It was Saturday morning. The wind had died down, and gave threats of rain for the first time in six long, hot dry weeks. He hitched John and Humpy to the spring wagon, and with a touch of his old enthusiasm, left his grandmother cheerfully—but for reasons of his own, did not tell her that he was going for Orlean. Perhaps he wished to surprise her, at least he did not tell her.

He drove to Winner more filled with hope than he had been for months.

The town was filled that day, and because there was an appearance of rain in the air, which could yet save much of the corn, there was an air of hope and cheer abroad. Jean thought to board a train and ride a few miles, and return on the evening train on which she would be. Then he decided he would wait for her and be ready to drive directly home. As the train was due shortly after nine p.m., he estimated that he could drive the distance in two hours; thereby getting to her claim before midnight and they could spend Sunday together celebrating their happy reunion.

He had longed to talk with her—and grieve with her over their loss in the fine little boy who never knew his parents. He thought of all this and of the happy days they had spent together the summer before. He felt the love and the devotion she had given him then. He wondered sometimes whether he had ever loved her as he had dreamed he would love his wife; but this thought had ever been replaced by his sense of duty. Marriage was sacred; it was the institution of good; he always disliked to see people part. He felt then, as he had ever felt before, that nothing but infidelity could ever make him leave a woman that he had married. He was still an enemy of divorce. He recalled how they had gone to the Catholic church once in Gregory, and had heard a learned priest discourse on divorce and its attendant evils. Never before had anything so impressed him. How plain the priest had made his audience understand why the church did not tolerate divorce. How decidedly he had shown that divorce could and would be avoided if the people could be raised to feel that "until death do us part." And Baptiste and the woman he had married had discussed it afterward. They had found books and stories in the magazines to which they subscribed, and had read deeper into it, and had been united in their opinion on the subject. Divorce was bad; it was evil; it was avoidable in almost every case. Then why should it be?

They had agreed that duty toward each other was the first essential toward combating it; that selfishness was a thing that so often precipitated it. In all its phases he had discussed it with her, and in the end, she had agreed with him. And down in their hearts they had felt that such would never be necessitated in the union they had formed.