g," and had no want
beyond. The travellers turned thence, found a third house full,
conjectured the same of the only remaining one, and took their way,
after all, towards Zosephine's. It was quite right, now, to go there,
thought Claude, since destiny led; and so he let it lead both his own
steps and the thrumping boots of this dear figure in Campeachy hat and
soft untrimmed beard, that followed ever at his side.

And then, after all!--looking into those quiet black eyes of
Zosephine's,--to hear that Marguerite was not there! Gone! Gone to the
great city, the place "too big to live in." Gone there for knowledge,
training, cultivation, larger life, and finer uses! Gone to study an
art,--an art! Risen beyond him "like a diamond in the sky." And he
fool enough to come rambling back, blue-shirted and brown-handed,
expecting to find her still a tavern maid! So, farewell fantasy! 'Twas
better so; much better. Now life was simplified. Oh, yes; and St.
Pierre made matters better still by saying to Zosephine:

"I dinn' know you got one lill gal. Claude never tell me 'bout dat. I
spec' dat why he dawn't want 'come yeh. He dawn't like gal; he run
f'om 'em like dog from yalla-jacket. He dawn't like none of 'm. What
he like, dass his daddy. He jus' married to his daddy." The father
dropped his hand, smilingly, upon his son's shoulder with a weight
that would have crushed it in had it been ordinary cast-iron.

Claude took the hand and held it, while Zosephine smiled and secretly
thanked God her child was away. In her letters to Marguerite she made
no haste to mention the young man's re-appearance, and presently a
small thing occurred that made it well that she had left it untold.

With Claude and his father some days passed unemployed. Yet both felt
them to be heavy with significance. The weight and pressure of new
and, to them, large conditions, were putting their inmost quality to
proof. Claude saw, now, what he could not see before; why his friend
the engineer had cast him loose without a word of advice as to where
he should go or what he should do. It was because by asking no advice
he had really proposed to be his own master. And now, could he do it?
Dare he try it?

The first step he took was taken, I suppose, instinctively rather than
intelligently; certainly it was perilous: he retreated into himself.
St. Pierre found work afield, for of this sort there was plenty; the
husbandmen's year, and the herders' too, were just g