known them. The man--haggard, dying--cherished a pride that had grown
fiercer as the grip of poverty tightened upon him. The woman lived only
for her husband and her child.

The man was Gustave Lenoble. The world had gone ill with him since he
cast his destiny into the lap of the woman he loved. In all these years
no olive-bearing dove had spanned the gulf that yawned between the
prodigal and his father. The seigneur of Beaubocage had been marble. A
narrow-minded old man, living his narrow life, and nursing one idea with
fanatical devotion, was of all men the least likely to forgive. Vain had
been the tears and entreaties of mother and sister. The doors of that
joyless dwelling on the fertile flats beyond Vevinord were sealed against
the offender with a seal not to be broken, even had he come thither to
plead for pardon, which he did not.

"My father would have sold me as negro slaves are sold _labas_," he said,
on those rare occasions when he opened his old wounds, which were to the
last unhealed: "I am glad that I escaped the contemptible barter."

He was in very truth glad. Poverty and hardship seemed to him easier to
bear than the dreary prosperity of Cotenoir and a wife he could not have
loved. The distinguishing qualities of this man's mind were courage and
constancy. There are such noble souls born into the world, some to shine
with lustre supernal, many to burn and die in social depths, obscure as
ocean's deepest cavern.

In his love for the woman he had chosen Gustave Lenoble never wavered. He
worked for her, he endured for her, he hoped against hope for her sake;
and it was only when bodily strength failed that this nameless
foot-soldier began to droop and falter in life's bitter battle. Things