better. After sundry vicissitudes and twists of fortune, he met Nicolas
Lavilette at a horse race, and a friendship was struck up. He frankly
and gladly accepted an invitation to attend the wedding of Sophie
Lavilette, and to make a visit at the farm, and at the Manor Casimbault
afterwards. Nicolas spoke lightly of the Manor Casimbault, yet he had
pride in it also; for, scamp as he was, and indifferent to anything like
personal dignity or self-respect, he admired his father and had a
natural, if good-natured, arrogance akin to Christine's self-will.

It meant to Ferrol freedom from poverty, misery and financial subterfuge
for a moment; and he could be quiet--for, as he said, "This confounded
cold takes the iron out of my blood."

Like all people stricken with this disease, he never called it anything
but a cold. All those illusions which accompany the malady were his. He
would always be better "to-morrow." He told the two or three friends who
came from their beds in the early morning to see him safely off from
Montreal to Bonaventure that he would be all right as soon as he got out
into the country; that he sat up too late in the town; and that he had
just got a new prescription which had cured a dozen people "with colds
and hemorrhages." His was only a cold--just a cold; that was all. He
was a bit weak sometimes, and what he needed was something to pull up
his strength. The country would do this-plenty of fresh air, riding,
walking, and that sort of thing.

He had left Montreal behind in gay spirits, and he continued gay for
several hours, holding himself' erect in the seat, noting the landscape,
telling stories; but he stumbled with weakness as they got out of the
coach for luncheon. He drank three full portions of whiskey at table,
and ate nothing. The silent landlady who waited on them at last brought