I marvel that I do not take every man and woman of them that fall into my hands and flog them to death as they would have flogged you when you sought--alas to so little purpose--to intervene on my behalf." He grew silent and thoughtful, and the expression of his face was not nice.

At last: "Have I given you reason enough," he asked, "why you should not seek to thwart me ?" "Why, yes," answered La Boulaye, "more than was necessary.

I am desolated that I should have brought you to re-open a sorrow that I thought was healed." "So it is, Caron.

How it is I do not know.

Perhaps it is my nature; perhaps it is that in youth sorrow is seldom long-enduring; perhaps it is the strenuous life I have lived and the changes that have been wrought in me--for, after all, there is a little in this Captain Tardivet that is like the peasant poor Marie took to husband, four years ago.