d his
course, because once Virginie Poucette had read him a letter from there.
That was in the office of the little Clerk of the Court at Vilray. The
letter was from Virginie's sister at Shilah, and told him that Zoe and
her husband had gone away into farther fields of homelessness. Thus it
was that Shilah ever seemed to him, as he worked West, a goal in his
quest--not the last goal perhaps, but a goal.

He had been far past it by another route, up, up and out into the more
scattered settlements, and now at last he had come to it again, having
completed a kind of circle. As he entered it, the past crowded on to him
with a hundred pictures. Shilah--it was where Virginie Poucette's sister
lived; and Virginie had been a part of the great revelation of his life
at St. Saviour's.

As he was walking by the riverside at Shilah, a woman spoke to him,
touching his arm as she did so. He was in a deep dream as she spoke,
but there certainly was a look in her face that reminded him of someone
belonging to the old life. For an instant he could not remember. For a
moment he did not even realize that he was at Shilah. His meditation
had almost been a trance, and it took him time to adjust himself to
the knowledge of the conscious mind. His subconsciousness was very
powerfully alive in these days. There was not the same ceaselessly
active eye, nor the vibration of the impatient body which belonged to
the money-master and miller of the Manor Cartier. Yet the eye had more
depth and force, and the body was more powerful and vigorous than it had
ever been. The long tramping, the everlasting trail on false scents, the
mental battling with troubles past and present, had given a fortitude
and vigour to the body beyond what it had ever known. In spite of
his homelessness and pilgrim equipment he looked as though he had a
home--far off. The eyes did not smile; but the lips showed the goodness
of his heart--and its hardness too. Hardness had never been there in
the old days. It was, however, the hardness of resentment, and not
of cruelty. It was not his wife's or his daughter's flight that he
resented, nor yet the loss of all he had, nor the injury done him by
Sebastian Dolores. No, his resentment was against one he had never seen,
but was now soon to see. As his mind came back from the far places where
it had been, and his eyes returned to the concrete world, he saw what
the woman recalled to him. It was--yes, it was Virginie Poucette--the
ki