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“Good-day, mealman,” he said, and waited. “Duclosse,” called Garotte warningly, “remember!” Duclosse’s knees shook, and his face became mottled like a piece of soap; he pushed his fingers into his shirt and touched the Agnus Dei that he carried there. That and Garotte’s words gave him courage. He scarcely knew what he said, but it had meaning. “Good-bye-leper,” he answered.

Pomfrette’s arm flew out to throw the pitcher at the mealman’s head, but Duclosse, with a grunt of terror, flung up in front of his face the small bag of meal that he carried, the contents pouring over his waistcoat from a loose corner. The picture was so ludicrous that Pomfrette laughed with a devilish humour, and flinging the pitcher at the bag, he walked away towards his own house. Duclosse, pale and frightened, stepped from among the fragments of crockery, and with backward glances towards Pomfrette joined his comrade.

“Lime-burner,” he said, sitting down on the bag of meal, and mechanically twisting tight the loose, leaking corner, “the devil’s in that leper.”

“He was a good enough fellow once,” answered Garotte, watching Pomfrette.

“I drank with him at five o’clock yesterday,” said Duclosse philosophically. “He was fit for any company then; now he’s fit for none.”

Garotte looked wise. “Mealman,” said he, “it takes years to make folks love you; you can make them hate you in an hour. La! La! it’s easier to hate than to love. Come along, m’sieu’ dusty-belly.”

Pomfrette’s life in Pontiac went on as it began that day. Not once a day, and sometimes not once in twenty days, did any human being speak to him. The village baker would not sell him bread; his groceries he had to buy from the neighbouring parishes, for the grocer’s flighty wife called for the constable when he entered the bake-shop of Pontiac. He had to bake his own bread, and do his own cooking, washing, cleaning, and gardening. His hair grew long and his clothes became shabbier. At last, when he needed a new suit–so torn had his others become at woodchopping and many kinds of work–he went to the village tailor, and was promptly told that nothing but Luc Pomfrette’s grave-clothes would be cut and made in that house.

When he walked down to the Four Corners the street emptied at once, and the lonely man with the tinkling bell of honour at his knee felt the whole world falling away from sight and touch and sound of him. Once when he went into the Louis Quinze every man present stole away in silence, and the landlord himself, without a word, turned and left the bar. At that, with a hoarse laugh, Pomfrette poured out a glass of brandy, drank it off, and left a shilling on the counter. The next morning he found the shilling, wrapped in a piece of paper, just inside his door; it had been pushed underneath. On the paper was written: “It is cursed.” Presently his dog died, and the day afterwards he suddenly disappeared from Pontiac, and wandered on to Ste. Gabrielle, Ribeaux, and Ville Bambord. But his shame had gone before him, and people shunned him everywhere, even the roughest. No one who knew him would shelter him. He slept in barns and in the woods until the winter came and snow lay thick upon the ground. Thin and haggard, and with nothing left of his old self but his deep brown eyes and curling hair, and his unhappy name and fame, he turned back again to Pontiac. His spirit was sullen and hard, his heart closed against repentance. Had not the Church and Pontiac and the world punished him beyond his deserts for a moment’s madness brought on by a great shock!

One bright, sunshiny day of early winter, he trudged through the snow-banked street of Pontiac back to his home. Men he once knew well, and had worked with, passed him in a sled on their way to the great shanty in the backwoods. They halted in their singing for a moment when they saw him; then, turning their heads from him, dashed off, carolling lustily: