But the idea was introduced to him in a manner which taught him to
think that there was to be a clandestine love affair. To him George
was still a boy, and Marie not much more than a child, and--without
much thinking--he felt that the thing was improper.

'I won't have it, George,' he had said.

'Won't have what, father?'

'Never mind. You know. If you can't get over it in any other way,
you had better go away. You must do something for yourself before
you can think of marrying.'

'I am not thinking of marrying.'

'Then what were you thinking of when I saw you with Marie? I won't
have it for her sake, and I won't have it for mine, and I won't have
it for your own. You had better go away for a while.'

'I'll go away to-morrow if you wish it, father.' Michel had turned
away, not saying another word; and on the following day George did
go away, hardly waiting an hour to set in order his part of his
father's business. For it must be known that George had not been an
idler in his father's establishment. There was a trade of wood-
cutting upon the mountain-side, with a saw-mill turned by water
beneath, over which George had presided almost since he had left the
school of the commune. When his father told him that he was bound
to do something before he got married, he could not have intended to
accuse him of having been hitherto idle. Of the wood-cutting and
the saw-mill George knew as much as Marie did of the poultry and the