ore it. Again he turned inquiringly, this time
towards the Cure. The Cure did not speak.

"It is you we wish to see, tailor," said the Abbe Rossignol.

Soft-tongued irony leaped to Charley's lips: "Have I, then, the honour
of including Monsieur among my customers? I cannot recall Monsieur's
figure. I think I should not have forgotten it."

It was now the old Charley Steele, with the new body, the new spirit,
but with the old skilful mind, aggravatingly polite, non-intime--the
intolerant face of this father of souls irritated him.

"I never forget a figure which has idiosyncrasy," he added, with a bland
eye wandering over the priest's gaunt form. It was his old way to strike
first and heal after--"a kick and a lick," as old Paddy Wier, whom he
once saved from prison, said of him. It was like bygone years of another
life to appear in defence when the law was tightening round a victim.
The secret spring had been touched, the ancient machinery of his mind
was working almost automatically.

The illusion was considerable, for the Seigneur had taken the only
arm-chair in the room, a little apart, as it were, filling the place of
judge. The priest-brother, cold and inveterate, was like the attorney
for the crown. The Cure was the clerk of the court, who could only echo
the decisions of the Judge. The constables were the machinery of the
Law, and Jo Portugais was the unwilling witness, whose evidence would
be the crux of the case. The prisoner--he himself was prisoner and
prisoner's counsel.

A good struggle was forward.

He had enraged the Abbe as much as he had delighted the Abbe's brother;
for nothing gave the Seigneur such pleasure as the discomfiture of the
Abbe Rossignol, chaplain and ordinary to the Archbishop of Quebec. The
genial, sympathetic nature of the Seigneur could not even be patient
with the excessive piety of the churchman, who, in rigid righteousness,
had thrashed him cruelly as a boy. At Charley's words upon the Abbe's
figure, gaunt and precise as a swaddled ramrod, he pulled his nose with
a grunt of satisfaction.

The Cure, the peace-maker, intervened. The tailor's meaning was
sufficiently clear: if they had come to see him personally, then it was
natural for him to wish to know the names and stations of his guests,
and their business. The Seigneur was aware that the tailor did know, and
he enjoyed the 'sang-froid' with which he was meeting the situation.

"Monsieur," said the Cure, in a mollifying