urf. He made
mistakes, sometimes in a childish, sometimes in an older way, some
against most worthy things. But withal he managed to keep the main
direction of truth, after his own young way of thinking and telling
it. He had no such power to formulate his large conclusions as you or
even I have; but whatever wrought to enlighten the unlettered,
whatever cherished manhood's rights alike in lofty and lowly, whatever
worked the betterment of the poor, whatever made man not too much and
not too little his brother's keeper,--his keeper not by mastery, but
by fraternal service,--whatever did these things was to him good
religion, good politics. So, at least, the cure told the ex-governor,
as from time to time they talked of the absent Bonaventure and of his
letters. However, they had to admit one thing: all this did not find
'Thanase.

And why, now, should 'Thanase longer be sought? Was there any thing to
gain by finding him dead? Not for Bonaventure; he felt, as plainly as
though he had seen an angel write the decree, that to Bonaventure
Deschamps no kind of profit or advantage under the sun must come by
such a way. But was there any thing to be gained in finding that
'Thanase still lived? The police will tell you, as they told
Bonaventure, that in these days of steam and steel and yoked lightning
a man may get lost and be found again; but that when he stays lost,
and is neither dead nor mad, it is because he wants to be lost. So
where was to be the gain in finding 'Thanase alive? Oh, much, indeed,
to Bonaventure! The star of a new hope shot up into his starless sky
when that thought came, and in that star trembled that which he had
not all these weary months of search dared see even with fancy's
eye,--the image of Zosephine! This--this! that he had never set out to
achieve--this! if he could but stand face to face with evidence that
'Thanase could have reached home and would not.

This thought was making new lines in the young care-struck face,
when--

"See here," said a voice one day. Bonaventure's sleeve was caught by
the thumb and forefinger of a man to whom, in passing, he had touched
his hat. The speaker was a police captain.

"Come with me." They turned and walked, Bonaventure saying not a word.
They passed a corner, turned to the right, passed two more, turned to
the left,--high brick walls on either side, damp, ill-smelling
pavements under foot,--and still strode on in silence. As they turned
once more to the