ficers.

"It would relieve the situation," interposed the Seigneur, "if Monsieur
could find it possible to grant the Abbe's demand."

Charley bowed to the Seigneur. "I do not know why I should be taken for
a Frenchman or an infidel. I speak French well, I presume, but I spoke
it from the cradle. I speak English with equally good accent," he added,
with the glimmer of a smile; for there was a kind of exhilaration in the
little contest, even with so much at stake. This miserable, silly charge
had that behind it which might open up a grave, make its dead to walk,
fright folk from their senses, and destroy their peace for ever. Yet
he was cool and thinking clearly. He measured up the Abbe in his mind,
analysed him, found the vulnerable spot in his nature, the avenue to the
one place lighted by a lamp of humanity. He leaned a hand upon the ledge
of the chimney where he stood, and said, in a low voice:

"Monsieur l'Abbe, it is sometimes the misfortune of just men to
be terribly unjust. 'For conscience sake' is another name for
prejudice--for those antipathies which, natural to us, are, at the same
time, trap-doors, for our just intentions. You, Monsieur, have a radical
antipathy to those men who are unable to see or to feel what you were
privileged to see and feel from the time of your birth. You know that
you are right. Do you think that those who do not see as you do are
wicked because they were not given what you were given? If you are
right, may they, poor folk! not be the victims of their blindness of
heart--of the darkness born with them, or of the evils that overtake
them? For conscience sake, you would crush out evil. To you an
infidel--so called--is an evil-doer, a peril to the peace of God.
You drive him out from among the faithful. You heard that a tailor
of Chaudiere was an infidel. You did not prove him one, but you, for
conscience sake, are trying to remove him, by fixing on him a crime of
which he may, with slight show of reason, be suspected. But I ask you,
would you have taken the same deep interest in setting the law upon this
suspected man did you not believe him to be an infidel?"

He paused. The Abbe made no reply. The Cure was bending forward eagerly;
the Seigneur sat with his hands over the top of his cane, his chin on
his hands, never taking his eyes from him, save to glance once or twice
at his brother. Jo Portugais was crouched on the bench, watching.

"I do not know what makes an infidel," Charl