e road to the Manor
Cartier; and Maitre Fille went also with the widow of Palass Poucette.

CHAPTER XVII. HIS GREATEST ASSET

Jean Jacques did not go to the house of the widow of Palass Poucette
"next day" as he had proposed: and she did not expect him. She had seen
his flour-mill burned to the ground on the-evening when they met in the
office of the Clerk of the evening Court, when Jean Jacques had learned
that his Zoe had gone into farther and farther places away from him.
Perhaps Virginie Poucette never had shed as many tears in any whole
year of her life as she did that night, not excepting the year Palass
Poucette died, and left her his farm and seven horses, more or less
sound, and a threshing-machine in good condition. The woman had a rare
heart and there was that about Jean Jacques which made her want to help
him. She had no clear idea as to how that could be done, but she had
held his hand at any rate, and he had seemed the better for it. Virginie
had only an objective view of things; and if she was not material, still
she could best express herself through the medium of the senses.

There were others besides her who shed tears also--those who saw Jean
Jacques' chief asset suddenly disappear in flame and smoke and all his
other assets become thereby liabilities of a kind; and there were many
who would be the poorer in the end because of it. If Jean Jacques went
down, he probably would not go alone. Jean Jacques had done a good
fire-insurance business over a course of years, but somehow he had not
insured himself as heavily as he ought to have done; and in any case
the fire-policy for the mill was not in his own hands. It was in the
safe-keeping of M. Mornay at Montreal, who had warned M. Fille of the
crisis in the money-master's affairs on the very day that the crisis
came.

No one ever knew how it was that the mill took fire, but there was one
man who had more than a shrewd suspicion, though there was no occasion
for mentioning it. This was Sebastian Dolores. He had not set the mill
afire. That would have been profitable from no standpoint, and he had no
grudge against Jean Jacques. Why should he have a grudge? Jean Jacques'
good fortune, as things were, made his own good fortune; for he ate
and drank and slept and was clothed at his son-in-law's expense. But he
guessed accurately who had set the mill on fire, and that it was done
accidentally. He remembered that a man who smoked bad tobacco which
ha