afire. That would have been profitable from no standpoint, and he had no
grudge against Jean Jacques. Why should he have a grudge? Jean Jacques'
good fortune, as things were, made his own good fortune; for he ate and
drank and slept and was clothed at his son-in-law's expense. But he
guessed accurately who had set the mill on fire, and that it was done
accidentally. He remembered that a man who smoked bad tobacco which had
to be lighted over and over again, threw a burning match down after
applying it to his pipe. He remembered that there was a heap of flour-
bags near where the man stood when the match was thrown down; and that
some loose strings for tying were also in a pile beside the bags. So it
was easy for the thing to have happened if the man did not turn round
after he threw the match down, but went swaying on out of the mill, and
over to the Manor Cartier, and up staggering to bed; for he had been
drinking potato-brandy, and he had been brought up on the mild wines of
Spain! In other words, the man who threw down the lighted match which
did the mischief was Sebastian Dolores himself.

He regretted it quite as much as he had ever regretted anything; and on
the night of the fire there were tears in his large brown eyes which
deceived the New Cure and others; though they did not deceive the widow
of Palass Poucette, who had found him out, and who now had no pleasure at
all in his aged gallantries. But the regret Dolores experienced would
not prevent him from doing Jean Jacques still greater injury if, and
when, the chance occurred, should it be to his own advantage.

Jean Jacques shed no tears on the night that his beloved flour-mill
became a blackened ruin, and his saw-mill had a narrow escape. He was
like one in a dream, scarcely realizing that men were saying kind things
to him; that the New Cure held his hand and spoke to him more like a
brother than one whose profession it was to be good to those who