The Money Master, Complete

d he accepted his degree of illumination with content. But when Pere Langon was gathered to his fathers, and thousands had turned away from the graveyard, where he who had baptised

mp of wisdom at which the people lighted their small souls. The New Cure could command th

round good flour, brought him increasing pence; his saw-mill more than paid its way; his farms made a small profit, in spite of a cousin who worked one on halves, but who had a spendthrift wife; the ash-factory which his own initiative had started made no money, but the loss was only small; a

hile to stand well with him. If he insisted on debts being paid, he was never exacting or cruel. If he lent money, he never demanded more than eight per cent.; and he never pressed his debtors unduly. His cheerfulness seldo

e became an obsession with him. In vain the occasional college professors, who spent summer months at St. Saviour's, sought to interest him in science and history, for his philosophy had large areas of boredom; but science marched over too jagged a road for his tender intell

it. Let the poor fellows, who gave themselves to science, trouble their twisted minds with trigonometry and the formula of some grotesque chemical combination; let the dull people rub their noses in the ink of Greek and Latin, which was no use for ev

m being thought a philosopher, always carried about with him his little compendium from the quay at Quebec, whi

ne day, when he stepped into the witness-box, what he was, meaning what was his occupation, his re

the Judge who had tried the case-M. Ca

le man, that Monsieur Jean J

erything. He does enough foolish things to ruin any man, yet swims along-swims along. He has many kinds of business-mills, stores, farms, lime-kilns, and all that, and keeps them

nality, that's sure," wa

olar in Quebec, he said to me once that M'sieu' Jean Jacques missed being a genius by a

where it should be most cohesive. He interested me. I took note of every turn of his mind as he gave evidence. He will go on for a time, pulling his strings, doing this and doing that,

I will speak the truth about it. She is a Spaniard-the Spanische she is called by the neighbours. I will tell you

id. Bumptious little man, and yet-and yet there's something in him. There's a sense of things which everyone doesn't have-a glimmer of life beyond his own orbit, a catching at the biggest elements of being, a ho

se of pleasure that his great man, this wonderful aged little ju

idence in a weak world gets unearned profit often. But tell me about his wife-the Spanische. Tel

can do as much in an hour as most women can do in two; but then she will not keep at it. Her life is but fits and starts. Yet she h

she come from? What was t

r. It was like this,

he home-coming, and the life that followed, so far as rumour, observation, and a mind with a gift for narrative, which was not to be incomplete for lack of imaginati

They are all the same. The English are the worst-as though the good God was English. But the child-so beautiful, you say, and yet more like the father than the m

fits, and makes things hard at the Manor Cartier. It is not all a bed of roses for our Jean Jacques. But there it is. He is very busy all the time. Something doing always, never still, except when you will find him by the road-side, or in a tavern with all the people round him, talki

to the poor, that he does not treat men hardly who are in debt to him,

as so, m

e of that he will feel the blow when i

Jacques was not so busy with his farms and his mills and his kilns and his usury, he would see what a woman he has got. It is his good fortune that she has such sense in business. When Jean Jacques listens to her, he goes right. She herself did not want her father to manage the lime-kilns-the old Sebastian Dolores

ein?" laughed

I laugh," responded the Clerk of the Court a little unce

rge village, but because it had a court-house and a marketplace it was called a town-that he m

aught you-a bachelor too, with time on his hands, and the right side of seventy as well! The evidence you have given of a close knowledge of the household

ce of women, and even small girl children had frightened him, till he had made friends with little Zoe Barbille, the daughter of Jean Jacques. Yet even with Zoe, who was so simple and companionable and the very soul of childish confidence, he used to blush and falte

Court, and had great amusement out of his discomfiture. "You are convicted. At an age w

le Zoe-but a maid of charm and kindness. She brings me cakes and the toffy made by her own hands; and if I go to the Manor Cartier, as I often do, it is to be polite an

or he also was little, and he was fat and round and ruddy, an

the philosopher's house and talk at length also to m'sieu' the philosopher's wife; while to make the position regular by friendship with the philosopher's child is a wisdom which I can only ascribe to"

rotested the Clerk of the Court,

g his arm, "if I could have you no ot

m he lived every day, and they could see the doyen of the Bench, the great Judge Carcasson, who had refused to be knighted, arm in arm with him. Aye,

es of the big farmers, or the sister of the Cure, or the ladies of the military and commercial exiles who lived in that portion of the province; but because of an alien something in her look-a lonely, distant sense of isolation, a something which might hide a companionship and sympathy of a rare kind, or might be but the mask of a furtive, soulless nature. In the child's face was nothing of this. It was open as the day, bright with the cheerfulness of her father's countenance, alive with a humour which that countenance did not

a rare charm and sympathy. Her face was the mirror of her mind, and it had no ulterior thought. Her mother's face, the Judge had noted, was the foreground of a landscape which had lonely shadows. It w

ure Zoe gave a command to M. Fille to help her down. With a hand on his shoulder she dropped to the ground. Her object was at once a

r characteristics; and the sum of his reflections, after a few moments' talk, was that dangers he had se

the Clerk of the Court, should enable him to come to any definite conclusion. But at eighty-odd Judge Carcasson was a Solon and a Solomon in one. He had

in his. A kinship had been at once established between them, so little has age

f I were a judge I should have no jails," she said.

sea in a little boat, or out on the prairies without

ou would drop him on the prairie far away from ever

ld kill him or cure him

ne on the prairie-a separate prairie for every criminal-that would take a lot of space; but the idea is all right. It mightn't provide the pr

more intently towards a land that is far off, where the miserable miscalculations and mistakes of this world are readjusted. Now he was

do if you were a judg

a miller," she replied. "

le. If I get up early enough in the morning, or if I am let stay up at night late enough, I see him; but that is not e

, and irritation showed in her eyes, but by

what he can do and can

d you, ma'm'selle?" asked the old inquisitor. "You w

" she replied. "He is too goo

good idle, and make the bad work. The good you would put in a mill to watch the stones grind, and the bad you

oung girl asked with the look of a visi

ut yes, always, and always, and always," he replied. Inwardly he sai

her mother