sent his sister to a little
secluded town, where she should be well out of earshot of his doings or
possible troubles. He would have shielded her from harm at the cost of
his life. His loyalty to her was only limited by the irresponsibility
of his nature and a certain incapacity to see the difference between
radical right and radical wrong. His honour was a matter of tradition,
such as it was, and in all else he had the inherent invalidity of some
of his distant forebears. For a time all went well, then discovery came,
and only the kind intriguing of as good friends as any man deserved
prevented his arrest and punishment. But it all got whispered about; and
while some ladies saw a touch of romance in his doing professionally
and wholesale what they themselves did in an amateurish way with laces,
gloves and so on, men viewed the matter more seriously, and advised
Ferrol to leave Quebec.

Since that time he had lived by his wits--and pleasing, dangerous wits
they were--at Montreal and elsewhere. But fatal ill-luck pursued him.
Presently a cold settled on his lungs. In the dead of winter, after
sending what money he had to his sister, he had lived a week or more in
a room, with no fire and little food. As time went on, the cold got no
better. After sundry vicissitudes and twists of fortune, he met Nicolas
Lavilette at a horse race, and a friendship was struck up. He frankly
and gladly accepted an invitation to attend the wedding of Sophie
Lavilette, and to make a visit at the farm, and at the Manor Casimbault
afterwards. Nicolas spoke lightly of the Manor Casimbault, yet he had
pride in it also; for, scamp as he was, and indifferent to anything
like personal dignity or self-respect, he admired his father and had a
natural, if good-natured, arrogance akin to Christine's self-will.

It meant to Ferrol freedom from poverty, misery and financial subterfuge
for a moment; and he could be quiet--for, as he said, "This confounded
cold takes the iron out of my blood."

Like all people stricken with this disease, he never called it anything
but a cold. All those illusions which accompany the malady were his. He
would always be better "to-morrow." He told the two or three friends
who came from their beds in the early morning to see him safely off from
Montreal to Bonaventure that he would be all right as soon as he got out
into the country; that he sat up too late in the town; and that he had
just got a new prescription which had