"You hear that, ould sand-in-the-sugar!" said Mrs. Flynn. "Will you let
me kiss ye, darlin'?" she added to Rosalie, and, waddling over, reached
out her hands.

Rosalie's eyes were wet as she warmly kissed the old Irishwoman, and
thereupon they entered into a friendship which was without end.

The Seigneur drove the crowd from the shop, and shut the door.

The Cure came to Charley. "Monsieur," said he, "I have no words. When
I remember what agonies you suffered in those hours, how bravely you
endured them--ah, Monsieur!" he added, with moist eyes, "I shall always
feel that--that you are not far from the kingdom of God."

A silence fell upon them, for the Cure, the Seigneur, and Rosalie, as
they looked at Charley, thought of the scar like a red cross on his
breast.

It touched Charley with a kind of awe. He smiled painfully. "Shall I
give you proof?" he said, making a motion to undo his waistcoat.

"Monsieur!" said the Seigneur reprovingly, and holding out his hand.
"Monsieur! We are all gentlemen!"

CHAPTER XLIII. JO PORTUGAIS TELLS A STORY

Walking slowly, head bent, eyes unseeing, Charley was on his way to
Vadrome Mountain, with the knowledge that Jo Portugais had returned.

The hunger for companionship was on him: to touch some mind that could
understand the deep loneliness which had settled on him since that scene
in the postoffice. It was the loneliness of a new and great separation.
He had wakened to it to-day.

Once before, in the hut on Vadrome Mountain, he had wakened from a
grave, had been born again. Last night had come still another birth, had
come, as with Rosalie herself, knowledge, revelation, understanding.
To Rosalie the new vision had come with a vague pain of heart, without
shame, and with a wonderful happiness. Pain, shame, knowledge, and a
happiness that passed suddenly into a despairing sorrow, had come to
him.

In finding love he had found conscience, and in finding conscience he
was on his way to another great discovery.

Looking to where Jo Portugais' house was set among the pines, Charley
remembered the day--he saw the scene in his mind's eye--when Rosalie
entered with the letter addressed "To the sick man at the house of Jo
Portugais, at Vadrome Mountain," and he saw again her clear, unsoiled
soul in the deep inquiring eyes.

"If you but knew"--he turned and looked down at the village below--"if
you but knew!" he said, as though to all the world. "I have the sign
from h