n;' now treating a stiff neck or a bent back, or giving
momentary help to the palsy of an old man, or again making a speech.

Charley was in touch again with the old life, but in a kind of fantasy
only--a staring, high-coloured dream. This man--John Brown--had gone
down before his old ironical questioning, had been, indirectly, the
means of disgracing his name. A step forward to that wagon, a word
uttered, a look, and he would have to face again the life he had put
by for ever, would have to meet a hard problem and settle it--to what
misery and tragedy, who might say? Under this tree he was M. Mallard,
the infidel tailor, whose life was slowly entering into the life of
this place called Chaudiere, slowly being acted upon by habit, which,
automatically repeated, at length becomes character. Out in that red
light, before that garish wagon, he would be Charley Steele, barrister,
'flaneur', and fop, who, according to the world, had misused a wife,
misled her brother, robbed widows and orphans, squandered a fortune,
become drunkard and wastrel, and at last had lost his life in
a disorderly tavern at the Cote Dorion. This man before him had
contributed to his disgrace; but once he had contributed to John Brown's
disgrace; and to-day he had saved John Brown's life. They were even.

All the night before, all this morning, he had fought a fierce battle
with his past--with a raging thirst. The old appetite had swept over him
fiercely. All day he had moved in a fevered conflict, which had lifted
him away from the small movements of everyday life into a region where
only were himself and one strong foe, who tirelessly strove with him. In
his old life he had never had a struggle of any sort. His emotions had
been cloaked, his soul masked, there had been a film before his eyes, he
had worn an armour of selfishness on a life which had no deep problems,
because it had no deep feelings--a life never rising to the intellectual
prowess for which it was fitted, save when under the stimulus of liquor.

From the moment he had waked from a long seven months' sleep in the
hut on Vadrome Mountain, new deep feelings had come to him as he faced
problems of life. Fighting had begun from that hour--a fighting which
was putting his nature through bitter mortal exercises, yet, too, giving
him a sense of being he had never known. He had now the sweetness of
earning daily bread by the work of his hands; of giving to the poor, the
needy, and the afflic