of all. But he was only at St. Saviour's for his convalescence after a
so-called attack of congestion of the lungs; and as he still had a slight
cough and looked none too robust, and as, more than all, he was simple
in his ways, enjoying the life of the parish with greater zest than the
residents, he found popularity. Undoubtedly he had a taking way with
him. He was lodging with Louis Charron, a small farmer and kinsman of
Jean Jacques, who sold whisky--"white whisky"--without a license. It was
a Charron family habit to sell liquor illegally, and Louis pursued the
career with all an amateur's enthusiasm. He had a sovereign balm for
"colds," composed of camomile flowers, boneset, liquorice, pennyroyal and
gentian root, which he sold to all comers; and it was not unnatural that
a visitor with weak lungs should lodge with him.

Louis and his wife had only good things to say about Gerard Fynes; for
the young man lived their life as though he was born to it. He ate the
slap-jacks, the buttermilk-pop, the pork and beans, the Indian corn on
the cob, the pea-soup, and the bread baked in the roadside oven, with a
relish which was not all pretence; for indeed he was as primitive as he
was subtle. He himself could not have told how much of him was true and
how much was make-believe. But he was certainly lovable, and he was not
bad by nature. Since coming to St. Saviour's he had been constant to one
attraction, and he had not risked his chances with Zoe by response to the
shy invitations of dark eyes, young and not so young, which met his own
here and there in the parish.

Only M. Fille and Jean Jacques himself had feelings of real antagonism to
him. Jean Jacques, though not naturally suspicious, had, however, seen
an understanding look pass between his Zoe and this stranger--this
Protestant English stranger from the outer world, to which Jean Jacques
went less frequently since his fruitless search for his vanished Carmen.