performing behind the flaring oil-lights stuck on poles round his wagon,
his hat now on, now off; now singing a comic song in English---'I found
Y' in de Honeysuckle Paitch;' now a French chanson--'En Revenant de St.
Alban;' now treating a stiff neck or a bent back, or giving momentary
help to the palsy of an old man, or again making a speech.

Charley was in touch again with the old life, but in a kind of fantasy
only--a staring, high-coloured dream. This man--John Brown--had gone
down before his old ironical questioning, had been, indirectly, the means
of disgracing his name. A step forward to that wagon, a word uttered,
a look, and he would have to face again the life he had put by for ever,
would have to meet a hard problem and settle it--to what misery and
tragedy, who might say? Under this tree he was M. Mallard, the infidel
tailor, whose life was slowly entering into the life of this place called
Chaudiere, slowly being acted upon by habit, which, automatically
repeated, at length becomes character. Out in that red light, before
that garish wagon, he would be Charley Steele, barrister, 'flaneur', and
fop, who, according to the world, had misused a wife, misled her brother,
robbed widows and orphans, squandered a fortune, become drunkard and
wastrel, and at last had lost his life in a disorderly tavern at the Cote
Dorion. This man before him had contributed to his disgrace; but once he
had contributed to John Brown's disgrace; and to-day he had saved John
Brown's life. They were even.

All the night before, all this morning, he had fought a fierce battle
with his past--with a raging thirst. The old appetite had swept over him
fiercely. All day he had moved in a fevered conflict, which had lifted
him away from the small movements of everyday life into a region where
only were himself and one strong foe, who tirelessly strove with him.
In his old life he had never had a struggle of any sort. His emotions