o be checked in his course. He waved a hand and
smiled at her. Then his eyes seemed to travel away into the distance,
the look of the dreamer in them; but behind all was that strange, ruddy
underglow of revelation which kept emerging from shadows, retreating and
emerging, yet always there now, in much or in little, since the burning
of the mill.

"I've lent a good deal of money without security in my time," he
reflected, "but the only people who ever paid me back were a deaf and
dumb man and a flyaway--a woman that was tired of selling herself, and
started straight and right with the money I lent her. She had been
the wife of a man who studied with me at Laval. She paid me back every
penny, too, year by year for five years. The rest I lent money to never
paid; but they paid, the dummy and the harlot that was, they paid! But
they paid for the rest also! If I had refused these two because of the
others, I'd not be fit to visit at Neighbourhood House where Virginie
Poucette lives."

He looked closely at the order she had given him again, as though to let
it sink in his mind and be registered for ever. "I'm going to do without
any further use of your two thousand dollars," he continued cheer fully.
"It has done its work. You've lent it to me, I've used it"--he put
the hand holding it on his breast--"and I'm paying it back to you, but
without interest." He gave the order to her.

"I don't see what you mean," she said helplessly, and she looked at the
paper, as though it had undergone some change while it was in his hand.

"That you would lend it me is worth ten times two thousand to me,
Virginie Poucette," he explained. "It gives me, not a kick from
behind--I've not had much else lately--but it holds a light in front of
me. It calls me. It says, 'March on, Jean Jacques--climb the mountain.'
It summons me to dispose my forces for the campaign which will restore
the Manor Cartier to what it has ever been since the days of the Baron
of Beaugard. It quickens the blood at my heart. It restores--"

Virginie would not allow him to go on. "You won't let me help you?
Suppose I do lose the money--I didn't earn it; it was earned by Palass
Poucette, and he'd understand, if he knew. I can live without the money,
if I have to, but you would pay it back, I know. You oughtn't to take
any extra risks. If your daughter should come back and not find you
here, if she returned to the Manor Cartier, and--"

He made an insistent gesture. "Hu