nd set it down with a sigh of content. Then
he broke bread into the soup--large pieces of black oat bread--until the
bowl was a mass of luscious pulp. This he ate almost ravenously, his eye
wandering avidly the while to the small piece of meat beside the bowl.
What meat was it? It looked like venison, yet summer was not the time
for venison. What did it matter! Jo sat on a bench beside the fire, his
face turned towards his guest, dreading the moment when the man he had
nursed and cared for, with whom he had eaten and drunk for so long,
should know the truth about himself. He could not tell him all there was
to tell, he was taking another means of letting him know.

Charley did not speak. Hunger was a new sensation, a delicious thing,
too good to be broken by talking. He ate till he had cleared away the
last crumbs of bread and meat and drunk the last drop of soup. He looked
at the woodsman as though wondering if he would bring more. Jo evidently
thought he had had enough, for he did not move. Charley's glance
withdrew from Jo, and busied itself with the few crumbs remaining upon
the table. He saw a little piece of bread on the floor. He picked it up
and ate it with relish, laughing to himself.

"How long will it take us to get to town? Can we do it this morning?"

"Not this morning, M'sieu'," said Jo, in a sort of hoarse whisper.

"How many hours would it take?"

He was gathering the last crumbs of his feast with his hand, and looking
casually down at the newspaper spread as a table-cloth.

All at once his hand stopped, his eyes became fixed on a spot in the
paper. He gave a hoarse, guttural cry, like an animal in agony. His lips
became dry, his hand wiped a blinding mist from his eyes.

Jo watched him with an intense alarm and a horrified curiosity. He felt
a base coward for not having told Charley what this paper contained.
Never had he seen such a look as this. He felt his beads, and told
them over and over again, as Charley Steele, in a dry, croaking sort
of whisper, read, in letters that seemed monstrous symbols of fire, a
record of himself:

"To-day, by special license from the civil and ecclesiastical courts
[the paragraph in the paper began], was married, at St. Theobald's
Church, Mrs. Charles Steele, daughter of the late Hon. Julien Wantage,
and niece of the late Eustace Wantage, Esq., to Captain Thomas Fairing,
of the Royal Fusileers--"

Charley snatched at the top of the paper and read the date "Tent