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
memory on which was carved, "Chez nous autrefois, et chez Dieu
maintenant"--which was to say, "Our home once, and God's Home now."
That done, with a sorrow which still had the peace of finality in his
mind, he had turned his face to the West. His long, long sojourning had
brought him to Shilah where a new chapter of his life was closed, and at
last to Askatoon, where another chapter still closed an epoch in his
life, and gave finality to all. There he had been taken down with
congestion of the lungs, and, fainting at the door of a drug-store, had
been taken possession of by the Young Doctor, who would not send him to
the hospital. He would not send him there because he found inside the
waistcoat of this cleanest tramp--if he was a tramp--that he had ever
seen, a book of philosophy, the daguerreotype photo of a beautiful
foreign-looking woman, and some verses in a child's handwriting.
Pages:
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330