.

THE STEALING OF THE CROSS.
If Charley had been less engaged with his own thoughts, he would have noticed the curious baleful look in the eyes of the tailor; but he was deeply absorbed in a struggle that had nothing to do with Louis Trudel.
The old fever of thirst and desire was upon him.

All morning the door of Jolicoeur's saloon was opening and shutting before his mind's eye, and there was a smell of liquor everywhere.

It was in his nostrils when the hot steam rose from the clothes he was pressing, in the thick odour of the fulled cloth, in the melting snow outside the door.
Time and again he felt that he must run out of the shop and away to the little tavern where white whiskey was sold to unwise habitants.

But he fought on.