I'll take my gruel expecting it, not fearing it--if there is to be any gruel anywhere, or any round-up anywhere!" A figure suddenly appeared coming round the bend of the road before him.

It was Rouge Gosselin.

Rouge Gosselin was inclined to speak.

Some satanic whim or malicious foppery made Charley stare him blankly in the face.

The monocle and the stare stopped the bon soir and the friendly warning on Rouge Gosselin's tongue, and the pilot passed on with a muttered oath.
Gosselin had not gone far, however, before he suddenly stopped and laughed outright, for at the bottom he had great good-nature, in keeping with his "six-foot" height, and his temper was friendly if quick.
It seemed so absurd, so audacious, that a man could act like Charley Steele, that he at once became interested in the phenomenon, and followed slowly after Charley, saying as he went: "Tiens, there will be things to watch to-night!" Before Charley was within five hundred yards of the tavern he could hear the laughter and song coming from the old seigneury which Theophile Charlemagne called now the Cote Dorion Hotel, after the name given to the point on which the house stood.