CHAPTER XXIV

JEAN JACQUES ENCAMPED

The Young Doctor of Askatoon had a good heart, and he was exercising it
honourably one winter's day near three years after Jean Jacques had left
St. Saviour's.

"There are many French Canadians working on the railway now, and a good
many habitant farmers live hereabouts, and they have plenty of children
--why not stay here and teach school? You are a Catholic, of course,
monsieur?"

This is what the Young Doctor said to one who had been under his anxious
care for a few, vivid days. The little brown-bearded man with the grey-
brown hair nodded in reply, but his gaze was on the billowing waste of
snow, which stretched as far as eye could see to the pine-hills in the
far distance. He nodded assent, but it was plain to be seen that the
Young Doctor's suggestion was not in tune with his thought. His nod only
acknowledged the reasonableness of the proposal. In his eyes, however,
was the wanderlust which had possessed him for three long years, in which
he had been searching for what to him was more than Eldorado, for it was
hope and home. Hope was all he had left of the assets which had made him
so great a figure--as he once thought--in his native parish of St.
Saviour's. It was his fixed idea--une idee fixe, as he himself said.
Lands, mills, manor, lime-kilns, factories, store, all were gone, and his
wife Carmen also was gone. He had buried her with simple magnificence
in Montreal--Mme. Glozel had said to her neighbours afterwards that the
funeral cost over seventy-five dollars--and had set up a stone to her