Might there not be another refuge here--here in Palass Poucette's widow! He was sixty-three, it was true, and she was only thirty-two; but for her to be an old man's darling who had no doubt been a young man's slave, that would surely have its weight with her.

Also she owned the farm where she lived; and she was pleasant pasturage--that was the phrase he used in his own mind, even as his eye swept from Mere Langlois to hers in swift, hungry inquiry.
He seemed in earnest when he spoke--but that was his way; it had done him service often.

"I do good whenever it comes my way to do it," he continued.

"I left my work this morning"-- he lied of course--"and hired a buggy to bring me over here, all at my own cost, to save a fellow-man.
There in the Court House he was sure of prison, with a wife and three small children weeping in 'The Red Eagle'; and there I come at great expense and trouble to tell the truth--before all to tell the truth--and save him and set him free.

Yonder he is in the tavern, the work of my hands, a gift to the world from an honest man with a good heart and a sense of justice.