always!"

"Come home with me--where are your things?" she asked.

"I have only a knapsack," he replied. "It is not far from here. But I
cannot stay with you. I have no claim. No, I will not, for--"

"As to that, we keep a tavern," she returned. "You can come the same
as the rest of the world. The company is mixed, but there it is. You
needn't eat off the same plate, as they say in Quebec."

Quebec! He looked at her with the face of one who saw a vision. How
like Virginie Poucette--the brave, generous Virginie--how like she was!

In silence now he went with her, and seeing his mood she did not talk to
him. People stared as they walked along, for his dress was curious and
his head was bare, and his hair like the coat of a young lion. Besides,
this woman was, in her way, as brave and as generous as Virginie
Poucette. In the very doorway of the tavern by the river a man jostled
them. He did not apologize. He only leered. It made his foreign-
looking, coarsely handsome face detestable.

"Pig!" exclaimed Virginie Poucette's sister. "That's a man--well, look
out! There's trouble brewing for him. If he only knew! If suspicion
comes out right and it's proved--well, there, he'll jostle the door-jamb
of a jail."

Jean Jacques stared after the man, and somehow every nerve in his body
became angry. He had all at once a sense of hatred. He shook the
shoulder against which the man had collided. He remembered the leer