d to be lighted over and over again, threw a burning match down
after applying it to his pipe. He remembered that there was a heap of
flour-bags near where the man stood when the match was thrown down; and
that some loose strings for tying were also in a pile beside the bags.
So it was easy for the thing to have happened if the man did not turn
round after he threw the match down, but went swaying on out of the
mill, and over to the Manor Cartier, and up staggering to bed; for he
had been drinking potato-brandy, and he had been brought up on the mild
wines of Spain! In other words, the man who threw down the lighted match
which did the mischief was Sebastian Dolores himself.

He regretted it quite as much as he had ever regretted anything; and
on the night of the fire there were tears in his large brown eyes which
deceived the New Cure and others; though they did not deceive the widow
of Palass Poucette, who had found him out, and who now had no pleasure
at all in his aged gallantries. But the regret Dolores experienced would
not prevent him from doing Jean Jacques still greater injury if, and
when, the chance occurred, should it be to his own advantage.

Jean Jacques shed no tears on the night that his beloved flour-mill
became a blackened ruin, and his saw-mill had a narrow escape. He was
like one in a dream, scarcely realizing that men were saying kind things
to him; that the New Cure held his hand and spoke to him more like
a brother than one whose profession it was to be good to those who
suffered. In his eyes was the same half-rapt, intense, distant look
which came into them when, at Vilray, he saw that red reflection in the
sky over against St. Saviour's, and urged his horses onward.

The world knew that the burning of the mill was a blow to Jean Jacques,
but it did not know how great and heavy the blow was. First one and
then another of his friends said he was insured, and that in another
six months the mill-wheel would be turning again. They said so to Jean
Jacques when he stood with his eyes fixed on the burning fabric, which
nothing could save; but he showed no desire to speak. He only nodded
and kept on staring at the fire with that curious underglow in his eyes.
Some chemistry of the soul had taken place in him in the hour when he
drove to the Manor Cartier from Vilray, and it produced a strange fire,
which merged into the reflection of the sky above the burning mill.
Later, came things which were strange