g its pink toes into the
air, and Norah Doyle did the same, murmuring an Irish love-name for a
child. Jean Jacques was silent, but in his face was the longing of a
soul sick for home, of one who desires the end of a toilsome road.

The laughing child crooned and spluttered and shook its head, as though
it was playing some happy game. It looked first at Norah, then at
Jean Jacques, then at Norah again, and then, with a little gurgle of
pleasure, stretched out its arms to her and half-raised itself from
the pillow. With a glad cry Norah gathered it to her bosom, and triumph
shone in her face.

"Ah, there, you see!" she said, as she lifted her face from the blossom
at her breast.

"There it is," said Jean Jacques with shaking voice.

"You have nothing to give her--I have everything," she urged. "My rights
are that I would die for the child--oh, fifty times!... What are you
going to do, m'sieu'?"

Jean Jacques slowly turned and picked up his hat. He moved with the
dignity of a hero who marches towards a wall to meet the bullets of a
firing-squad.

"You are going?" Norah whispered, and in her eyes was a great relief and
the light of victory. The golden link binding Nolan and herself was in
her arms, over her heart.

Jean Jacques did not speak a word in reply, though his lips moved. She
held out the little one to him for a good-bye, but he shook his head.
If he did that--if he once held her in his arms--he would not be able to
give her up. Gravely and solemnly, however, he stooped over and kissed
the lips of the child lying against Norah's breast. As he did so, with a
quick, mothering instinct Norah impulsively kissed his shaggy head, and
her eyes filled with tears. She smiled too, and Jean Jacques saw how
beautiful her teeth were--cruel no longer.

He moved away slowly. At the door he turned, and looked back at the
two--a long, lingering look he gave. Then he faced away from them again.

"Moi je suis philosophe," he said gently, and opened the door and
stepped out and away into the frozen world.

EPILOGUE.

Change might lay its hand on the parish of St. Saviour's, and it did
so on the beautiful sentient living thing, as on the thing material and
man-made; but there was no change in the sheltering friendship of Mont
Violet or the flow of the illustrious Beau Cheval. The autumns also
changed not at all. They cast their pensive canopies over the home-scene
which Jean Jacques loved so well, before he was exha