Two Halves of a Life

I.

THE VISION SPLENDID.

I.

ST. ATHANASE would be like half a hundred other villages in Quebec but that the noble river on which it stands gives it a beauty and a character of its own. The bridge which connects it with the flourishing town of St. Jean on its opposite side spans nearly a mile of the waters of the Richelieu. Its main street, where are the few stores that supply its few wants, runs parallel with the course of the stream. The rest of the village —some of the houses of stone, quaint and old-fashioned, others more modern, of wood— rises from it among groves of maple and elm on the gradual slope of its bank. Behind it, the mass of Mount St. Gregoire fills in the distance. Seen of a summer’s evening, with the mingling lights falling on tree and house and water, while the notes of the angelus ring softly out on the air, it is a charming picture, at once sweet and soothing.

But the place is under a doom, — the doom that waits on standing still, and of which its rotting sidewalks are an evidence. With progress, indeed, St. Athanase has nothing to do. It transacts its own little business and goes on its own way. Life has gone on in it in much the same fashion from generation to generation. When the father has passed away the son has stepped into the vacant place. Baptiste succeeds Alexandre, and Jean, Baptiste; and but that the names are changed, there seems no other change. Yet it is happy, with the happiness which has no written history. Outside such events as are inscribed in its parish register it has nothing to record. The place is full of the age-long quiet, the undisturbed content, which brood like wings of shadow over all the life of French Canada, in strangest contrast to the rush and the bustle of these times, in which St. Athanase has neither part nor lot. All its sympathies are with that vanishing, older world, of which it has its own survivals in its seigneurie; in the great high-steepled church, with its presbytère nestling among the elms; in its unquestioning beliefs ; most of all, perhaps, in its finely drawn social distinctions. In the ideas of modern democracy it has no share.

It was among such associations of place and custom that Pierre Lacordière grew up to manhood. His father, M. le Notaire, was a person of some consequence in St. Athanase. The place was too small to admit of his having a rival, so he knew everybody in it and all its affairs, most of which were transacted in his own little office. Whatever simple secrets there were were in his keeping. Then he was prosperous and wealthy, as wealth went in St. Athanase. All this made him an important personage, and knowing his own value he rejoiced. As the seigneur was a Protestant and an Englishman, and therefore a remote influence in the life of this Catholic village, and the fat old priest was the notary’s good friend and ally, there was nothing to dim the satisfaction with which he regarded his position.

But it was not forgotten in the village by a few of the families, whose just pride that in their veins flowed some of the best blood of old France took a keener edge from the very fact that they were poorer than he, that M. le Notaire’s father had been a peasant. Not that their demeanor to him was marked by an overwhelming hauteur or odious condescension, but they simply kept themselves to themselves. To do the notary justice, he had never sought to penetrate their reserve ; the knowledge of their affairs he possessed gave him all the power he wanted. But it was different with his son Pierre. His destiny was so shaping itself that it had become imperatively necessary for him at least to try to enter this charmed circle. He had reached in his life the Great Divide, on that side of which lie the untroubled joy and gladness of youth, on tiffs side the tumult and the fever of the love of conscious manhood. His eyes had roved away from his own associates to fix themselves forever on one who belonged not to them. His early training, however, was altogether against him. With a child’s acuteness he had observed that while his father’s manner to most of his clients had that easy courtesy which comes from the satisfying conviction of the security and importance of one’s own station, to some, again, it was touched with a deep reverence which marked a difference in their relative positions. The boy naturally accepted such actions as an abiding expression of the mutual relations that existed between his father or himself and others. He grew up with the feeling of it in his mind.

Another important influence which determined his subsequent life also came to him from his peasant blood and his surroundings. There is no more deeply credulous being than the French Canadian of the lower classes. Whatever mental life he has is still the life of a little child standing in the morning of the world. The age of faith has not ceased with him. That there should be places made holy by beatific visions, that relics should work miracles, that all sorts of local saints should have power to bless and all sorts of local devils power to curse, are to him among the deepest facts of life. Such beliefs are so wrought into his thoughts that he never can get outside their grasp. These come to him naturally from his religion, but he is full of superstitions besides. His churchyard is alive with ghosts. He easily credits any supernatural story. And Pierre was no freer from such ideas than were others. One of his most lasting memories was of a little sister of his who for a long time had always been dressed in blue, in fulfillment of a vow to the Virgin. She had been very ill, and his mother — the dear old maman who was now dead — had vowed to the Holy Mother, if she would but cause the child to recover, to dress her in this her favorite color for three years. There were many other instances of the same kind among the neighbors; indeed, it would not be too much to say that there was hardly one of them but could tell some tale which was not of this world.

The Canadian habitant, notwithstanding, is as a rule gay and joyous as a lark, simple-hearted, content, unaffectedly fond of his home, bearing the few burdens of his life lightly, and accepting with cheery resignation its inevitable ills. Pierre was of a different type: graver, more serious, more inquiring, than his countrymen. He had been fairly educated after a fashion. Of the great world which lay beyond his own little village he knew scarcely anything. The few visits he had paid to Montreal, the nearest city, had given him glimpses of what it might be like. For some time, as he neared manhood, his mind had been stirred by vague longings for a larger life. He watched with curious interest the steamers which passed down the Richelieu on their way to the St. Lawrence, bound for various ports. Dreamily he speculated as to what manner of men, what kind of cities, he would see if he embarked on them. His greatest friend, Father Cherrier, the parish priest, a man now old, but who had once held an important post in a distant city, told him of the world’s vanities and disappointments ; but these made little impression compared with the intoxicating successes, the glitteriug splendors, the coveted distinctions of which he also spoke. It was when Pierre’s mind was full of such thoughts, and a multitude besides of the indistinct movements of aspiration and desire that come along with the vigorous springtide of manhood, that he fell in love with Marie de Calles. At once all the nebulous ideas which had been floating loosely in his mind concentrated themselves in this absorbing and sufficing passion. To woo and win her were the only objects in life worth striving for.

Marie was the daughter of one of those families who, in the midst of poverty, found a deep compensation for it in their undoubted purity of descent. To them M. le Notaire and his son were well enough in their way, but that way was at an infinite distance from their own. To Pierre this distance had its own additional enchantment. Marie was very beautiful, but it was the beauty which is outward only. Pierre knew it not. Around the maiden he wrapped a glamour and a mystery which he had himself created, and which were true only so far as they existed in his own consciousness. That she was beautiful no one could deny. Indeed, hers was the ripe, obvious beauty of a splendid physical type. Her figure was regal, her whole air queenly. The oval face was perfect after its kind. The dark masses of her hair framed a white forehead neither too lofty nor too low. It was impossible to look at her great violet eyes without delight, at the lovely mouth without admiration. But of the subtle charm, the aerial grace, the indescribable quality of the fascination which surrounds some women, and which makes men their willing slaves to the end, there was no trace in Marie. Her eyes were always the same, — immovably beautiful, with no hint of fire or tenderness in them. The lips lacked sensitiveness. Her face was the face of a woman upon whom the softening, refining influences of the unutterable pathos of human life had as yet left no mark. It was not that she was selfish or unkind, but that hers was a nature which had no depth. Hence she had no real power of sympathy, only at best a superficial tenderness. Pierre saw nothing of this. He loved her ; and all other thoughts and feelings were lost in that one great emotion. To him she was the sweetest as she was the loveliest of women ; and he believed in her with his whole soul.

Pierre had seen her nearly all his life, but owing to the difference in their social position he had always thought of her as something apart from it. A year or two, however, before he fell in love with her, she had gone to a convent at Montreal to finish her education. When she returned it was the month of May, the month of Mary, when St. Athanase is as sense-satisfying a spot as there is on this earth. All the trees were in full glory of green. The lilacs were in bloom, and the air was laden with the scent of all the sweet flowers of spring, — fragrant snowdrops, and lilies of the valley, and hyacinth, and narcissus, everywhere. It was the custom of the daughters of the village to go of an evening in a kind of procession, bearing chaplets and wreaths of flowers, to present them to the Sisters to decorate the image of the Virgin. Late In the afternoon of one of these delicious days, Pierre was idling along the main street when the procession passed before him. His eyes wandered over the smiling faces, to pause involuntarily on that of Marie. The soft spring air had given her a delicious warmth of coloring, and its effect was heightened by the bouquet of white flowers which she held near her face as she passed him. She looked lovely enough to be the Goddess of Youth.

“ Mon Dieu! ” exclaimed Pierre. Then he quickly followed the band of girls into the church, trying to catch another glimpse of that incomparable face. For some time afterwards Pierre was constant in his attendance at church, hoping that perchance he might be fortunate enough to intercept some stray glance from those wonderful violet eyes.

There is something magnetic in love, and it was not long before Marie knew of Pierre’s devotion. An accidental meeting, in which Pierre was of some slight assistance, gave him a kind of acquaintance with her. She felt it would be a rudeness on her part not to acknowledge the claim this made upon her, however slight it was. So she bowed to him when they met, which was often in a small place like St. Athanase. It was in the nature of things that the acquaintance thus formed should go on growing, if Marie did not object, — and she did not object. The place was dull, and Pierre was handsome. Then when she got to know him a little better she could not but perceive that he was different from the other young fellows of the village. He was altogether more interesting ; the air of habitual thoughtfulness he had suited him well ; and she was flattered both by the evident sincerity and the special character of his admiration. In his own simple fashion the homage he paid her was that of a knight to his queen ; and though she was disposed to accept this tribute to her charms as coming to her of divine right, she was none the less proud of it. Then another element, of a far more subtle kind, entered into the affair. Both knew very well that her friends would not readily consent to recognize the son of the notary as her lover. This acted as an incentive to Pierre. Was he not young, and with all the wonderful world of which he dreamed at his feet ? But to Marie it gave the adventure the necessary thrill of excitement, and the specious air of romance dear to the newly emancipated school-girl.

It was not easy for their meetings to pass unnoticed. There was a constant danger of remark, for there were plenty of gossips in St. Athanase who knew more of their neighbors’ affairs than of their own. But somehow they managed to escape it. There were quiet, shady walks by the river, where they met, and the lover’s Providence was kind to them and sheltered them from observation.

Pierre, timidly at first, but with increasing boldness as he became accustomed to the magical atmosphere with which he surrounded her, began to open his soul to Marie. She listened to his eager talk, made bright by a thousand fancies ; for his strong love for her gave him eyes to see and ears to hear where otherwise he would have been blind and deaf. The girl said little about herself, and gave no communication of her own thoughts in return. But it was delightful to her to be talked to by this goodlooking young fellow, and to know that he was her slave. She liked him. Could any one help liking him ? she asked herself. Would not her people like him if they knew him?

By and by Pierre began falteringly to speak of love to the girl, and to plead his suit. Marie listened and smiled, not displeased. She had often, in her girlish fancies, pictured to herself some eager-eyed youth thus supplicating her favor. But though she suffered him for a moment to take her into his arms, she pushed him away the next, and laughingly made her escape. That evening Pierre went home in a tumult of emotion. All night long he lay awake thinking confusedly; and at last one idea fixed itself firmly in his mind. He had nothing at present to offer the girl but his love. He knew it was a very deep and honest love, but love was not enough. He had no position, and before Marie could become his wife he must, have one, and one that would be worthy of her acceptance. Then he could go to her parents and ask for her hand. Yes, he would do something for this beautiful girl, — something that would be noble and splendid, the fruit of which he would lay proudly, and yet humbly, at her feet. In the natural order of things he would have succeeded his father as the village notary ; of course a respectable position, but one which, in his ardor, he thought too commonplace to ask Marie to share with him. There was Montreal, the greatest city of which he knew ; and even in that quiet village stories had come of men, no richer than he, who had gone there and had conquered fortune. Might he not do as much for Marie ?

When he met her some days later he said something of this to Marie; and naturally it pleased the girl. Pierre did not ask her to pledge herself to him, but it was understood. When she had questioned herself if she loved him she had answered unhesitatingly, Yes. In saying this she thought she was quite sincere. He certainly was handsome, — so she repeated to herself, — and there was no one to compare with him in St. Athanase. With what a deference and respect did he treat her! He was so much in love with her ! And he was going away to do something for her sake, — ah, this was romance ! Yet the place would certainly be dull without Pierre. But the girl contemplated his departure with none of the palpitation of the heart, the swift floodings of hopes and fears, which deep love inspires. The truth was that Pierre had not really reached her heart. She liked him, thought well of him, was pleased by a devotion which made her life more interesting; but the inner citadel of her heart had not been gained. As for him, his whole life was completely bound up in her; but it was not so with her. Yet the evening before he went away, when Pierre had spoken brave and hopeful words, — none the less brave and hopeful because they were spoken with trembling lips, — she hung over him, crying and sobbing, and kissed him for the first time.

So Pierre went to Montreal with the thought that Marie loved him for inspiration.

Thus is the perennial epic written. So upon the simple country life of some English lad may there arise like a star, stately and yet tender, a beautiful vision, which makes him go from the fens and levels of the midlands, or from the hills of the northlands, to London, to make his fortune. So, in France, the cry of the provincial is, To Paris! With the same bravery is it done in every case, though there is no beat of drum nor flag flying in the breeze.

II.

There was always a large party entertained at the seigneurie of St. Athanase every Christmas. The festivities went on for two or three weeks, and that period was one of great excitement to the village, as there were dances and concerts, to which its leading people were invited. And though a seigneur who was an Englishman and a Protestant was distinctly alien to all their ideas, still they felt that they might go to his dances and listen to his concerts without compromising themselves.

The preceding winter there had come to the seigneurie a gentleman named Manning, and Pierre had chanced to meet him. Some business had been transacted for Manning by his father the notary, and Pierre, who was then in his father’s office, had waited upon him several times. Manning had found young Lacordière intelligent and obliging, and he had taken a lazy liking to him. There had been some conversation between them, and Pierre had said something of his desire to leave the village, to enter the life of the big world which lay beyond it. Manning had listened to him with a good-humored amusement, and had promised that if Pierre should ever leave St. Athanase and come to Montreal he would see what he could do for him there. So as soon as Pierre reached Montreal he went and looked up Manning, who got a clerkship in a railway office for him. It was not a very important or lucrative post, not such a position as Pierre had dreamed of ; but the office of a great railway company has now and again its chances of speedy promotion, and he worked on steadily, with the thought of Marie constantly in his mind.

Marie, on her part, found St. Athanase unendurably stupid in Pierre’s absence. Each day had the same repeated monotony, and the girl had no resources of her own to make the tedium less irksome. As Pierre’s attachment to her was unknown to her parents, there were no loving letters to look forward to, no loving messages to send in return. She had no confidante to whom she might talk of Pierre, — unless she made one of Nation, her old nurse, who was quite faithful to her, but who might not understand. Thus the image of Pierre was growing dim when she heard with delight that the party which was annually assembled at the seigneurie would soon light up the overwhelming dullness of the place with what seemed to it astonishing splendor.

Christmas came, and the seigneurie was once again merry with much cheer and many guests. Wherever the company had been drawn from, they could hardly have left a prettier spot than St. Athanase, for its winter beauty is almost as captivating in its way as its summer sweetness. Day after day, a sky of soft, silvery gray-blue hangs above it; and about it the snow lies thickly, deeply, warmly, everywhere. The frozen waters of the Richelieu are sheeted over with it. It piles itself high about the trunks of the trees, which stand out from the white background with every outline distinctly penciled. It shows up, in wonderful relief, the dark foliage of the evergreens, as it lies on leaf and branch of pine and cedar. Here and there the wind has driven it into irregular mounds and drifts on the unsheltered stretches, in the streets, and about the houses. Then the air is clear and bracing ; it is musical, too, with the bells of gliding sleigh and cariole.

George Manning was again among the guests at the seigneurie, and it was generally admitted that he was the life of the party. This, indeed, was his métier, and he had already achieved a considerable social reputation. He was very popular ; he studied to be so, and he had his desire. By nature he was irrepressibly blithe and gay; on occasion he could be witty, and was at times sufficiently brilliant to be classed among the clever. He had a genuine talent for the social side of life. No man was better able than he to arrange or do anything society wanted for its delectation. and he did everything in such a way that society delighted in him. He could arrange a play, put it upon the stage, or play a part in it if required; get up the most effective tableaux ; sing a song or tell a story. He would Lake a world of trouble to make anything he undertook a success, and generally achieved it. Young, good-looking, rich, so that he was naturally rather in the position of those who are waited upon by the world than of those who wait upon it, it was perhaps on this account that he was credited with great goodness of heart. And he was kind in a lazy, easy way, — when it was not too much trouble. He had never had any serious trouble in his life, and he did not propose having any, if he could help it. He would have life a sparkling comedy, with as little dullness and as few shadings-in of tragedy as possible. What he did steadily propose was to enjoy himself thoroughly ; and so far he had done so. His unflagging spirits had hitherto kept him from becoming ennuyé, and it was with jaunty step that he trod the primrose path. This was made the more easy to him by the secret complacency with which he regarded himself, — a comfortable feeling which had so far escaped any harsh shock.

It was with surprise and admiration that he saw Marie at the first dance given at the seigneurie.

“ Good heavens ! what a superb figure ! what a lovely face ! ” he exclaimed to his hostess.

He was among the first to be introduced to her, and he exerted all his welltrained powers of pleasing to make himself agreeable. They danced and chatted, and chatted and danced; and Marie thought him delightful. This dance was an epoch in her life. The lights, the music, the well-dressed people, the well-appointed house, — how charming it all was ! And this man, with his distinguished appearance and finished manner, — how much at home he was in this brilliant scene ; how it became him, and how he became it! She compared him with Pierre ; and though she would hardly allow it to herself, Pierre suffered in the comparison. At the same time, the remembrance of her absent lover was fresher in her mind that evening than it had been for weeks past; and this gave a background to her thoughts which threw over her a delicious air of reserve that made her infinitely more interesting than usual. Manning noticed it, and it piqued him. He thought when he learned that this was her first appearance in society that he had found out the secret. Then he regarded the discovery of this beautiful creature as a tremendous, unlooked-for piece of good fortune, and he determined to follow it up. It would certainly give a relish to this visit to St. Athanase. So he asked and received permission to call upon her.

Manning saw Marie next day at her house, and for two or three weeks afterwards he was very persistent in his attentions. The old-fashioned atmosphere of a French family hedged him about with restrictions, but this only added a piquancy to his ideas of Marie. Yet he saw a great deal of the girl. His friends at the seigneurie remarked it, and were disposed to tease him about it. They were amazed to find, from the marked disfavor with which he received their good-humored chaff, that the affair appeared to be serious. In truth it was becoming serious. He had fallen in love with Marie, very much to his own astonishment. At last he confessed to himself that he did care enough for her to contemplate the possibility of giving up the freedom of his luxurious bachelor life. As for Marie, she was completely fascinated. She cared for him as much as she could care for any one. Small wonder that she should ! Never had she seen any one so brilliant, so splendid. There was poor Pierre, true, but he would forget her in time. He would surely have some great success in Montreal, she hoped, and would be consoled for losing her.

Most of the guests departed from the seigneurie, but Manning remained. He had fully made up his mind to marry Marie, and soon he proposed in due form for her. Of course her family had seen his attentions, and, although he was a Protestant, had resolved to accept him. He was wealthy and well-born ; and, to do them justice, it counted for something with them that Marie cared for him. It was not necessary, to be sure ; but it was well as it was. So there were some wonderful courtesies on both sides, and Manning found himself Marie’s acknowledged lover.

When Manning spoke to Marie she gave him her hand in a transport of triumphant happiness and gratified pride. He pressed for an early marriage, and her friends consented. But before it took place she resolved to tell him about Pierre, whom she could not altogether dismiss from her thoughts. The lad’s brave words and burning eyes kept coming back to her; and though she had given him no promise, she could not forget that last meeting, when she had kissed him. She had acted on a sudden impulse, and she could not bring herself to regret it even now. She would tell Manning of it. But it was a difficult thing to do, and became more difficult as time went on. Was it necessary to say anything about Pierre? They would probably never see him again, as their lives would move on different planes. Then Pierre’s love for her,— had it not been that of a very young man, of a boy rather, which would soon pass away? So she argued with herself, but she could not persuade herself that it was so. She had seen far enough into Pierre’s character to know that his love for her might not be so evanescent. He had made her his whole world, and if it tumbled about him in ruins there was no guessing what would be the result. He might do something desperate in his rage, when he learned of her approaching marriage. Her love for Manning made her realize this as highly possible, and she was driven on, by this fear, to tell him.

He appeared to put the whole thing contemptuously aside, — so contemptuously that Marie was deeply hurt. The confession had cost her a great effort, and should, she thought, have been met with some response of sympathy. It was only intensely disagreeable and annoying to him, but he was careful not to show her what he felt. One of her chief charms in his eyes had been her perfect freshness, — the freshness of the dewy, ungathered flower of the morning. He fancied he was the first who had ever spoken words of love to the girl; and here she had had a flirtation with the son of the village notary, a man who was not even her equal. He remembered Pierre very well, and it was gall and bitterness to him to think that when he had helped him to a clerkship in the railway company he had been unconsciously assisting in this most distasteful village drama. No one, however, knew of this horrible episode but themselves and Pierre. Pierre, of course, would sink below the horizon of their lives, and they would see him no more.

Besides, Manning was aware that the story of his love for this village maid had been paraded among his friends as a romance; and this was not without some thrill of gratification. He knew that in the St. James’s Club, for instance, people were saying that it was wonderful that he, who had seen all that was loveliest in Canadian society, should care for this country girl. Word had even reached him that some of his old comrades had betted against the marriage ever coming off; and the knowledge of this, while it irritated him, at the same time made him more determined. He was genuinely proud of the girl’s beauty, and his world, at any rate, would bow down before it. As this counted for much with him, on the whole he was satisfied.

The wedding took place in the early spring, and after a protracted honeymoon they settled down in Montreal towards the beginning of winter.

The first intimation Pierre had received of what was happening had come to him, among other items of local gossip, in a letter from his father. The notary, little knowing his son’s feelings, dilated on the subject at great length. Never before had anything so exciting occurred in St. Athanase! The old man was full of it. Pierre could not credit the news. Surely there must be some mistake. There was no plighted troth between them, but he could not forget the shady paths by the river, where she had gone to meet him when there was danger in such meetings. Would she have braved it if she had not cared for him ? Then she had kissed him. Would she have done that if she had not loved him ? So he comforted himself, and would not believe it.

When Pierre saw the announcement of the marriage in a newspaper it stunned him. He went about his work for a short time dully, doing it with that piteous, mechanical precision of the brain which may go on when the heart is cold and dead. Then the fact slowly worked itself into so keen a consciousness that it became the only living thing in it. He could think of nothing else. Was it true? Ay, it was true. Another letter from his father had removed any doubt there might, have been. The notary had described the marriage fête with enthusiasm. So Marie was married ! His bright and beautiful dream was over. He asked himself if he had any right to complain. Manning had been his patron, and though the thought of it was intolerable to him now he could not forget it. Manning had taken his love from him, but he had not known of any prior claim. Though Pierre could not blame him, he could not, hold a day longer this hateful position, for which he was indebted to him. And yet but a short time ago — O God, what a short time it was to have a Paradise to be happy in ! — he had thought something of it for her sake.

Had she been disloyal to him? No, he would not accuse her. Then he did not know whether she really cared for this man whom she had married. Perhaps it was that her parents had compelled her to marry this wealthy suitor, while all the time she rebelled against it. Had she held out till she could hold out no longer ? He remembered bitterly now that her father and mother, with their pride, would never have looked on him as an equal. He could fancy how, if Marie had ever said anything about him, she would be ridiculed; bow, if she confessed to her meetings with him, this marriage would be held up to her as absolutely necessary, as a way of escape from a compromising past. " Perhaps,” thought Pierre, “ she is unhappy and miserable, like myself.” Put though there was a certain hideous consolation in the thought, Pierre fought against it, and could find no real satisfaction in it.

Ah, well, there was nothing more for him to do in Montreal. So he resigned his post, and went back to the quiet village. No longer did he care for this great world, which had no balm for his wounds.

When he returned to St. Athanase he gave as the reason for his changed plans that he was ill; and Pierre was sick in body and in soul. The wise folk shook their heads. Ah, it was never well to leave St. Athanase. Others had gone from it before him, and they had come back defeated like himself, or had never come back at all, which seemed to them even a harder fate. Here were peace and plenty. Why exchange its abiding calm for perils and uncertainties ? As for Pierre, he went quietly back to his father’s office. With a morbid feeling he tried to learn all that was known about the Mannings. There was no difficulty in knowing everything. Never had there been such a marriage as Marie’s within the memory of St. Athanase. To its simple people it seemed that there never could be such another again. Pierre heard of it everywhere ; and while it made his heart bleed, he listened eagerly to each version of the story. In due time he learned that the Mannings had returned from their long wedding-tour, and were settled in Montreal. A hungry longing took possession of Pierre to see Marie once more. If he could only see her well and happy, he thought, he could bear his pain somewhat better. But if she was unhappy, then he did not know what might not happen ; he felt there was hardly anything he might not do.

So he went to Montreal. And he did see both Marie and her husband, as they were driving in a sleigh from the mountain at the foot of which the city stands. They were talking merrily to each other, and looked so perfectly happy that Pierre, whom they did not notice, could not but believe that they were happy. How lovely Marie was! Her husband, — yes, he was handsome, and looked worthy of her. This splendid sleigh, with its fine horses and beautiful furs, looked as if it ought to belong to Marie. Yes, she was fitted for this and such as this. Perhaps it was best as it was. And Pierre, though his eyes had filled with tears of misery, was able to find somewhere in his aching heart a blessing for them. For this peasant-born son of a village notary had a strain of nobleness in him.

Then he went back to St. Athanase, and tried to forget this miserable but beautiful past. But it was no use. He could not so forget. He was much with his old friend, Father Cherrier, to whom he had told all his story. The good priest comforted him, but it was at best cold comfort. Pierre was completely changed. Then there grew up in him the feeling that he must get into some new kind of life, away from St. Athanase, which was full of painful memories. But he was not minded to go into the great world again : it seemed to him a dismal place; all his interest in it had been associated with Marie, and now that she had gone out from his life he would have no more of it. What he wanted was something which held the promise of peace. There was the life of the religious ; and he could imagine no other which would put so wide an interval between the past and himself.

II.

THE LIVING MIRROR.

I.

It was natural that Father Cherrier, when he saw the bent of Pierre’s thoughts, should say to him something of the religious order of which he himself was a member. In his then frame of mind it attracted Pierre. Besides, there was something in the calm, tranquil figure of the old priest, who looked on life as a whole with serene, untroubled eyes, as if he had penetrated and mastered its secret, which commanded and drew Pierre to him.

The Society of the Oblates of Marie Immaculate, to which the curé of St. Athanase belonged, was founded by Eugenios, Bishop of Marseilles, in 1816, at the time when Europe was in the state of profound collapse which succeeded the overthrow of the first Napoleon. Father Cherrier spoke with gentle enthusiasm of the piety, the simplicity, and the goodness of the first great superior of his order, whom he had known intimately in France, and whose history reads more like the legendary life of a mediæval monk than of a man living in this nineteenth century. He told Pierre how the society had grown, until its missionaries were to be found throughout Europe, in Asia, in Africa ; perhaps nowhere were they so numerous as in America, and nowhere had their efforts met with such success, especially in the wild and savage solitudes of the North. Singly, or in little bands of two and three, they had gone to the Saskatchewan, to the Athabasca, to the Mackenzie, to the utmost boundaries of the Frozen Sea, and had worked as they best could among the Chip’wyans, and the Crees, and the Blackfeet, and the Tukudh, who inhabit these regions. Pierre listened with little attention at first, but as time went on a certain interest began to attach itself to the Oblate Fathers, though it hardly came from what he heard of the dangers they had encountered, or of the hardships they had undergone, or of the successes they had gained. He could not help asking himself if this life of isolation did not promise to give what he stood most in need of. He knew that he had no special vocation for it, but the narrowness of his education inevitably suggested it, in his circumstances, as the only way in which he might put a barrier between himself and the past. He had no idea that he was trying a “ heroic ” remedy for his heart-sickness ; but he did think that in some lonely mission, far away from his old home, he might find peace, and in time come to take life as calmly as old Father Cherrier himself. There he might forget Marie — no, he did not wish to forget her ; but there he might gradually lose this terrible longing which was so hard to conquer. There she might become to him a memory which he could contemplate without this intolerable pain, — a memory perhaps something like that he had of his dead mother, something infinitely tender and beautiful, but very distant and forever out of reach. This could not be so long as he stayed in St. Athanase, where everything reminded him of Marie. Then Montreal was no great distance away, and the Mannings might at any time come on a visit to the village.

He thought it over all that winter, and at last his mind was fully made up, and he offered himself for the novitiate. There was his father to be considered, and the notary was bitterly opposed to his son’s leaving St. Athanase to become a priest.

“ Look you, Pierre,” he said, “ I did not oppose your going to Montreal at first, though I did not altogether like it. But I said to myself, Perhaps the boy will make his way. I know that what does for the fathers will not always suffice for the children : was it not so with myself ? So I said, See you, Pierre goes to Montreal. Perhaps he will succeed, — who knows? Perhaps not. If not, there is my old desk for him when he returns. But, Pierre, this is different; there is no coming back. Why go away, my son? The business will be yours, and it is a good business.”

But Pierre was quite resolved.

“ My father,” said he, “ I cannot stay in St. Athanase. I cannot bear it. I shall go mad if I stay.”

The notary stared.

“ What is it ails thee, Pierre ? ”

“ Nay, my father, do not ask. I am unhappy, — let me go. I am sick of this place, — let me go. I am sick of the world, — let me go.”

“ Thou art too young, my son, to talk of unhappiness and leaving the world. What would you ? ”

The notary had observed his son’s melancholy, but as Pierre had always been different from the other young fellows of St. Athanase, he had thought little of it. He was utterly puzzled now. He tried hard to dissuade his son from his purpose, but Pierre was not to be moved. In his distress, the notary asked Father Cherrier to speak to Pierre, but the priest was on his son’s side. He soon saw that Pierre must have his way, — for the present, at any rate. Two or three years must pass before he could become an Oblate, and in the interval something might happen to make Pierre change his mind. Perhaps it might be best to humor his son.

But his son’s resolution remained fixed. Father Cherrier wrote to his superiors about him, and in due time Pierre was received as a " scholar-novice ” in the house of Our Lady of the Angels at Lachine, not far from Montreal, the seminary of the order. There he went through a course of study which at any rate occupied his mind, and even the routine of the place was a relief to him. It was a complete change from his former life, and he thought he had done well. His desire to become a member of the society remained unchanged. If there had been any uncertainty, an incident which occurred just before he entered upon the one year’s special novitiate required for the priesthood in the order would have removed it. He had gone with a fellow-student to be present at a great religious function at the Cathedral in Montreal, and as he went thither he had chanced to meet Marie. She was driving in the street, and with her in the carriage were a little child and its nurse. Beautiful as ever did she seem to poor Pierre, whose heart leaped up in his breast when he saw her. The old wild longing, the sharp pain, the hopelessness of it all, came back on him at once with unabated and overwhelming force. Never, never, must he see her again. He must get away from her forever, and as far away as possible.

So Pierre became a priest. As soon as he could, he eagerly petitioned his superiors to be sent to one of the outposts of the society in the North ; and, though this missionary enthusiasm was unexpected by them, his request was granted. A few months later, after a tedious and sometimes difficult journey, he reached Fort Chip’wyan, on Lake Athabasca, just before winter set in. There he joined Father Gerard and Jerome, a lay brother, who were in charge of a flourishing mission which had been established there for some years. With them he studied the language of the Chip’wyans, and became so proficient in it that in the course of another year he was sent to the mission of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, near Fond du Lac, to take the place of an Oblate who was returning to St. Boniface, the headquarters of the society in British Northwest America.

The mission-house of Notre Dame des Sept-Douleurs is situated in one of the loneliest spots on the face of the earth. It was about the beginning of December when Pierre reached it, and winter did not make the place seem less lonely. It was with satisfaction that he noticed how completely it was cut off from the rest of the world. In almost any one, in Pierre himself, had he been in a more healthy frame of mind, it would have struck an inevitable chill. Besides the mission-house, a small trading-post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, some distance away, was the only dwelling-place within hundreds of miles. The mission-house itself was a hut of rudely hewn logs, standing a little back among the pines ; in front of it, a vast stretch of snow, with here and there the brown earth showing through it, reaching down to the ice-bound lake, and then away across the frozen waters of Lake Athabasca as far as the eye could see. The squat fence which surrounded the hut, as well as a pile of cut wood, was nearly buried in a deep drift, beaten hard by the wind. There was a track made upon it, as if by a single pair of feet ; below it, the trail went winding down the slope to the water-hole pierced in the ice, and then up and along the bank among the trees to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s store. The ice of the lake, before it had been thoroughly set fast for the winter, had been washed up high on the banks, and piled in great masses on the shore and for some yards in the lake itself, where it had been crushed and twisted and broken and welded together again by the action of wind and wave and sun, until it had assumed ten thousand fantastic shapes. In the distance, long irregular black lines, sharply etched on the white plain of snow on the surface of the lake, showed where the imprisoned air had burst through the ice.

On the top of the hut, above the entrance, there was a wooden cross, carved with some skill. The interior of the hut had been arranged in two divisions. One served as the chapel : it had an altar draped in crimson, a gilt image of the Virgin, and two cheap and badly colored pictures. The other was the livingroom of the Oblate. It was furnished with a couch, a table, a couple of chairs, a box strongly clamped with iron, a wood-stove, an unpainted cupboard. At one end of the room there hung a picture of Our Lady, and below it was a crucifix of brass.

When the dog-train bore away from the mission Father Bonjean, the Oblate Pierre had come to relieve, it was with a feeling of exultation that he found himself alone. And he was almost utterly alone. The clerk who had charge of the trading-post was an English halfbreed and a Protestant. He was friendly enough, but there was nothing in common between him and Pierre. His wife came each morning to the mission to arrange the rooms and to prepare his food ; but beyond a brief salutation they hardly spoke. Thus Pierre was left alone with his thoughts. How he had longed for this! Four years had passed since he left St. Athanase to conquer fortune for his beautiful Marie. Now he had to conquer himself. Surely, he said to himself, at this distance of time and space he could think of the past calmly; perhaps come to look upon it as some sad but beautiful dream.

A few weeks after his arrival a band of Indians came in to the mission to keep the festival of Christmas. In ten days they were gone again to their hunting-grounds, and until Easter, when they would again return for a short time, Pierre was left solitary and alone.

It was now that the utter loneliness of the place began to have an effect upon him. He had come here to forget, but with each day the past became more vivid, until he lived in it alone. Honestly and with such fervor as he could command did he follow the rules of his order ; but they had no spell sufficiently great to make his story different from what it was. He tried to study his breviary, to read his Following of Christ with devotion, but thoughts other than they suggested came into his mind.

Now it was that the brooding, lonely man began to find a strange companionship in a small mirror he had brought with him. The little circle of silvered glass, in its dark walnut frame, had been given him long ago by his mother, when he had been a boy in St. Athanase, and he had kept it ever since. It was the one memorial of her he had, and it was sacred to him for her sake. Had any one else looked in it, when it imaged back the face of Pierre, he would have seen the pallid features, the wistful eyes, of the Oblate, — a mournful and piteous sight, truly, which might haunt him with its pathos, — but he would have seen nothing more. To Pierre it became something different from what it was. At the beginning of that long, weary, dragging winter, when he had for the first time in his life been left utterly alone, it had seemed to him, as he saw in it his own face, something companionable, something like a friend. After he had risen from his couch in the morning, and had prostrated himself at the foot of the crucifix, his face pale from spent emotions, it was the first object that his eyes sought when he rose from his knees. After passing hours sitting thinking, if he took a few steps in his narrow room, the mirror caught his glance at each turn. Involuntarily it became bound up with all his thoughts. It often gave them a new direction. Some expression of his face that he saw there brought back a particular scene, a half-forgotten memory. From what we see to what we seem to see is but a step. Reared as Pierre had been among a superstitious, much-believing people, it was not long before the idea grew upon him that the mirror was something living, until it did become to him alive. It lived and breathed; it spoke to Pierre.

He told himself over and over again that it was a trick of the senses, but the idea was stronger than his reason. He fought against it, but it grew upon him. In vain he disciplined himself with prayers and fastings. Several times he took it down from the wall and examined it. Once or twice he thought of destroying it, but it defied him. It spoke to him then of his old home, of the happy life of his boyhood, in which the central figure was his mother. She had given him the glass: were these her eyes which now looked at him from it ? How clearly he saw her, and the face of his little sister nestling against hers ! Both of them were dead, but the mirror made them live for him again. At such times the intervening years were blotted out.

Again, he would see his father’s face in the mirror, with the look of trouble and of grief upon it that it had when he said farewell. His father’s eyes looked at him with reproach. Was it well to leave him ? Would it not have been nobler and manlier to have stayed with him, as he had at first proposed, than to have deserted him? Perhaps he might have conquered his pain. But here it had a deeper stab for him now ; it never left him long, night or day. He had come here to overcome the past, and the past, God help him, was overcoming him now more than ever. But in St. Athanase —

Ah, that is the face of his old friend, Father Cherrier. Well, he too had joined the invisible some time before Pierre had left Canada. Glancing at the book which detailed the personnel of the order of the Oblates, he had seen his name in its black-edged necrology, among those over whom was inscribed a requiescant. How calm and serene was the dead man’s face as it looked at him ! — how steadfast were the eyes !

Sometimes the mirror would show him the companions of his boyhood. There, that is the face of Simon, — happy, contented Simon. They had often boated together on the Richelieu in the summer evenings; often had they skated together upon it in the early winter. He has a stout wife now, and laughing children, and his father’s farm. Yes, it is a pleasant face.

And so is this of Blaise, another old comrade, who has now the store at the corner of the street, near the church, in St. Athanase.

Ah, that is the white face of Baptiste, — the face of the dead man he had drawn out from the river.

Alas ! the beautiful river and the old village, — how near they sometimes were, and then again how far off ! How long had he been here ? Counted by months it was but a short time, but this was no adequate measurement.

There is hardly a moment that the mirror does not. show him in some form or other his lost Marie. All the other faces led up to her face ; they faded out to show him hers, —sometimes with the fresh, girlish charm which had enraptured him when he first loved her. Now she would flash upon him her great violet eyes ; the ripe lips would redly pout, or part with a sunny smile. Again, the shapely head, with the dark hair massed about it, would bend towards him, as if to call him near. What a splendid curve was the oval of her face ! Sometimes she looks at him with the careless, riante gladness he had noticed when he met her immediately after her marriage. But her face as it had appeared upon the occasion when he had seen her last, with her child — his, Manning’s, child — beside her, is what he oftenest thinks he sees.

For poor Pierre there was no shutting out the past. His experiment was resulting in direst failure. It was not long — how could it be? — before the memories of his life, which the mirror caused to live again with a cruel realism, became hideous, ghastly mockeries. The man was slowly going mad. He had allowed his imagination to lead him on until it had betrayed him. In this profound solitude, with nothing outside him but the overwhelming desolation, with nothing within him but a mind ever growing more and more dejected and despairing with morbid retrospection, brooding constantly upon the past, this living mirror became a mocking fiend instead of the friend he had first imagined it.

The faces that at last appeared in it — faces he had never seen, but which had some bewildering trace of faces that he had seen — reproached him, sneered at him, flouted him, laughed at him. Visitants from the other world, spectral appearances of all kinds, good and bad, he had heard about from his childhood, — such were the faces the mirror showed him now: hateful faces, evil faces, deadly faces, devilish faces! He ceased to struggle against the mirror. He lost any power but that of submission to it. All idea of destroying it had left him : it was too much alive with a monstrous life for that.

His madness worked upon him in other ways. His morbid mind changed every sound or the absence of sound into something infernal. The wind, when it stormed among the trees or drove the snow before it across the lake, seemed the shouting of fiends. The wolf’s howl was the cry of a lost soul.

Thus the terrible days, with this unending nightmare, passed on till Easter, — the Oblate performing meanwhile the personal duties his vows imposed upon him with a piteous precision, — till some families of the Chip’wyans came in to the mission to keep the feast, and at the same time to dispose of their furs at the trading-post. Their presence roused Pierre for a time: there were baptisms and other services to perform. But there was no life in the man; it had been absorbed by the accursed mirror. The Indians wondered at the pallid, sunken face, at the emaciated frame, at the eyes that burned so strangely. They brought him of their best, and he gave them their gifts back again gently and kindly, telling them that he had no lack of food.

It was in the midst of the Easter services that the winter-packet, which had been slowly traveling northwards through the snow, from the Red River Settlement, came in to Fond du Lac with letters for Pierre; among them, a long letter from his father. He did not at once open it, and some instinct kept him from looking at it till the Indians had gone again to hunt in the wilderness; but by the returning dog-train he sent back a message to St. Athanase to say to his father that he was well.

II.

It is wearing on in the afternoon, and the cold evening shadows are descending upon the mission of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. The Oblate is again alone. In the gathering darkness Pierre sits in the unlighted room; his figure is huddled together ; the sheets of his father’s letter are lying in a little white heap at his feet, where they have fallen from his hands. He had read them over slowly once, and then swiftly, feverishly, again. Then they had dropped from his hands.

This is what he read : —

“ My son, is it well with thee? Art thou better ? Art thou finding that peace which our little village denied thee? Thou couldst not stay in St. Athanase. What were thy thoughts? What was thy secret ? I have missed thee sorely, but I comforted myself when I said, My son is happy. He has followed his vocation ; it is well with him. But it hath carried thee away from all thy friends and from thy father. Yet it is well if thou art at rest and thy mind is quiet. Thy father is glad if thou art glad. But my heart misgives me when I think of the desolation of the wilderness, of the long, cold winter. Who is there that tends thee now ? When thou wast here, I did not think of thee as I ought. Perhaps it was that I was busy ; perhaps I said to myself, It is best that young folk should have their way, without too much interference from their elders ; perhaps it was that I said, My son will do something greater than I have done. Did not I do better than my father ? And now, Pierre, tell me if there is anything that I can send thee. Surely thou wilt tell thy father, who loveth thee, if there is.

“ It is nearly a year since I bade thee farewell at Montreal, and then I told thee all the news of the village. Thy friends are well, — Etienne, and Blaise, and Simon, and big Hilaire, and Joseph with the red face, and the others. They say that Jean-Louis, with whom thou hadst a fight when you were boys together, — dost thou remember ? — is to marry Julie Deltour, the baker’s fat daughter. The baker is rich, and perhaps will give her a fat dowry to match.

“ But I have other news for thee.

“ Thou rememberest the small stone house by the elms, not far from the bridge which crosses our river? It was in my charge, and I had sought in vain a tenant for it for a long time. Just after thou hadst gone on thy journey — how gladly did I hear of thy safe arrival at Fort Chip’wyan ! — I received a letter from a solicitor in Montreal, desiring the house for a client, Madame Manning, who would occupy it immediately. I had the house put in order, and on the lady’s arrival I waited upon her to offer my services. Canst thou guess who it was ? It was Marie de Calles. For one moment before she came I thought that the lady named by the solicitor might be the Madame Manning we had known in St. Athanase, but on reflection I had dismissed the idea. Why should she come here without her husband ? Then did not her father and mother live in the village? If it were she, she would go to them. ’T is a stranger, I said, and the name is but a coincidence.

“ But it was our Madame Manning. Dost thou remember Marie de Calles ? Perhaps not; thou wast absent in Montreal when she was married to M. Manning. But of course thou hadst seen her in St. Athanase long ago. Such a splendid marriage as it was ! Such gifts, such flowers ! What a beautiful bride, what a handsome bridegroom ! These

exclamations were in everybody’s mouth. ’T was a pity thou wast not here to see so brave a sight.

“ It is four or five years ago since the marriage, and madame has two lovely children, who look at you timidly with the eyes of their mother. I saw them pass in a carriage, the other day, with their grandam.

“ But the marriage has turned out most unhappily. Madame did not give me her confidence; any one, however, could see she was in deep trouble. She was pale, and had a look of suffering on her face. I feared she was in a decline, as she had the spirituelle appearance of the consumptive. But she said nothing to me, nor do I think she told her story to any one in the village. However, it is well known enough now, though everything may not be just as it is reported.

“ For two or three years the marriage was happy enough. M. Manning, whom thou mayest also remember, — he bought Quillette’s farm from us, — was kind to her. He was proud of her beauty, and nothing was too fine so that it set it off. He gave her magnificent presents, — diamonds, and furs, and what not. She was everywhere acknowledged to be the most beautiful woman of the day. And as she was devoted to her husband he was the envy of all.

“ Wouldst thou believe it, Pierre ? M. Manning grew weary of her devotion, and became tired even of her beauty. It is said another lady came to Montreal,— not nearly so beautiful as his wife, but with a strange fascination before which men fell down powerless. It happened that she came just when Manning was wearying of his wife. I have not seen her, but they say she was brilliant, yet cold, — cold to everybody but him. Over him she cast a spell. His admiration of her was soon observed. Wherever she was, there also was M. Manning. For a time madame did not, or perhaps would not, notice it. But thou knowest that there are always kind friends near at hand to whisper of such doings in the ears of those who would rather not hear them. Of course madame was jealous. How could it be otherwise ? She found herself completely neglected for this stranger. She spoke to her husband, and’t is said there were violent scenes. I cannot believe it of such a distinguished gentleman as M. Manning, but it is even reported that he struck her. For myself, I doubt it. Such a man has more deadly weapons than his hands.

“ Madame then pursued a different course. She resolved to have done with expostulation, and to play the same game that he was playing. She openly preferred the society of a gentleman well known in the capital. True, he was a great friend of her husband’s, but her preference was remarked. Of course her husband remarked it also, and even taunted her with this liaison. But madame’s heart was not in it, and she gave up the struggle against her rival. At this time she had a Serious illness, brought on by her trouble, and she has never recovered from it altogether.

“ Perhaps thou canst anticipate the end ? One day M. Manning told his wife that he had to go off on business for some weeks. A few days later it was learned that he had sailed for Europe, and not alone.

“ This is madame’s story as it is told in the village. Is it not sad ?

“ Madame tried for a time to bear up against her misfortunes, but they have been too much for her. She left Montreal and came hither. She would know nobody here, save her relatives. For myself, I fear she is dying, arid that the end cannot be far off. She is very thin, very pale, very weak. She never goes out of the bouse save to church. All her old beauty has gone from her, they say, save that her eyes are more beautiful than ever. They look like the eyes of a hunted deer. Thou knowest what I mean.

“ I do not know why I should tell thee this, my Pierre, but that it is almost the only subject of conversation in St. Athanase outside the ordinary round of our life.

“ Adieu, my son.

“ Send me word that thou art well.

“ Thy loving father,

“MTTU. LACORDIÈRE.”

A postscript was added: “ I open this letter to say that there is a report that madame is dead. I went out into the village to learn if it were true, and I was told that Father Barret had been hurriedly sent for. . . . It is true ; thus my fears are realized. Ah, how sad it all is! I am glad that her little children are provided for; their grandam will take care of them.”

So the old man had written in his garrulous fashion, unwitting that every word had a stab for his son.

“ Is it well with thee, my son ? ” The awful irony of it all !

The April day comes to a close. Unconscious of the flight of time, Pierre remains in the same attitude for hours.

His first feeling is one of intolerable shock. Marie dead, dead, dead ! Again and again does he go over his whole story, her whole story. With what hopes, what promise, what brave and gallant thoughts, had his begun for him ! He had never thought that the end might be this. He had meant to isolate what was their common past, and to keep it from any change ; something he might muse over sadly, but into which nothing fresh should come. He had imagined that he could close his account with the past when he entered the Oblates, and that with what should happen later he should have nothing to do. Yet this was the end! Marie dead, brokenhearted! More than that, she had been dead for months; and he had pictured her glad and happy, with everything about her that her heart could wish. His own brave and loyal spirit had been buoyed up by it. Then the lying mirror had told him so, and he had believed it; it had mocked at all his inward battlings, but it had never suggested such misery as this.

The chill dawn lightens up the room of the Oblate, but it brings no brightness to him. As his thoughts keep going the same fevered round, he becomes conscious of a strange sense of tightening about his head ; it is as if some invisible hand is compressing his brain with its iron fingers. It continues till it is unendurable. He moves restlessly from his position. His eyes, which have been shut, open and wander ; from the force of habit they look into the mirror.

There he beholds Marie, — beholds her without wonder or fear, but no longer does she appear to him in all the gracious charm of her beauty. He can hardly see anything nowr but her eyes : they are large and sad in the gray light of the morning; they are full of a tearless pity for him and for herself. He cannot bear to look long into them. The tears rise to his own ; he weeps ; the pressure for a time lifts from his brain.

Marie, beautiful Marie, dead! Living, he had loved her; dead, he loved her not less. Ay, could he not the more love her now ? Did not death, kind death, make her his at last ? Her husband was nothing to her now. Her husband —

A storm of rage sweeps over him when he thinks of Manning ; it shuts out everything else. How he had been deceived! He had imagined Manning the most devoted husband; a man worthy of the girl whose love was not for him, — of whom he had said in his humility he was not himself worthy. In the midst of his own heart-bitterness, when he had struggled with his jealousy and despair, he had found some comfort in the thought that Marie was happy with the man of her love. Moreover, there had been a dreary satisfaction in seeing so peerless a gem so fitly set, so becomingly worn. Had it all been the hollowest make-believe? Well, it had ended thus. Manning had deserted her, flung her from him for another who had taken his wandering fancy. There was neither loyalty, nor truth, nor faith, nor courage, in the man he had thought worthy ; only a common and vulgar story, — the sort of story which made a cynical world smile with its ever enjoyable comment, “ I told you so.”

What vengeance could reach this man ? Was Manning not far beyond all reach of vengeance from him ?

Pierre, as he thinks of Manning, paces quickly up and down the little room. His madness is on him again.

Outside it is intensely cold. Absorbed by his own thoughts, Pierre has not replenished the fire, and it is burnt out; and the stove is cold as ice. The temperature within the hut is almost as low as that of the outside air. Though it is April, it is still as cold in these latitudes as in midwinter; and the ice on the lake does not break up till far on in June. Pierre heeds not the cold. There is a fever in his veins ; the man’s whole being is afire.

As the dawn slowly broadens to day the air is calm and still, save for the hungry howling of wolves. They are strangely near the cottage ; they seem to be closing in upon it. It is as if a ghastly circle of them ringed it round, as if the circle is growing less and less. Does some instinct tell them of the doom there is upon the cottage ? Pierre hears their cries, and to his disordered mind they seem like the shouts of the demons of the accursed mirror.

Again Pierre feels that tightening upon his brain, and he can bear it but little longer.

“Ah, Manning, if thou wert here ! ” exclaims Pierre in fury.

Manning is there. The living mirror shows Pierre Ins face distinctly, — the handsome face. God ! What a sneer of triumph there is upon it! How the eyes swell with devilish glee!

“ You have killed Marie, my Marie ! ” he shouts in a terrible voice. “ You shall die! ”

Manning mocks him.

“ What have you to do with Marie ? A priest, forsooth ! ” And the imaged lips laugh at him.

Quickly Pierre raises his hand to strike, but before the blow falls the face of Manning disappears, and the great sad eyes of Marie look at him instead.

With one shuddering shriek the Oblate falls down heavily, a dark huddled mass, unconscious, upon the floor.

Hurry, hurry, Mère Goitten, before the wolves !

The room is cold, icy cold, when Mère Goitten comes to the mission - house from the trading-post, to attend to the father’s wants, as she has done every day since he came. She enters, but there is no friendly salutation for her this morning. With terror she sees Pierre stretched upon the floor. She touches his hands, — they are ice; his hair, — it is stiff with frost. She tries to raise him, but her efforts are fruitless, and so she desists, and runs back to the post to bring her husband.

Tenderly, reverently, do they move the body. They moisten the white lips with brandy, they chafe the white cheeks with snow, they rub his white hands and his white feet; and Pierre revives for a few moments. Put it is too late. The vital forces are too much weakened by the long, terrible mental struggle to bear any further strain.

His lips move.

“ Marie,Marie,” is the faint whisper; and Mère Goitten crosses herself.

“ He is calling on the Holy Mother,” she says.

“ Marie,” Pierre says again, in a firmer voice.

He tries to sit up, and Goitten supports him. He raises his eyes: they travel round the room, past the pictured Virgin and the crucifix, and fix themselves on the mirror. He looks at it fixedly, and tries to motion Mère Goitten to bring it to him. She takes it down from the wall. He looks at it intently. It is but a hit of glass.

“ It was my mother’s,” he says, and with his eyes fixed on it falls back dead.

Then there is silence upon the snows; silence in the hut above the still, white face ; silence forevermore in the dead man’s heart.

R. Machray.