It was almost midday when he slept; the afternoon was advancing when he awakened.  Madam Morin was standing beside him arranging a tray of food upon the table.

‘Eh!’ she said, and smiled upon him.

Then she pointed to the food, and demanded in pantomime if it suited him.  Courthope concluded that he had ceased to be in disgrace.  He would rather, much rather, have been summoned to a family meal, but that was not his lot.  He had taken many things philosophically in the course of recent hours, and he took this also.  What right had he to intrude himself?  He ate his meal alone.  His roving glance soon brought him pleasure, for he found that some one had tip-toed into the room while he slept and laid the choicest volumes of romance near his chair.

The wind had dropped, the snow had ceased falling.  Before Courthope had finished his luncheon the young man who looked like a notary’s clerk came in, using his broken English.  He remarked that the storm was over and that they were now going to get out a double team to plough through the road.  He suggested that Courthope should help him to drive it, and to transport the prisoner to the gaol in the village.  One man must be left to protect the young ladies and the house; one man must help him with the team and its burden.  The speaker shrugged his shoulders, suggesting that it would be more suitable for Morin to remain, and said that for his part he would be much obliged and honoured if Courthope would accompany him.  Here some plain and easy compliments were thrown in about Courthope’s strength and the generous activity he had displayed, but not a word concerning his temporary disgrace; if this man knew of it he did not regard it as of any importance.

He was a matter-of-fact young man, not much interested in Courthope as a stranger, immensely interested in the fact of the theft and all that concerned it.  At the slightest question he poured out excited information.  Xavier had been a servant in the house.  Mrs. King, who was religious and zealous, had found in him a convert.  He had become a Protestant to please her. (At this point the narrator shrugged his shoulders again.) Then Xavier had asked higher wages; upon that there was a quarrel, and he had left.

The speaker’s scanty English was of the simplest.  He said, ’Xavier is a very bad man, much worse than our people usually are.  This winter he went to the city and got his wits sharpened, and when he came back he made a scheme.  He sent word to Mrs. King that his old father was dying and would like to be converted too.  Mrs. King travels at once with a horse and the strongest servant-man.  The old father takes a long time to die, so Xavier comes here yesterday to say she will stay all night; but when he did not come back, his wife she got frightened, and she told that the old man was not going to die, that she was afraid there was a scheme.  Now we have Xavier very safe.  He may get five years.’