marriage,--happily done, whatever the reason.

For Martel, outside business matters, which needed a clear head and all a
man's wits about him unless he wanted to run himself and his cargoes into
trouble, soon proved himself unstable as water. The nature of his business
tended to conviviality. Successful runs were celebrated, and fresh ones
planned, and occasional losses consoled, in broached kegs which cost
little. Success or failure found equal satisfaction in the flowing bowl,
and no home happiness ever yet came out of a bung-hole.

Then, too, Rachel Carré had been brought up by her father in a simple,
perhaps somewhat rigorous, faith, which in himself developed into
Quakerism. I have thought it not impossible that in that might be found
some explanation of her action in marrying Paul Martel. Perhaps her father
drew the lines somewhat tightly, and her opening life craved width and
colour, and found the largest possibilities of them in the rollicking young
stranger. Truly he brought colour enough and to spare into the sober gray
of her life. It was when the red blood started under his vicious blows that
their life together ended.

Martel had no beliefs whatever, except in himself and his powers of
outwitting any preventive officer ever born.

Rachel Carré's illusions died one by one. The colours faded, the gray
darkened. Martel was much away on his business; possibly also on his
pleasures.

One night, after a successful run, he returned home very drunk, and
discovered more than usual cause for resentment in his wife's reproachful
silence. He struck her, wounding her to the flowing of blood, and she