she said, "you told me once that the Santien boys were a
hard lot; what did you mean by that?"

"Oh no," he answered, laughing good-humoredly up into her eyes, "you
did'n year me right. W'at I said was that we had a hard name in the
country. I don' see w'y eitha, excep' we all'ays done putty much like
we wanted. But my! a man can live like a saint yere at Place-du-Bois,
they ain't no temptations o' no kine."

"There's little merit in your right doing, if you have no temptations
to withstand," delivering the time worn aphorism with the air and tone
of a pretty sage, giving utterance to an inspired truth.

Melicent felt that she did not fully know Gregoire; that he had always
been more or less under restraint with her, and she was troubled by
something other than curiosity to get at the truth concerning him. One
day when she was arranging a vase of flowers at a table on the back
porch, Aunt Belindy, who was scouring knives at the same table, had
followed Gregoire with her glance, when he walked away after
exchanging a few words with Melicent.

"God! but dats a diffunt man sence you come heah."

"Different?" questioned the girl eagerly, and casting a quick sideward
look at Aunt Belindy.

"Lord yas honey, 'f you warn't heah dat same Mista Gregor 'd be in
Centaville ev'y Sunday, a raisin' Cain. Humph--I knows 'im."

Melicent would not permit herself to ask more, but picked up her vase
of flowers and walked with it into the house; her comprehension of
Gregoire in no wise advanced by the newly acquired knowledge that he
was liable to "raise Cain" during her absence--a proceeding which she
could not too hastily condemn, considering her imperfect apprehension
of what it might imply.

Meanwhile she would not allow her doubts to interfere with the
kindness which she lavished on him, seeing that he loved her to
desperation. Was he not at this very moment looking up into her eyes,
and talking of his misery and her cruelty? turning his face downward
in her lap--as she knew to cry--for had she not already seen him lie
on the ground in an agony of tears, when she had told him he should
never kiss her again?

And so they lingered in the woods, these two curious lovers, till the
shadows grew so deep about old McFarlane's grave that they passed it
by with hurried step and averted glance.

IX

Face to Face.

After a day of close and intense September heat, it had rained during
the night. And now the morning had foll