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“Softly, my boys!” he would say; “work smooth and you work fast. The logs in the river run well when they run all the same way. But when two logs cross each other, on the same rock–psst! a jam! The whole drive is hung up! Do not run crossways, my children.”

The walls rose steadily, straight as a steamboat pipe–ten, twenty, thirty, forty feet; it was time to put in the two cross-girders, lay the floor of the belfry, finish off the stonework, and begin the pointed wooden spire. The cure had gone to Quebec that very day to buy the shining plates of tin for the roof, and a beautiful cross of gilt for the pinnacle.

Leclere was in front of the tower putting on his overalls. Vaillantcoeur came up, swearing mad. Three or four other workmen were standing about.

“Look here, you Leclere,” said he, “I tried one of the cross-girders yesterday afternoon and it wouldn’t go. The templet on the north is crooked–crooked as your teeth. We had to let the girder down again. I suppose we must trim it off some way, to get a level bearing, and make the tower weak, just to match your sacre bad work, eh?”

“Well,” said Prosper, pleasant and quiet enough, “I’m sorry for that, Raoul. Perhaps I could put that templet straight, or perhaps the girder might be a little warped and twisted, eh? What? Suppose we measure it.”

Sure enough, they found the long timber was not half seasoned and had corkscrewed itself out of shape at least three inches. Vaillantcoeur sat on the sill of the doorway and did not even look at them while they were measuring. When they called out to him what they had found, he strode over to them.

“It’s a dam’ lie,” he said, sullenly. “Prosper Leclere, you slipped the string. None of your sacre cheating! I have enough of it already. Will you fight, you cursed sneak?”

Prosper’s face went gray, like the mortar in the trough. His fists clenched and the cords on his neck stood out as if they were ropes. He breathed hard. But he only said three words:

“No! Not here.”

“Not here? Why not? There is room. The cure is away. Why not here?”

“It is the house of LE BON DIEU. Can we build it in hate?”

“POLISSON! You make an excuse. Then come to Girard’s, and fight there.”

Again Prosper held in for a moment, and spoke three words:

“No! Not now.”

“Not now? But when, you heart of a hare? Will you sneak out of it until you turn gray and die? When will you fight, little musk-rat?”

“When I have forgotten. When I am no more your friend.”

Prosper picked up his trowel and went into the tower. Raoul bad- worded him and every stone of his building from foundation to cornice, and then went down the road to get a bottle of cognac.

An hour later he came back breathing out threatenings and slaughter, strongly flavoured with raw spirits. Prosper was working quietly on the top of the tower, at the side away from the road. He saw nothing until Raoul, climbing up by the ladders on the inside, leaped on the platform and rushed at him like a crazy lynx.

“Now!” he cried, “no hole to hide in here, rat! I’ll squeeze the lies out of you.”

He gripped Prosper by the head, thrusting one thumb into his eye, and pushing him backward on the scaffolding.

Blinded, half maddened by the pain, Prosper thought of nothing but to get free. He swung his long arm upward and landed a heavy blow on Raoul’s face that dislocated the jaw; then twisting himself downward and sideways, he fell in toward the wall. Raoul plunged forward, stumbled, let go his hold, and pitched out from the tower, arms spread, clutching the air.

Forty feet straight down! A moment–or was it an eternity?–of horrible silence. Then the body struck the rough stones at the foot of the tower with a thick, soft dunt, and lay crumpled up among them, without a groan, without a movement.