e, but he could not command their
love and confidence until he had earned them.

So it was that, for a time, Jean Jacques took the place of the Old Cure
in the human side of the life of the district, though in a vastly lesser
degree. Up to the death of M. Langon, Jean Jacques had done very well
in life, as things go in out-of-the-way places of the world. His mill,
which ground good flour, brought him increasing pence; his saw-mill more
than paid its way; his farms made a small profit, in spite of a
cousin who worked one on halves, but who had a spendthrift wife; the
ash-factory which his own initiative had started made no money, but the
loss was only small; and he had even made profit out of his lime-kilns,
although Sebastian Dolores, Carmen's father, had at one time mismanaged
them--but of that anon. Jean Jacques himself managed the business
of money-lending and horse-dealing; and he also was agent for fire
insurance and a dealer in lightning rods.

In the thirteen years since he married he had been able to keep a good
many irons in the fire, and also keep them more or less hot. Many people
in his and neighbouring parishes were indebted to him, and it was worth
their while to stand well with him. If he insisted on debts being paid,
he was never exacting or cruel. If he lent money, he never demanded
more than eight per cent.; and he never pressed his debtors unduly. His
cheerfulness seldom deserted him, and he was notably kind to the poor.
Not seldom in the winter time a poor man, here and there in the parish,
would find dumped down outside his door in the early morning a half-cord
of wood or a bag of flour.

It could not be said that Jean Jacques did not enjoy his own generosity.
His vanity, however, did not come from an increasing admiration of his
own personal appearance, a weakness which often belongs to middle age;
but from the study of his so-called philosophy, which in time became an
obsession with him. In vain the occasional college professors, who spent
summer months at St. Saviour's, sought to interest him in science and
history, for his philosophy had large areas of boredom; but science
marched over too jagged a road for his tender intellectual feet; the
wild places where it led dismayed him. History also meant numberless
dates and facts. Perhaps he could have managed the dates, for he was
quick at figures, but the facts were like bees in their hive,--he could
scarcely tell one from another by looking at th