hat day; and she could not rest till she had written to
Virginie how Jean Jacques came to Shilah in the evening, and went with
the dawn.

CHAPTER XXIV. JEAN JACQUES ENCAMPED

The Young Doctor of Askatoon had a good heart, and he was exercising it
honourably one winter's day near three years after Jean Jacques had left
St. Saviour's.

"There are many French Canadians working on the railway now, and a
good many habitant farmers live hereabouts, and they have plenty of
children--why not stay here and teach school? You are a Catholic, of
course, monsieur?"

This is what the Young Doctor said to one who had been under his anxious
care for a few, vivid days. The little brown-bearded man with the
grey-brown hair nodded in reply, but his gaze was on the billowing waste
of snow, which stretched as far as eye could see to the pine-hills in
the far distance. He nodded assent, but it was plain to be seen that the
Young Doctor's suggestion was not in tune with his thought. His nod only
acknowledged the reasonableness of the proposal. In his eyes, however,
was the wanderlust which had possessed him for three long years, in
which he had been searching for what to him was more than Eldorado, for
it was hope and home. Hope was all he had left of the assets which had
made him so great a figure--as he once thought--in his native parish of
St. Saviour's. It was his fixed idea--une idee fixe, as he himself said.
Lands, mills, manor, lime-kilns, factories, store, all were gone,
and his wife Carmen also was gone. He had buried her with simple
magnificence in Montreal--Mme. Glozel had said to her neighbours
afterwards that the funeral cost over seventy-five dollars--and had set
up a stone to her memory on which was carved, "Chez nous autrefois, et
chez Dieu maintenant"--which was to say, "Our home once, and God's Home
now."

That done, with a sorrow which still had the peace of finality in his
mind, he had turned his face to the West. His long, long sojourning had
brought him to Shilah where a new chapter of his life was closed, and
at last to Askatoon, where another chapter still closed an epoch in
his life, and gave finality to all. There he had been taken down with
congestion of the lungs, and, fainting at the door of a drug-store, had
been taken possession of by the Young Doctor, who would not send him to
the hospital. He would not send him there because he found inside the
waistcoat of this cleanest tramp--if he was a tramp--t