One day Carnac read in a newspaper that Barode Barouche was to speak at
St. Annabel. As that was not far from Charlemont he determined to hear
Barouche for the first time. He had for him a sympathy which, to
himself, seemed a matter of temperament.
"Mother," he said, "wouldn't you like to go and hear Barode Barouche at
St. Annabel? You know him--I mean personally?"
"Yes, I knew him long ago," was the scarcely vocal reply.
"He's a great, fine man, isn't he? Wrong-headed, wrong-purposed, but a
big fine fellow."
"If a man is wrong-headed and wrong-purposed, it isn't easy for him to be
fine, is it?"
"That depends. A man might want to save his country by making some good
law, and be mistaken both as to the result of that law and the right
methods in making it. I'd like you to be with me when I hear him for the
first time. I've got a feeling he's one of the biggest men of our day.
Of course he isn't perfect. A man might want to save another's life, but
he might choose the wrong way to do it, and that's wrongheaded; and
perhaps he oughtn't to save the man's life, and that's wrong-purposed.
There's no crime in either. Let's go and hear Monsieur Barouche."
He did not see the flush which suddenly filled her face; and, if he had,
he would not have understood. For her a long twenty-seven years rolled
back to the day when she was a young neglected wife, full of life's
vitalities, out on a junction of the river and the wild woods, with
Barode Barouche's fishing-camp near by.
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