
of delicate green, of an enticing yellow colour, were here for sale
at Vilray market on the morning after the painful scene at the Manor
Cartier between Zoe and her father.

The market-place was full--fuller than it had been for many a day. A
great many people were come in as much to "make fete" as to buy and
sell. It was a saint's day, and the bell of St. Monica's had been
ringing away cheerfully twice that morning. To it the bell of the Court
House had made reply, for a big case was being tried