if that might be! To live on here unrecognised? I am little like my
old self, and year after year I should grow less and less like Charley
Steele. . . . But, no, it is not possible!"

He stopped short in his thoughts, and his lips tightened in bitterness.

"God in heaven, what an impasse!" he said aloud.

There was a sudden crackling of twigs as a man rose up from a log by the
wayside ahead of him. It was Jo Portugais, who had seen him coming, and
had waited for him. He had heard Charley's words.

"Do you call me an impasse, M'sieu'?" Charley grasped Portugais' hand.

"What has happened, M'sieu'?" Jo asked anxiously. There was a brief
silence, and then Charley told him of the events of the morning.

"You know of the mark-here?" he asked, touching his breast.

Jo nodded. "I saw, when you were ill."

"Yet you never asked!"

"I studied it out--I knew old Louis Trudel. Also, I saw ma'm'selle nail
the cross to the church door. Two and two together in my mind did it.
I didn't think Paulette Dubois would tell. I warned her."

"She quarrelled with mademoiselle. It was revenge.

"She might have been less vindictive. She had had good luck herself