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Thoughts not to be uttered crowded to the forefront of consciousness as he neared the cleft in the Flamsted Hills, whence the Rothel makes known to every wayfarer that it has come direct from the heart of The Gore, and brought with it the secrets of its granite veins.
It was at this juncture, when Louis Champney died without remembering his nephew-in-law by so much as a book from his library and the boy was ten years old, that a crisis was discovered to be imminent in the fortunes of the Googe-Champney families, the many ramifications of which were intricately interwoven in the communal life of Flamsted.
This was enough; the mistress of Champ-au-Haut was again on her guard and well she might be, for Aileen Armagh was in possession of the knowledge that Champney Googe loved her. In joyful anticipation she was waiting for the word which, spoken by him when he should be again in Flamsted, was to make her future both fair and blest.
In July, however, she had again an opportunity to see the two together at Champ-au-Haut. Champney was in Flamsted on business for two days only, and so far as she knew there was no opportunity for Aileen to see her nephew more than once and in her presence. She managed matters in such a way that Aileen's services were in continual demand during Champney's two days' stay in his native town.
I mean outside of you and my mother?" he asked in a low voice, but subdued eagerness was audible in it. "Have you any? Why, man, a friend is a friend for life and beyond. Who was it put it thus: 'Said one: I would go up to the gates of hell with a friend. Said the other: I would go in. That last is the kind you have here in Flamsted, Champney."
For six years there had been a veil, as it were, drawn between the lovely relations that had previously existed between Father Honoré and this firstling of his flock in Flamsted.
Champney when she comes down; it don't set well, you know, if she ain't told everything that's going on." He passed on without waiting for an answer. The girl took her seat again by the window. Her work lay in her lap; her hands were folded above it; her face was turned to the Flamsted Hills. "Would he come soon? When and where could she see him again, and alone?"
Father Honoré closed the window and took his stand on the hearth. Aileen raised her eyes to him. It seemed as if she lifted the swollen reddened lids with difficulty. "Father Honoré," she said in a low voice, tense with suppressed feeling, "dear Father Honoré, the only father I have ever known, don't you know why I cannot go to Mrs. Googe's? why I must not stay too long in Flamsted?"
He went to his writing table, sat down at it, and, for a moment, busied himself with making out his personal check for one hundred thousand dollars payable to the Flamsted Granite Quarries Company. He handed it to Father Honoré to look at. The priest read it. "Whatever bail is needed, if an arrest should follow now," said Mr. Van Ostend further and significantly, "I will be responsible for."
Yet this very fact of differentiation provided hundreds of others farmers, shopkeepers, jobbers, machinists, mechanics, blacksmiths, small restaurant-keepers, pool and billiard room owners with ample sources of livelihood. This internal change in the community of Flamsted corresponded to the external. During those six years the very face of nature underwent transformation.
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