round him--the
uncomplicated lie and the unvarnished truth, the obvious sorrow and the
patent joy, the childish faith, and the rude wickedness so pardonable
because so frankly brutal--had worked upon him. The elemental spirit
of it all had so invaded his nature, breaking through the crust of old
habit to the new man, that, when he fell before his temptation, and his
body became saturated with liquor, the healthy natural being and the
growing natural mind were overpowered by the coarse onslaught, and death
had nearly followed.

It was his first appeal to a force outside himself, to an active
principle unfamiliar to the voluntary working of his nature, and the
answer had been immediate and adequate. Yet what was it? He did not ask;
he had not got beyond the mere experience, and the old questioning habit
was in abeyance. Each new and great emotion has its dominating moment,
its supreme occasion, before taking its place in the modulated moral
mechanism. He was touched with helplessness.

As he sat beside Narcisse Dauphin's bedside, one evening, the sick man
on his way to recovery, there came to him the text of a sermon he had
once heard John Brown preach: "Greater love hath no man than this, that
a man lay down his life for his friend." He had been thinking of Rosalie
and that day at Vadrome Mountain. She would not only have died with him,
but she would have died for him, if need had been. What might he give in
return for what she gave?

The Notary interrupted his thoughts. He had lain watching Charley for a
long time, his brow drawn down with thought. At last he said:

"Monsieur, you have been good to me." Charley laid a hand on the sick
man's arm.

"I don't see that. But if you won't talk, I'll believe you think so."

The Notary shook his head. "I've not been talking for an hour, I've no
fever, and I want to say some things. When I've said them, I'll feel
better--voila! I want to make the amende honorable. I once thought
you were this and that--I won't say what I thought you. I said you
interfered--giving advice to people, as you did to Filion Lacasse, and
taking the bread out of my mouth. I said that!"

He paused, raised himself on his elbow, smoothed back his grizzled
hair behind his ears, looked at himself in the mirror opposite with
satisfaction, and added oracularly: "But how prone is the mind of man
to judge amiss! You have put bread into my mouth--no, no, Monsieur, you
shall hear me! As well as doing your o