His look was set upon the red reflection which widened
in the sky and seemed to grow nearer and nearer. The horses quickened
their pace. He touched them with the whip, and they went faster. The glow
increased as he left Vilray behind. He gave the horses the whip again
sharply, and they broke into a gallop. Yet his eyes scarcely left the
sky. The crimson glow drew him, held him, till his brain was afire also.
Jean Jacques had a premonition and a conviction which was even deeper
than the imagination of M. Fille.
In Vilray, behind him, the telegraph clerk was in the street shouting to
someone to summon the local fire-brigade to go to St. Saviour's.
"What is it--what is it?" asked M. Fille of the telegraph clerk in marked
agitation.
"It's M'sieu' Jean Jacques' flour-mill," was the reply.
Wagons and buggies and carts began to take the road to the Manor Cartier;
and Maitre Fille went also with the widow of Palass Poucette.
CHAPTER XVII
HIS GREATEST ASSET
Jean Jacques did not go to the house of the widow of Palass Poucette
"next day" as he had proposed: and she did not expect him. She had seen
his flour-mill burned to the ground on the-evening when they met in the
office of the Clerk of the evening Court, when Jean Jacques had learned
that his Zoe had gone into farther and farther places away from him.
Perhaps Virginie Poucette never had shed as many tears in any whole year
of her life as she did that night, not excepting the year Palass Poucette
died, and left her his farm and seven horses, more or less sound, and a
threshing-machine in good condition.
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