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THE DAY after they came home from the sea-side they set out on a tour of inspection to make sure everything was as they had left it. Soon they discovered that old Hobden had blocked their best hedge-gaps with stakes and thorn-bundles, and had trimmed up the hedges where the blackberries were setting.‘It can’t be time for the gipsies to come along,’ said Una. ‘Why, it was summer only the other day!’

‘There’s smoke in Low Shaw!’ said Dan, sniffing. ‘Let’s make sure!’

They crossed the fields towards the thin line of blue smoke that leaned above the hollow of Low Shaw which lies beside the King’s Hill road. It used to be an old quarry till somebody planted it, and you can look straight down into it from the edge of Banky Meadow.

‘I thought so,’ Dan whispered, as they came up to the fence at the edge of the larches. A gipsy-van—not the show-man’s sort, but the old black kind, with little windows high up and a baby-gate across the door—was getting ready to leave. A man was harnessing the horses; an old woman crouched over the ashes of a fire made out of broken fence-rails; and a girl sat on the van-steps singing to a baby on her lap. A wise-looking, thin dog snuffed at a patch of fur on the ground till the old woman put it carefully in the middle of the fire. The girl reached back inside the van and tossed her a paper parcel. This was laid on the fire too, and they smelt singed feathers.

‘Chicken feathers!’ said Dan. ‘I wonder if they are old Hobden’s.’

Una sneezed. The dog growled and crawled to the girl’s feet, the old woman fanned the fire with her hat, while the man led the horses up to the shafts, They all moved as quickly and quietly as snakes over moss.

‘Ah!’ said the girl. ‘I’ll teach you!’ She beat the dog, who seemed to expect it.

‘Don’t do that,’ Una called down. ‘It wasn’t his fault.’

‘How do you know what I’m beating him for?’ she answered.

‘For not seeing us,’ said Dan. ‘He was standing right in the smoke, and the wind was wrong for his nose, anyhow.’

The girl stopped beating the dog, and the old woman fanned faster than ever.

‘You’ve fanned some of your feathers out of the fire,’ said Una. ‘There’s a tail-feather by that chestnut-tot.’

‘What of it?’ said the old woman, as she grAbbéd it.

‘Oh, nothing!’ said Dan. ‘Only I’ve heard say that tail-feathers are as bad as the whole bird, sometimes.’

That was a saying of Hobden’s about pheasants. Old Hobden always burned all feather and fur before he sat down to eat.

‘Come on, mother,’ the man whispered. The old woman climbed into the van, and the horses drew it out of the deep-rutted shaw on to the hard road.

The girl waved her hands and shouted something they could not catch.

‘That was gipsy for “Thank you kindly, Brother and Sister,”’ said Pharaoh Lee.

He was standing behind them, his fiddle under his arm. ‘Gracious, you startled me!’ said Una.

‘You startled old Priscilla Savile,’ Puck called from below them. ‘Come and sit by their fire. She ought to have put it out before they left.’

They dropped down the ferny side of the shaw. Una raked the ashes together, Dan found a dead wormy oak branch that burns without flame, and they watched the smoke while Pharaoh played a curious wavery air.

‘That’s what the girl was humming to the baby,’ said Una.

‘I know it,’ he nodded, and went on:

He passed from one odd tune to another, and quite forgot the children. At last Puck asked him to go on with his adventures in Philadelphia and among the Seneca Indians.

‘I’m telling it,’ he said, staring straight in front of him as he played. ‘Can’t you hear?’

‘Maybe, but they can’t. Tell it aloud,’ said Puck.

Pharaoh shook himself, laid his fiddle beside him, and began:

‘I’d left Red Jacket and Cornplanter riding home with me after Big Hand had said that there wouldn’t be any war. That’s all there was to it. We believed Big Hand and we went home again—we three braves. When we reached Lebanon we found Toby at the cottage with his waistcoat a foot too big for him—so hard he had worked amongst the yellow-fever people. He beat me for running off with the Indians, but ’twas worth it—I was glad to see him,—and when we went back to Philadelphia for the winter, and I was told how he’d sacrificed himself over sick people in the yellow fever, I thought the world and all of him. No, I didn’t neither. I’d thought that all along. That yellow fever must have been something dreadful. Even in December people had no more than begun to trinkle back to town. Whole houses stood empty and (they)  was robbing them out. But I can’t call to mind that any of the Moravian Brethren had died. It seemed like they had just kept on with their own concerns, and the good Lord He’d just looked after ’em. That was the winter—yes, winter of ’Ninety-three—the Brethren bought a stove for the church. Toby spoke in favour of it because the cold spoiled his fiddle hand, but many thought stove-heat not in the Bible, and there was yet a third party which always brought hickory coal foot-warmers to service and wouldn’t speak either way. They ended by casting the Lot for it, which is like pitch-and-toss. After my summer with the Senecas, church-stoves didn’t highly interest me, so I took to haunting round among the French emigres which Philadelphia was full of. My French and my fiddling helped me there, d’ye see. They come over in shiploads from France, where, by what I made out, every one was killing every one else by any means, and they spread ’emselves about the city—mostly in Drinker’s Alley and Elfrith’s Alley—and they did odd jobs till times should mend. But whatever they stooped to, they were gentry and kept a cheerful countenance, and after an evening’s fiddling at one of their poor little proud parties, the Brethren seemed old-fashioned. Pastor Meder and Brother Adam Goos didn’t like my fiddling for hire, but Toby said it was lawful in me to earn my living by exercising my talents. He never let me be put upon.

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‘In February of ’Ninety-four—No, March it must have been, because a new Ambassador called Faucher had come from France, with no more manners than Genet the old one—in March, Red Jacket came in from the Reservation bringing news of all kind friends there. I showed him round the city, and we saw General Washington riding through a crowd of folk that shouted for war with England. They gave him quite rough music, but he looked ’twixt his horse’s ears and made out not to notice. His stirrup brished Red Jacket’s elbow, and Red Jacket whispered up, “My brother knows it is not easy to be a chief.” Big Hand shot just one look at him and nodded. Then there was a scuffle behind us over some one who wasn’t hooting at Washington loud enough to please the people. We went away to be out of the fight. Indians won’t risk being hit.’

‘What do they do if they are?’ Dan asked.

‘Kill, of course. That’s why they have such proper manners. Well, then, coming home by Drinker’s Alley to get a new shirt which a French Vicomte’s lady was washing to take the stiff out of (I’m always choice in my body-linen) a lame Frenchman pushes a paper of buttons at us. He hadn’t long landed in the United States, and please would we buy. He sure-ly was a pitiful scrattel—his coat half torn off, his face cut, but his hands steady; so I knew it wasn’t drink. He said his name was Peringuey, and he’d been knocked about in the crowd round the Stadt—Independence Hall. One thing leading to another we took him up to Toby’s rooms, same as Red Jacket had taken me the year before. The compliments he paid to Toby’s Madeira wine fairly conquered the old man, for he opened a second bottle and he told this Monsieur Peringuey all about our great stove dispute in the church. I remember Pastor Meder and Brother Adam Goos dropped in, and although they and Toby were direct opposite sides regarding stoves, yet this Monsieur Peringuey he made ’em feel as if he thought each one was in the right of it. He said he had been a clergyman before he had to leave France. He admired at Toby’s fiddling, and he asked if Red Jacket, sitting by the spinet, was a simple Huron. Senecas aren’t Hurons, they’re Iroquois, of course, and Toby told him so. Well, then, in due time he arose and left in a style which made us feel he’d been favouring us, instead of us feeding him. I’ve never seen that so strong before—in a man. We all talked him over but couldn’t make head or tail of him, and Red Jacket come out to walk with me to the French quarter where I was due to fiddle at a party. Passing Drinker’s Alley again we saw a naked window with a light in it, and there sat our button-selling Monsieur Peringuey throwing dice all alone, right hand against left.

‘Says Red Jacket, keeping back in the dark, “Look at his face!”

‘I was looking. I protest to you I wasn’t frightened like I was when Big Hand talked to his gentlemen. I—I only looked, and I wondered that even those dead dumb dice ’ud dare to fall different from what that face wished. It—it was a face!

‘“He is bad,” says Red Jacket. “But he is a great chief. The French have sent away a great chief. I thought so when he told us his lies. Now I know.”

‘I had to go on to the party, so I asked him to call round for me afterwards and we’d have hymn-singing at Toby’s as usual. “No,” he says. “Tell Toby I am not Christian tonight. All Indian.” He had those fits sometimes. I wanted to know more about Monsieur Peringuey, and the emigre party was the very place to find out. It’s neither here nor there, of course, but those French emigre parties they almost make you cry. The men that you bought fruit of in Market Street, the hairdressers and fencing-masters and French teachers, they turn back again by candlelight to what they used to be at home, and you catch their real names. There wasn’t much room in the washhouse, so I sat on top of the copper and played ’em the tunes they called for—“Si le Roi m’avait donne,” and such nursery stuff. They cried sometimes. It hurt me to take their money afterwards, indeed it did. And there I found out about Monsieur Peringuey. He was a proper rogue too! None of ’em had a good word for him except the Marquise that kept the French boarding-house on Fourth Street. I made out that his real name was the Count Talleyrand de Perigord—a priest right enough, but sorely come down in the world. He’d been King Louis’ Ambassador to England a year or two back, before the French had cut off King Louis’ head; and, by what I heard, that head wasn’t hardly more than hanging loose before he’d run back to Paris and prevailed on Danton, the very man which did the murder, to send him back to England again as Ambassador of the French Republic! That was too much for the English, so they kicked him out by Act of Parliament, and he’d fled to the Americas without money or friends or prospects. I’m telling you the talk in the washhouse. Some of ’em was laughing over it. Says the French Marquise, “My friends, you laugh too soon. That man ‘ll be on the winning side before any of us.”

‘“I did not know you were so fond of priests, Marquise,” says the Vicomte. His lady did my washing, as I’ve told you.

‘“I have my reasons,” says the Marquise. “He sent my uncle and my two brothers to Heaven by the little door,”—that was one of the emigre names for the guillotine. “He will be on the winning side if it costs him the blood of every friend he has in the world.”

‘“Then what does he want here?” says one of ’em. “We have all lost our game.”

‘“My faith!” says the Marquise. “He will find out, if any one can, whether this canaille of a Washington means to help us to fight England. Genet” (that was my Ambassador in the Embuscade) “has failed and gone off disgraced; Faucher” (he was the new man) “hasn’t done any better, but our Abbé will find out, and he will make his profit out of the news. Such a man does not fall.”

‘“He begins unluckily,” says the Vicomte. “He was set upon today in the street for not hooting your Washington.” They all laughed again, and one remarks, “How does the poor devil keep himself?”

‘He must have slipped in through the washhouse door, for he flits past me and joins ’em, cold as ice.

‘“One does what one can,” he says. “I sell buttons. And you, Marquise?”

‘“I?”—she waves her poor white hands all burned—“I am a cook—a very bad one—at your service, Abbé. We were just talking about you.”

‘They didn’t treat him like they talked of him. They backed off and stood still.

‘“I have missed something, then,” he says. “But I spent this last hour playing—only for buttons, Marquise—against a noble savage, the veritable Huron himself.”

‘“You had your usual luck, I hope?” she says.

‘“Certainly,” he says. “I cannot afford to lose even buttons in these days.”

‘“Then I suppose the child of nature does not know that your dice are usually loaded, Father Tout-a-tous,” she continues. I don’t know whether she meant to accuse him of cheating. He only bows. ‘“Not yet, Mademoiselle Cunegonde,” he says, and goes on to make himself agreeable to the rest of the company. And that was how I found out our Monsieur Peringuey was Count Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Perigord.’

Pharaoh stopped, but the children said nothing.

‘You’ve heard of him?’ said Pharaoh.

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Una shook her head. ‘Was Red Jacket the Indian he played dice with?’ Dan asked.

‘He was. Red Jacket told me the next time we met. I asked if the lame man had cheated. Red Jacket said no—he had played quite fair and was a master player. I allow Red Jacket knew. I’ve seen him, on the Reservation, play himself out of everything he had and in again. Then I told Red Jacket all I’d heard at the party concerning Talleyrand.

‘“I was right,” he says. “I saw the man’s war-face when he thought he was alone. That’s why I played him. I played him face to face. He’s a great chief. Do they say why he comes here?”

‘“They say he comes to find out if Big Hand makes war against the English,” I said.

‘Red Jacket grunted. “Yes,” he says. “He asked me that too. If he had been a small chief I should have lied. But he is a great chief. He knew I was a chief, so I told him the truth. I told him what Big Hand said to Cornplanter and me in the clearing—‘There will be no war.’ I could not see what he thought. I could not see behind his face. But he is a great chief. He will believe.’

‘“Will he believe that Big Hand can keep his people back from war?” I said, thinking of the crowds that hooted Big Hand whenever he rode out.

‘“He is as bad as Big Hand is good, but he is not as strong as Big Hand,” says Red Jacket. “When he talks with Big Hand he will feel this in his heart. The French have sent away a great chief. Presently he will go back and make them afraid.”

‘Now wasn’t that comical? The French woman that knew him and owed all her losses to him; the Indian that picked him up, cut and muddy on the street, and played dice with him; they neither of ’em doubted that Talleyrand was something by himself—appearances notwithstanding.’

‘And was he something by himself?’ asked Una.

Pharaoh began to laugh, but stopped. ‘The way I look at it,’he said, ‘Talleyrand was one of just three men in this world who are quite by themselves. Big Hand I put first, because I’ve seen him.’

‘Ay,’ said Puck. ‘I’m sorry we lost him out of Old England. Who d’you put second?’

‘Talleyrand: maybe because I’ve seen him too,’ said Pharaoh.

‘Who’s third?’said Puck.

‘Boney—even though I’ve seen him.’

‘Whew!’ said Puck. ‘Every man has his own weights and measures, but that’s queer reckoning.’

‘Boney?’ said Una. ‘You don’t mean you’ve ever met Napoleon Bonaparte?’

‘There, I knew you wouldn’t have patience with the rest of my tale after hearing that! But wait a minute. Talleyrand he come round to Hundred and Eighteen in a day or two to thank Toby for his kindness. I didn’t mention the dice-playing, but I could see that Red Jacket’s doings had made Talleyrand highly curious about Indians—though he would call him the Huron. Toby, as you may believe, was all holds full of knowledge concerning their manners and habits. He only needed a listener. The Brethren don’t study Indians much till they join the Church, but Toby knew ’em wild. So evening after evening Talleyrand crossed his sound leg over his game one and Toby poured forth. Having been adopted into the Senecas I, naturally, kept still, but Toby ’ud call on me to back up some of his remarks, and by that means, and a habit he had of drawing you on in talk, Talleyrand saw I knew something of his noble savages too. Then he tried a trick. Coming back from an emigre party he turns into his little shop and puts it to me, laughing like, that I’d gone with the two chiefs on their visit to Big Hand. I hadn’t told. Red Jacket hadn’t told, and Toby, of course, didn’t know. ’Twas just Talleyrand’s guess. “Now,” he says, my English and Red Jacket’s French was so bad that I am not sure I got the rights of what the President really said to the unsophisticated Huron. Do me the favour of telling it again.” I told him every word Red Jacket had told him and not one word more. I had my suspicions, having just come from an emigre party where the Marquise was hating and praising him as usual.

‘“Much obliged,” he said. “But I couldn’t gather from Red Jacket exactly what the President said to Monsieur Genet, or to his American gentlemen after Monsieur Genet had ridden away.”

‘I saw Talleyrand was guessing again, for Red Jacket hadn’t told him a word about the white men’s pow-wow.’

‘Why hadn’t he?’ Puck asked.

‘Because Red Jacket was a chief. He told Talleyrand what the President had said to him and Cornplanter; but he didn’t repeat the talk, between the white men, that Big Hand ordered him to leave behind.’

‘Oh!’ said Puck. ‘I see. What did you do?’

‘First I was going to make some sort of tale round it, but Talleyrand was a chief too. So I said, “As soon as I get Red Jacket’s permission to tell that part of the tale, I’ll be delighted to refresh your memory, Abbé.” What else could I have done?

‘“Is that all?” he says, laughing. “Let me refresh your memory. In a month from now I can give you a hundred dollars for your account of the conversation.”

‘“Make it five hundred, Abbé,” I says. ‘”Five, then,” says he.

‘“That will suit me admirably,” I says. “Red Jacket will be in town again by then, and the moment he gives me leave I’ll claim the money.”

‘He had a hard fight to be civil, but he come out smiling.

‘“Monsieur,” he says, “I beg your pardon as sincerely as I envy the noble Huron your loyalty. Do me the honour to sit down while I explain.”

‘There wasn’t another chair, so I sat on the button-box.

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‘He was a clever man. He had got hold of the gossip that the President meant to make a peace treaty with England at any cost. He had found out—from Genet, I reckon, who was with the President on the day the two chiefs met him. He’d heard that Genet had had a huff with the President and had ridden off leaving his business at loose ends. What he wanted—what he begged and blustered to know—was just the very words which the President had said to his gentlemen after Genet had left, concerning the peace treaty with England. He put it to me that in helping him to those very words I’d be helping three great countries as well as mankind. The room was as bare as the palm of your hand, but I couldn’t laugh at him.

‘“I’m sorry,” I says, when he wiped his forehead. “As soon as Red Jacket gives permission—”

‘“You don’t believe me, then?” he cuts in.

‘“Not one little, little word, Abbé,” I says; “except that you mean to be on the winning side. Remember, I’ve been fiddling to all your old friends for months.”

‘Well, then his temper fled him and he called me names.

‘“Wait a minute, ci-devant,” I says at last. “I am half English and half French, but I am not the half of a man. I will tell thee something the Indian told me. Has thee seen the President?”

‘“Oh yes!” he sneers. “I had letters from the Lord Lansdowne to that estimable old man.”

‘“Then,” I says, “thee will understand. The Red Skin said that when thee has met the President thee will feel in thy heart he is a stronger man than thee.”

‘“Go!” he whispers. “Before I kill thee, go.”

‘He looked like it. So I left him.’

‘Why did he want to know so badly?’ said Dan.

‘The way I look at it is that if he had known for certain that Washington meant to make the peace treaty with England at any price, he’d ha’ left old Faucher fumbling about in Philadelphia while he went straight back to France and told old Danton—“It’s no good your wasting time and hopes on the United States, because she won’t fight on our side—that I’ve proof of!” Then Danton might have been grateful and given Talleyrand a job, because a whole mass of things hang on knowing for sure who’s your friend and who’s your enemy. just think of us poor shop-keepers, for instance.’

‘Did Red Jacket let you tell, when he came back?’ Una asked.

‘Of course not. He said, “When Cornplanter and I ask you what Big Hand said to the whites you can tell the Lame Chief. All that talk was left behind in the timber, as Big Hand ordered. Tell the Lame Chief there will be no war. He can go back to France with that word.”

‘Talleyrand and me hadn’t met for a long time except at emigre parties. When I give him the message he just shook his head. He was sorting buttons in the shop.

‘I cannot return to France with nothing better than the word of an unsophisticated savage,” he says.

‘“Hasn’t the President said anything to you?” I asked him.

‘“He has said everything that one in his position ought to say, but—but if only I had what he said to his Cabinet after Genet rode off I believe I could change Europe—the world, maybe.”

‘“I’m sorry,” I says. “Maybe you’ll do that without my help.”

‘He looked at me hard. “Either you have unusual observation for one so young, or you choose to be insolent,” he says.

‘“It was intended for a compliment,” I says. “But no odds. We’re off in a few days for our summer trip, and I’ve come to make my good-byes.”

‘“I go on my travels too,” he says. “If ever we meet again you may be sure I will do my best to repay what I owe you.”

‘“Without malice, Abbé, I hope,” I says.

‘“None whatever,” says he. “Give my respects to your adorable Dr Pangloss” (that was one of his side-names for Toby) “and the Huron.” I never could teach him the difference betwixt Hurons and Senecas.

‘Then Sister Haga came in for a paper of what we call “pilly buttons,” and that was the last I saw of Talleyrand in those parts.’

‘But after that you met Napoleon, didn’t you?’ said Una.

‘Wait Just a little, dearie. After that, Toby and I went to Lebanon and the Reservation, and, being older and knowing better how to manage him, I enjoyed myself well that summer with fiddling and fun. When we came back, the Brethren got after Toby because I wasn’t learning any lawful trade, and he had hard work to save me from being apprenticed to Helmbold and Geyer the printers. ’Twould have ruined our music together, indeed it would. And when we escaped that, old Mattes Roush, the leather-breeches maker round the corner, took a notion I was cut out for skin-dressing. But we were rescued. Along towards Christmas there comes a big sealed letter from the Bank saying that a Monsieur Talleyrand had put five hundred dollars—a hundred pounds—to my credit there to use as I pleased. There was a little note from him inside—he didn’t give any address—to thank me for past kindnesses and my believing in his future, which he said was pretty cloudy at the time of writing. I wished Toby to share the money. I hadn’t done more than bring Talleyrand up to Hundred and Eighteen. The kindnesses were Toby’s. But Toby said, “No! Liberty and Independence for ever. I have all my wants, my son.” So I gave him a set of new fiddle-strings, and the Brethren didn’t advise us any more. Only Pastor Meder he preached about the deceitfulness of riches, and Brother Adam Goos said if there was war the English ’ud surely shoot down the Bank. I knew there wasn’t going to be any war, but I drew the money out and on Red Jacket’s advice I put it into horse-flesh, which I sold to Bob Bicknell for the Baltimore stage-coaches. That way, I doubled my money inside the twelvemonth.’

‘You gipsy! You proper gipsy!’ Puck shouted.

‘Why not? ’Twas fair buying and selling. Well, one thing leading to another, in a few years I had made the beginning of a worldly fortune and was in the tobacco trade.’

‘Ah!’ said Puck, suddenly. ‘Might I inquire if you’d ever sent any news to your people in England—or in France?’

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‘O’ course I had. I wrote regular every three months after I’d made money in the horse trade. We Lees don’t like coming home empty-handed. If it’s only a turnip or an egg, it’s something. Oh yes, I wrote good and plenty to Uncle Aurette, and—Dad don’t read very quickly—Uncle used to slip over Newhaven way and tell Dad what was going on in the tobacco trade.’

‘I see—

Go on, Brother Square-toes,’ said Puck. Pharaoh laughed and went on.

‘Talleyrand he’d gone up in the world same as me. He’d sailed to France again, and was a great man in the Government there awhile, but they had to turn him out on account of some story about bribes from American shippers. All our poor emigres said he was surely finished this time, but Red Jacket and me we didn’t think it likely, not unless he was quite dead. Big Hand had made his peace treaty with Great Britain, just as he said he would, and there was a roaring trade ’twixt England and the United States for such as ’ud take the risk of being searched by British and French men-o’-war. Those two was fighting, and just as his gentlemen told Big Hand ’ud happen—the United States was catching it from both. If an English man-o’-war met an American ship he’d press half the best men out of her, and swear they was British subjects. Most of ’em was! If a Frenchman met her he’d, likely, have the cargo out of her, swearing it was meant to aid and comfort the English; and if a Spaniard or a Dutchman met her—they was hanging on to England’s coat-tails too—Lord only knows what they wouldn’t do! It came over me that what I wanted in my tobacco trade was a fast-sailing ship and a man who could be French, English, or American at a pinch. Luckily I could lay my hands on both articles. So along towards the end of September in the year ’Ninety-nine I sailed from Philadelphia with a hundred and eleven hogshead o’ good Virginia tobacco, in the brig Berthe Aurette, named after Mother’s maiden name, hoping ’twould bring me luck, which she didn’t—and yet she did.’

‘Where was you bound for?’ Puck asked.

‘Er—any port I found handiest. I didn’t tell Toby or the Brethren. They don’t understand the ins and outs of the tobacco trade.’

Puck coughed a small cough as he shifted a piece of wood with his bare foot.

‘It’s easy for you to sit and judge,’ Pharaoh cried. ‘But think o’ what we had to put up with! We spread our wings and run across the broad Atlantic like a hen through a horse-fair. Even so, we was stopped by an English frigate, three days out. He sent a boat alongside and pressed seven able seamen. I remarked it was hard on honest traders, but the officer said they was fighting all creation and hadn’t time to argue. The next English frigate we escaped with no more than a shot in our quarter. Then we was chased two days and a night by a French privateer, firing between squalls, and the dirty little English ten-gun brig which made him sheer off had the impudence to press another five of our men. That’s how we reached to the chops of the Channel. Twelve good men pressed out of thirty-five; an eighteen-pound shot-hole close beside our rudder; our mainsail looking like spectacles where the Frenchman had hit us—and the Channel crawling with short-handed British cruisers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it next time you grumble at the price of tobacco!

‘Well, then, to top it off, while we was trying to get at our leaks, a French lugger come swooping at us out o’ the dusk. We warned him to keep away, but he fell aboard us, and up climbed his JAbbéring red-caps. We couldn’t endure any more—indeed we couldn’t. We went at ’em with all we could lay hands on. It didn’t last long. They was fifty odd to our twenty-three. Pretty soon I heard the cutlasses thrown down and some one bellowed for the sacri captain.

‘“Here I am!” I says. “I don’t suppose it makes any odds to you thieves, but this is the United States brig Berthe Aurette.”

‘“My aunt!” the man says, laughing. “Why is she named that?”

‘“Who’s speaking?” I said. ’Twas too dark to see, but I thought I knew the voice.

‘“Enseigne de Vaisseau Estephe L’Estrange,” he sings out, and then I was sure.

‘“Oh!” I says. “It’s all in the family, I suppose, but you have done a fine day’s work, Stephen.”

‘He whips out the binnacle-light and holds it to my face. He was young L’Estrange, my full cousin, that I hadn’t seen since the night the smack sank off Telscombe Tye—six years before.

‘“Whew!” he says. “That’s why she was named for Aunt Berthe, is it? What’s your share in her, Pharaoh?”

‘“Only half owner, but the cargo’s mine.”

‘“That’s bad,” he says. “I’ll do what I can, but you shouldn’t have fought us.”

‘“Steve,” I says, “you aren’t ever going to report our little fall-out as a fight! Why, a Revenue cutter ’ud laugh at it!”

‘“So’d I if I wasn’t in the Republican Navy,” he says. “But two of our men are dead, d’ye see, and I’m afraid I’ll have to take you to the Prize Court at Le Havre.”

‘“Will they condemn my ’baccy?” I asks.

‘“To the last ounce. But I was thinking more of the ship. She’d make a sweet little craft for the Navy if the Prize Court ’ud let me have her,” he says.

‘Then I knew there was no hope. I don’t blame him—a man must consider his own interests, but nigh every dollar I had was in ship or cargo, and Steve kept on saying, “You shouldn’t have fought us.”

‘Well, then, the lugger took us to Le Havre, and that being the one time we did want a British ship to rescue us, why, o’ course we never saw one. My cousin spoke his best for us at the Prize Court. He owned he’d no right to rush alongside in the face o’ the United States flag, but we couldn’t get over those two men killed, d’ye see, and the Court condemned both ship and cargo. They was kind enough not to make us prisoners—only beggars—and young L’Estrange was given the Berthe Aurette to re-arm into the French Navy.

‘”I’ll take you round to Boulogne,” he says. “Mother and the rest’ll be glad to see you, and you can slip over to Newhaven with Uncle Aurette. Or you can ship with me, like most o’ your men, and take a turn at King George’s loose trade. There’s plenty pickings,” he says.

‘Crazy as I was, I couldn’t help laughing.

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‘“I’ve had my allowance of pickings and stealings,” I says. “Where are they taking my tobacco?” ’Twas being loaded on to a barge.

‘“Up the Seine to be sold in Paris,” he says. “Neither you nor I will ever touch a penny of that money.”

‘“Get me leave to go with it,” I says. “I’ll see if there’s justice to be gotten out of our American Ambassador.”

‘“There’s not much justice in this world,” he says, “without a Navy.” But he got me leave to go with the barge and he gave me some money. That tobacco was all I had, and I followed it like a hound follows a snatched bone. Going up the river I fiddled a little to keep my spirits up, as well as to make friends with the guard. They was only doing their duty. Outside o’ that they were the reasonablest o’ God’s creatures. They never even laughed at me. So we come to Paris, by river, along in November, which the French had christened Brumaire. They’d given new names to all the months, and after such an outrageous silly piece o’ business as that, they wasn’t likely to trouble ’emselves with my rights and wrongs. They didn’t. The barge was laid up below Notre Dame church in charge of a caretaker, and he let me sleep aboard after I’d run about all day from office to office, seeking justice and fair dealing, and getting speeches concerning liberty. None heeded me. Looking back on it I can’t rightly blame ’em. I’d no money, my clothes was filthy mucked; I hadn’t changed my linen in weeks, and I’d no proof of my claims except the ship’s papers, which, they said, I might have stolen. The thieves! The door-keeper to the American Ambassador—for I never saw even the Secretary—he swore I spoke French a sight too well for an American citizen. Worse than that—I had spent my money, d’ye see, and I—I took to fiddling in the streets for my keep; and—and, a ship’s captain with a fiddle under his arm—well, I don’t blame ’em that they didn’t believe me.

‘I come back to the barge one day—late in this month Brumaire it was—fair beazled out. Old Maingon, the caretaker, he’d lit a fire in a bucket and was grilling a herring.

‘“Courage, mon ami,” he says. “Dinner is served.”

‘“I can’t eat,” I says. “I can’t do any more. It’s stronger than I am.”

‘“Bah!” he says. “Nothing’s stronger than a man. Me, for example! Less than two years ago I was blown up in the Orient in Aboukir Bay, but I descended again and hit the water like a fairy. Look at me now,” he says. He wasn’t much to look at, for he’d only one leg and one eye, but the cheerfullest soul that ever trod shoe-leather. “That’s worse than a hundred and eleven hogshead of ’baccy,” he goes on. “You’re young, too! What wouldn’t I give to be young in France at this hour! There’s nothing you couldn’t do,” he says. “The ball’s at your feet—kick it!” he says. He kicks the old fire-bucket with his peg-leg. “General Buonaparte, for example!” he goes on. “That man’s a babe compared to me, and see what he’s done already. He’s conquered Egypt and Austria and Italy—oh! half Europe!” he says, “and now he sails back to Paris, and he sails out to St Cloud down the river here—don’t stare at the river, you young fool! —and all in front of these pig-jobbing lawyers and citizens he makes himself Consul, which is as good as a King. He’ll be King, too, in the next three turns of the capstan—King of France, England, and the world! Think o’ that!” he shouts, “and eat your herring.”

‘I says something about Boney. If he hadn’t been fighting England I shouldn’t have lost my ’baccy—should I?

‘“Young fellow,” says Maingon, “you don’t understand.”

‘We heard cheering. A carriage passed over the bridge with two in it. ‘“That’s the man himself,” says Maingon. “He’ll give ’em something to cheer for soon.” He stands at the salute.

‘“Who’s t’other in black beside him?” I asks, fairly shaking all over.

‘“Ah! he’s the clever one. You’ll hear of him before long. He’s that scoundrel-bishop, Talleyrand.”

‘“It is!” I said, and up the steps I went with my fiddle, and run after the carriage calling, “Abbé, Abbé!”

‘A soldier knocked the wind out of me with the back of his sword, but I had sense to keep on following till the carriage stopped—and there just was a crowd round the house-door! I must have been half-crazy else I wouldn’t have struck up “Si le Roi m’avait donne Paris la grande ville!” I thought it might remind him.

‘“That is a good omen!” he says to Boney sitting all hunched up; and he looks straight at me.

‘“Abbé—oh, Abbé!” I says. “Don’t you remember Toby and Hundred and Eighteen Second Street?”

‘He said not a word. He just crooked his long white finger to the guard at the door while the carriage steps were let down, and I skipped into the house, and they slammed the door in the crowd’s face. ‘“You go there,” says a soldier, and shoves me into an empty room, where I catched my first breath since I’d left the barge. Presently I heard plates rattling next door—there were only folding doors between—and a cork drawn. “I tell you,” someone shouts with his mouth full, “it was all that sulky ass Sieyes’ fault. Only my speech to the Five Hundred saved the situation.”

‘“Did it save your coat?” says Talleyrand. “I hear they tore it when they threw you out. Don’t gasconade to me. You may be in the road of victory, but you aren’t there yet.”

‘Then I guessed t’other man was Boney. He stamped about and swore at Talleyrand.

‘“You forget yourself, Consul,” says Talleyrand, “or rather you remember yourself—Corsican.”

‘“Pig!” says Boney, and worse.

‘“Emperor!” says Talleyrand, but, the way he spoke, it sounded worst of all. Some one must have backed against the folding doors, for they flew open and showed me in the middle of the room. Boney whipped out his pistol before I could stand up.

“General,” says Talleyrand to him, “this gentleman has a habit of catching us canaille en deshabille. Put that thing down.”

‘Boney laid it on the table, so I guessed which was master. Talleyrand takes my hand—“Charmed to see you again, Candide,” he says. “How is the adorable Dr Pangloss and the noble Huron?”

‘“They were doing very well when I left,” I said. “But I’m not.”

‘“Do you sell buttons now?” he says, and fills me a glass of wine off the table.

‘“Madeira,” says he. “Not so good as some I have drunk.”

‘“You mountebank!” Boney roars. “Turn that out.” (He didn’t even say “man,” but Talleyrand, being gentle born, just went on.)

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‘“Pheasant is not so good as pork,” he says. “You will find some at that table if you will do me the honour to sit down. Pass him a clean plate, General.” And, as true as I’m here, Boney slid a plate along just like a sulky child. He was a lanky-haired, yellow-skinned little man, as nervous as a cat—and as dangerous. I could feel that.

‘“And now,” said Talleyrand, crossing his game leg over his sound one, “will you tell me your story?”

‘I was in a fluster, but I told him nearly everything from the time he left me the five hundred dollars in Philadelphia, up to my losing ship and cargo at Le Havre. Boney began by listening, but after a bit he dropped into his own thoughts and looked at the crowd sideways through the front-room curtains. Talleyrand called to him when I’d done.

‘“Eh? What we need now,” says Boney, “is peace for the next three or four years.”

‘“Quite so,” says Talleyrand. “Meantime I want the Consul’s order to the Prize Court at Le Havre to restore my friend here his ship.”

‘“Nonsense!” says Boney. “Give away an oak-built brig of two hundred and seven tons for sentiment? Certainly not! She must be armed into my Navy with ten—no, fourteen twelve- pounders and two long fours. Is she strong enough to bear a long twelve forward?”

‘Now I could ha’ sworn he’d paid no heed to my talk, but that wonderful head-piece of his seemingly skimmed off every word of it that was useful to him.

‘“Ah, General!” says Talleyrand. “You are a magician—a magician without morals. But the brig is undoubtedly American, and we don’t want to offend them more than we have. “

‘“Need anybody talk about the affair?” he says. He didn’t look at me, but I knew what was in his mind—just cold murder because I worried him; and he’d order it as easy as ordering his carriage.

‘“You can’t stop ’em,” I said. “There’s twenty-two other men besides me.” I felt a little more ’ud set me screaming like a wired hare.

‘“Undoubtedly American,” Talleyrand goes on. “You would gain something if you returned the ship—with a message of fraternal good-will—published in the Moniteur” (that’s a French paper like the Philadelphia Aurora).

‘“A good idea!” Boney answers. “One could say much in a message.”

‘“It might be useful,” says Talleyrand. “Shall I have the message prepared?” He wrote something in a little pocket ledger.

‘“Yes—for me to embellish this evening. The Moniteur will publish it tonight.”

‘“Certainly. Sign, please,” says Talleyrand, tearing the leaf out.

‘“But that’s the order to return the brig,” says Boney. “Is that necessary? Why should I lose a good ship? Haven’t I lost enough ships already?”

‘Talleyrand didn’t answer any of those questions. Then Boney sidled up to the table and jabs his pen into the ink. Then he shies at the paper again: “My signature alone is useless,” he says. “You must have the other two Consuls as well. Sieyes and Roger Ducos must sign. We must preserve the Laws.”

‘“By the time my friend presents it,” says Talleyrand, still looking out of window, “only one signature will be necessary.”

‘Boney smiles. “It’s a swindle,” says he, but he signed and pushed the paper across.

‘“Give that to the President of the Prize Court at Le Havre,” says Talleyrand, “and he will give you back your ship. I will settle for the cargo myself. You have told me how much it cost. What profit did you expect to make on it?”

‘Well, then, as man to man, I was bound to warn him that I’d set out to run it into England without troubling the Revenue, and so I couldn’t rightly set bounds to my profits.’

‘I guessed that all along,’ said Puck.

The children laughed.

‘It’s comical enough now,’ said Pharaoh. ‘But I didn’t laugh then. Says Talleyrand after a minute, “I am a bad accountant and I have several calculations on hand at present. Shall we say twice the cost of the cargo?”

‘Say? I couldn’t say a word. I sat choking and nodding like a China image while he wrote an order to his secretary to pay me, I won’t say how much, because you wouldn’t believe it.’

‘“Oh! Bless you, Abbé! God bless you!” I got it out at last.

‘“Yes,” he says, “I am a priest in spite of myself, but they call me Bishop now. Take this for my episcopal blessing,” and he hands me the paper.

‘“He stole all that money from me,” says Boney over my shoulder. “A Bank of France is another of the things we must make. Are you mad?” he shouts at Talleyrand.

‘“Quite,” says Talleyrand, getting up. “But be calm. The disease will never attack you. It is called gratitude. This gentleman found me in the street and fed me when I was hungry.”

‘”I see; and he has made a fine scene of it, and you have paid him, I suppose. Meantime, France waits. “

‘“Oh! poor France!” says Talleyrand. “Good-bye, Candide,” he says to me. “By the way,” he says, “have you yet got Red Jacket’s permission to tell me what the President said to his Cabinet after Monsieur Genet rode away?”

‘I couldn’t speak, I could only shake my head, and Boney—so impatient he was to go on with his doings—he ran at me and fair pushed me out of the room. And that was all there was to it.’ Pharaoh stood up and slid his fiddle into one of his big skirt-pockets as though it were a dead hare.

‘Oh! but we want to know lots and lots more,’said Dan. ‘How you got home—and what old Maingon said on the barge—and wasn’t your cousin surprised when he had to give back the Berthe Aurette, and—’

‘Tell us more about Toby!’ cried Una.

‘Yes, and Red Jacket,’ said Dan.

‘Won’t you tell us any more?’ they both pleaded.

Puck kicked the oak branch on the fire, till it sent up a column of smoke that made them sneeze. When they had finished the Shaw was empty except for old Hobden stamping through the larches.

‘They gipsies have took two,’he said. “My black pullet and my liddle gingy-speckled cockrel.’

‘I thought so,’ said Dan, picking up one tail-feather that the old woman had overlooked.

‘Which way did they go? Which way did the runagates go?’ said Hobden.

‘Hobby!’ said Una. ‘Would you like it if we told Keeper Ridley all your goings and comings?’

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There’s a gentleman of France—better met by choice than chance,
Where there’s time to turn aside and space to flee—
He is born and bred and made for the cattle-droving trade,
And they call him Monsieur Bouvier de Brie.
‘What—Brie?’ ‘Yes, Brie.’ ‘Where those funny cheeses come from?’ ‘Oui! Oui! Oui!
But his name is great through Gaul as the wisest dog of all,
And France pays high for Bouvier de Brie.’
‘De Brie?’ ‘C’est lui. And, if you read my story,—you will see
What one loyal little heart thought of Life and Love and Art,
And notably of Bouvier de Brie——
“My friend the Vicomte Bouvier de Brie.”’

NOTHING could prevent my adored Mother from demanding at once the piece of sugar which was her just reward for every Truffle she found. My revered Father, on the other hand, contented himself with the strict practice of his Art. So soon as that Pierre, our Master, stooped to dig at the spot indicated, my Father moved on to fresh triumphs.

From my Father I inherit my nose, and, perhaps, a touch of genius. From my Mother a practical philosophy without which even Genius is but a bird of one wing.

In appearance? My Parents come of a race built up from remote times on the Gifted of various strains. The fine flower of it to-day is small—of a rich gold, touched with red; pricked and open ears; a broad and receptive brow; eyes of intense but affable outlook, and a Nose in itself an inspiration and unerring guide. Is it any wonder, then, that my Parents stood apart from the generality? Yet I would not make light of those worthy artisans who have to be trained by Persons to the pursuit of Truffles. They are of many stocks and possess many virtues, but not the Nose—that gift which is incommunicable.

Myself? I am not large. At birth, indeed, I was known as The Dwarf; but my achievements early won me the title of The Abbé. It was easy. I do not recall that I was ever trained by any Person. I watched, imitated, and, at need, improved upon, the technique of my Parents among the little thin oaks of my country where the best Truffles are found; and that which to the world seemed a chain of miracles was, for me, as easy as to roll in the dust.

My small feet could walk the sun up and down across the stony hill-crests where we worked. My well-set coat turned wet, wind, and cold, and my size enabled me to be carried, on occasion, in my Master’s useful outside pocket.

My companions of those days? At first Pluton and Dis—the solemn, dewlapped, black, mated pair who drew the little wooden cart whence my master dispensed our Truffles at the white Château near our village, and to certain shopkeepers in the Street of the Fountain where the women talk. Those Two of Us were peasants in grain. They made clear to me the significance of the flat round white Pieces, and the Thin Papers, which my Master and his Mate buried beneath the stone by their fireplace. Not only Truffles but all other things, Pluton told me, turn into Pieces or Thin Papers at last.

But my friend of friends; my preceptor, my protector, my life-long admiration; was Monsieur le Vicomte Bouvier de Brie—a Marshal of Bulls whom he controlled in the stony pastures near the cottage. There were many sheep also, with whom neither the Vicomte nor I was concerned. Mutton is bad for the Nose, and, as I have reason to know, for the disposition.

He was of race, too—‘born’ as I was—and so accepted me when, with the rash abandon of puppyhood, I attached myself to his ear. In place of abolishing me, which he could have done with one of his fore-paws, he lowered me gently between both of them, so that I lay blinking up the gaunt cliff of his chest into his unfathomable eyes, and ‘Little bad one!’ he said. ‘But I prophesy thou wilt go far!’

Here, fenced by those paws, I would repair for my slumbers, to avoid my enemies or to plague him with questions. And, when he went to the Railway Station to receive or despatch more Bulls, I would march beneath his belly, hurling infantile insults at the craven doggerie of the Street of the Fountain. After I was expert in my Art, he would talk to me of his own, breaking off with some thunder of command to a young Bull who presumed to venture too near the woods where our Truffles grow, or descending upon him like hail across walls which his feet scorned to touch.

His strength, his audacity, overwhelmed me. He, on his side, was frankly bewildered by my attainments. ‘But how—how, little one, is it done, your business?’ I could not convey to him, nor he to me, the mystery of our several Arts. Yet always unweariedly he gave me the fruits of his experience and philosophy.

I recall a day when I had chased a chicken which, for the moment, represented to me a sufficiently gross Bull of Salers. There seemed a possibility of chastisement at the hands of the owner, and I refuged me beneath my friend’s neck where he watched in the sun. He listened to my foolish tale, and said, as to himself, ‘These Bulls of mine are but beef fitted with noses and tails by which one regulates them. But these black hidden lumps of yours which only such as you can unearth—that is a business beyond me! I should like to add it to my repertoire.’

‘And I,’ I cried (my second teeth were just pushing), ‘I will be a Driver of Bulls!’

‘Little one,’ he responded with infinite tenderness, ‘here is one thing for us both to remember. Outside his Art, an Artist must never dream.’

About my fifteenth month I found myself brother to four who wearied me. At the same time there was a change in my Master’s behaviour. Never having had any regard for him, I was the quicker to notice his lack of attention. My Mother, as always, said, ‘If it is not something, it is sure to be something else.’ My Father simply, ‘At all hazards follow your Art. That can never lead to a false scent.’

There came a Person of abominable odours to our cottage, not once but many times. One day my Master worked me in his presence. I demonstrated, through a long day of changing airs, with faultless precision. After supper, my Master’s Mate said to him, ‘We are sure of at least two good workers for next season—and with a dwarf one never knows. It is far off, that England the man talks of. Finish the affair, Pierril.’

Some Thin Papers passed from hand to hand. The Person then thrust me into his coat-pocket (Ours is not a breed to be shown to all) and there followed for me alternations of light and dark in stink-carts: a period when my world rose and rolled till I was sick; a silence beside lapping water under stars; transfer to another Person whose scent and speech were unintelligible; another flight by stink-cart; a burst of sunrise between hedges; a scent of sheep; violent outcries and rockings: finally, a dissolution of the universe which projected me through a hedge from which I saw my captor lying beneath the stink-cart where a large black-and-white She bit him with devotion.’

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A ditch led me to the shelter of a culvert. I composed myself within till the light was suddenly blocked out by the head of that very She, who abused me savagely in Lingua canina. [My Father often recommended me never to reply to a strange She.] I was glad when her Master’s voice recalled this one to her duties, and I heard the clickety of her flock’s feet above my head.

In due time I issued forth to acquaint myself with this world into which I had been launched. It was new in odour and aspect, but with points of likeness to my old one. Clumps of trees fringed close woods and smooth green pastures; and, at the bottom of a shallow basin crowned with woodland, stood a white Château even larger than the one to which Pluton and Dis used to pull their cart.

I kept me among the trees, and was congratulating my Nose on its recovery from the outrageous assaults it had suffered during my journeys, when there came to it the unmistakable aroma of Truffles—not, indeed, the strawberry-scented ones of my lost world, but like enough to throw me into my working-pose.

I took wind, and followed up my line. I was not deceived. There were Truffles of different sorts in their proper places under those thick trees. My Mother’s maxim had proved its truth. This was evidently the ‘something else’ of which she had spoken; and I felt myself again my own equal. As I worked amid the almost familiar odours it seemed to me that all that had overtaken me had not happened, and that at any moment I should meet Pluton and Dis with our cart. But they came not. Though I called they did not come.

A far-off voice interrupted me, with menace. I recognised it for that of the boisterous She of my culvert, and was still.

After cautious circuits I heard the sound of a spade, and in a wooded hollow saw a Person flattening earth round a pile of wood, heaped to make charcoal. It was a business I had seen often.

My Nose assured me that the Person was authentically a peasant and (I recalled the memory later) had not handled One of Us within the time that such a scent would hang on him. My Nose, further, recorded that he was imbued with the aromas proper to his work and was, also, kind, gentle, and equable in temperament. (You Persons wonder that All of Us know your moods before you yourselves realise them? Be well sure that every shade of his or her character, habit, or feeling cries itself aloud in a Person’s scent. No more than We All can deceive Each Other can You Persons deceive Us—though We pretend—We pretend—to believe!)

His coat lay on a bank. When he drew from it bread and cheese, I produced myself. But I had been so long at gaze, that my shoulder, bruised in transit through the hedge, made me fall. He was upon me at once and, with strength equal to his gentleness, located my trouble. Evidently—though the knowledge even then displeased me—he knew how We should be handled.

I submitted to his care, ate the food he offered, and, reposing in the crook of his mighty arm, was borne to a small cottage where he bathed my hurt, set water beside me and returned to his charcoal. I slept, lulled by the cadence of his spade and the bouquet of natural scents in the cottage which included all those I was used to, except garlic and, strangely, Truffles.

I was roused by the entry of a She-Person who moved slowly and coughed. There was on her (I speak now as We speak) the Taint of the Fear—of that Black Fear which bids Us throw up our noses and lament. She laid out food. The Person of the Spade entered. I fled to his knee. He showed me to the Girl-Person’s dull eyes. She caressed my head, but the chill of her hand increased the Fear. He set me on his knees, and they talked in the twilight.

Presently, their talk nosed round hidden flat Pieces and Thin Papers. The tone was so exactly that of my Master and his Mate that I expected they would lift up the hearthstone. But theirs was in the chimney, whence the Person drew several white Pieces, which he gave to the Girl. I argued from this they had admitted me to their utmost intimacy and—I confess it—I danced like a puppy. My reward was their mirth—his specially. When the Girl laughed she coughed. But his voice warmed and possessed me before I knew it.

After night was well fallen, they went out and prepared a bed on a cot in the open, sheltered only by a large faggot-stack. The Girl disposed herself to sleep there, which astonished me. (In my lost world out-sleeping is not done, except when Persons wish to avoid Forest Guards.) The Person of the Spade then set a jug of water by the bed and, turning to reenter the house, delivered a long whistle. It was answered across the woods by the unforgettable voice of the old She of my culvert. I inserted myself at once between, and a little beneath, some of the more robust faggots.

On her silent arrival the She greeted the Girl with extravagant affection and fawned beneath her hand, till the coughings closed in uneasy slumber. Then, with no more noise than the moths of the night, she quested for me in order, she said, to tear out my throat. ‘Ma Tante,’ I replied placidly from within my fortress, ‘I do not doubt you could save yourself the trouble by swallowing me alive. But, first, tell me what I have done.’ ‘That there is My Bone,’ was the reply. It was enough! (Once in my life I had seen poor honest Pluton stand like a raging wolf between his Pierril, whom he loved, and a Forest Guard.) We use that word seldom and never lightly. Therefore, I answered, ‘I assure you she is not mine. She gives me the Black Fear.’

You know how We cannot deceive Each Other? The She accepted my statement; at the same time reviling me for my lack of appreciation—a crookedness of mind not uncommon among elderly Shes.

To distract her, I invited her to tell me her history. It appeared that the Girl had nursed her through some early distemper. Since then, the She had divided her life between her duties among sheep by day and watching, from the First Star till Break of Light, over the Girl, who, she said, also suffered from a slight distemper. This had been her existence, her joy and her devotion long before I was born. Demanding nothing more, she was prepared to back her single demand by slaughter.

Once, in my second month, when I would have run away from a very fierce frog, my friend the Vicomte told me that, at crises, it is best to go forward. On a sudden impulse I emerged from my shelter and sat beside her. There was a pause of life and death during which I had leisure to contemplate all her teeth. Fortunately, the Girl waked to drink. The She crawled to caress the hand that set down the jug, and waited till the breathing resumed. She came back to me—I had not stirred—with blazing eyes. ‘How can you dare this?’ she said. ‘But why not?’ I answered. ‘If it is not something, it is sure to be something else.’ Her fire and fury passed. ‘To whom do you say it! ‘she assented. ‘There is always something else to fear—not for myself but for My Bone yonder.’

Then began a conversation unique, I should imagine, even among Ourselves. My old, unlovely, savage Aunt, as I shall henceforth call her, was eaten alive with fears for the Girl—not so much on account of her distemper, but because of Two She-Persons-Enemies—whom she described to me minutely by Eye and Nose—one like a Ferret, the other like a Goose.

These, she said, meditated some evil to the Girl against which my Aunt and the Girl’s Father, the Person of the Spade, were helpless. The Two Enemies carried about with them certain papers, by virtue of which the Girl could be taken away from the cottage and my Aunt’s care, precisely as she had seen sheep taken out of her pasture by Persons with papers, and driven none knew whither.

page 3

The Enemies would come at intervals to the cottage in daytime (when my Aunt’s duty held her with the sheep) and always they left behind them the Taint of misery and anxiety. It was not that she feared the Enemies personally. She feared nothing except a certain Monsieur The-Law who, I understood later, cowed even her.

Naturally I sympathised. I did not know this gentilhommier de Loire, but I knew Fear. Also, the Girl was of the same stock as He who had fed and welcomed me and Whose voice had reassured. My Aunt suddenly demanded if I purposed to take up my residence with them. I would have detailed to her my adventures. She was acutely uninterested in them all except so far as they served her purposes, which she explained. She would allow me to live on condition that I reported to her, nightly beside the faggot-stack, all I had seen or heard or suspected of every action and mood of the Girl during the day; any arrival of the Enemies, as she called them; and whatever I might gather from their gestures and tones. In other words I was to spy for her as Those of Us who accompany the Forest Guards spy for their detestable Masters.

I was not disturbed. (I had had experience of the Forest Guard.) Still there remained my dignity and something which I suddenly felt was even more precious to me. ‘Ma Tante,’ I said, ‘what I do depends not on you but on My Bone in the cottage there.’ She understood. ‘What is there on Him,’ she said, ‘to draw you?’ ‘Such things are like Truffles,’ was my answer. ‘They are there or they are not there.’ ‘I do not know what “Truffles” may be,’ she snapped. ‘He has nothing useful to me except that He, too, fears for my Girl. At any rate your infatuation for Him makes you more useful as an aid to my plans.’ ‘We shall see,’ said I. ‘But—to talk of affairs of importance—do you seriously mean that you have no knowledge of Truffles?’ She was convinced that I mocked her. ‘Is it,’ she demanded, ‘some lapdog’s trick?’ She said this of Truffles—of my Truffles.

The impasse was total. Outside of the Girl on the cot and her sheep (for I can testify that, with them, she was an artist) the square box of my Aunt’s head held not one single thought. My patience forsook me, but not my politeness. ‘Cheer-up, old one!’ I said. ‘An honest heart outweighs many disadvantages of ignorance and low birth.’ . . .

And She? I thought she would have devoured me in my hair! When she could speak, she made clear that she was ‘born’—entirely soof a breed mated and trained since the days of the First Shepherd. In return I explained that I was a specialist in the discovery of delicacies which the genius of my ancestors had revealed to Persons since the First Person first scratched in the first dirt.

She did not believe me—nor do I pretend that I had been entirely accurate in my genealogy—but she addressed me henceforth as ‘My Nephew.’

Thus that wonderful night passed, with the moths, the bats, the owls, the sinking moon, and the varied respirations of the Girl. At sunrise a call broke out from beyond the woods. My Aunt vanished to her day’s office. I went into the house and found Him lacing one gigantic boot. Its companion lay beside the hearth. I brought it to Him (I had seen my Father do as much for that Pierrounet my Master).

He was loudly pleased. He patted my head, and when the Girl entered, told her of my exploit. She called me to be caressed, and, though the Black Taint upon her made me cringe, I came. She belonged to Him—as at that moment I realised that I did.

Here began my new life. By day I accompanied Him to His charcoal—sole guardian of His coat and the bread and cheese on the bank, or, remembering my Aunt’s infatuation, fluctuated between the charcoal-mound and the house to spy upon the Girl, when she was not with Him. He was all that I desired—in the sound of His solid tread; His deep but gentle voice; the sympathetic texture and scent of His clothes; the safe hold of His hand when He would slide me into His great outer pocket and carry me through the far woods where He dealt secretly with rabbits. Like peasants, who are alone more than most Persons, He talked aloud to himself, and presently to me, asking my opinion of the height of a wire from the ground.

My devotion He accepted and repaid from the first. My Art he could by no means comprehend. For, naturally, I followed my Art as every Artist must, even when it is misunderstood. If not, he comes to preoccupy himself mournfully with his proper fleas.

My new surroundings; the larger size and closer spacing of the oaks; the heavier nature of the soils; the habits of the lazy wet winds—a hundred considerations which the expert takes into account—demanded changes and adjustments of my technique . . . . My reward? I found and brought Him Truffles of the best. I nosed them into His hand. I laid them on the threshold of the cottage and they filled it with their fragrance. He and the Girl thought that I amused myself, and would throw—throw!—them for me to retrieve, as though they had been stones and I a puppy! What more could I do? The scent over that ground was lost.

But the rest was happiness, tempered with vivid fears when we were apart lest, if the wind blew beyond moderation, a tree might fall and crush Him; lest when He worked late He might disappear into one of those terrible river pits so common in the world whence I had come, and be lost without trace. There was no peril I did not imagine for Him till I could hear His feet walking securely on sound earth long before the Girl had even suspected. Thus my heart was light in spite of the nightly conferences with my formidable Aunt, who linked her own dismal apprehensions to every account that I rendered of the Girl’s day-life and actions. For some cause or other, the Two Enemies had not appeared since my Aunt had warned me against them, and there was less of Fear in the house. Perhaps, as I once hinted to my Aunt, owing to my presence.

It was an unfortunate remark. I should have remembered her gender. She attacked me, that night, on a new scent, bidding me observe that she herself was decorated with a Collar of Office which established her position before all the world. I was about to compliment her, when she observed, in the low even tone of detachment peculiar to Shes of age, that, unless I were so decorated, not only was I outside the Law (that Person of whom, I might remember, she had often spoken) but could not be formally accepted into any household.

How, then, I demanded, might I come by this protection? In her own case, she said, the Collar was hers by right as a Preceptress of Sheep. To procure a Collar for me would be a matter of Pieces or even of Thin Papers, from His chimney. (I recalled poor Pluton’s warning that everything changes at last into such things.) If He chose to give of His Pieces for my Collar, my civil status would be impregnable. Otherwise, having no business or occupation, I lived, said my Aunt, like the rabbits—by favour and accident.

‘But, ma Tante,’ I cried, ‘I have the secret of an Art beyond all others.’

‘That is not understood in these parts,’ she replied. ‘You have told me of it many times, but I do not believe. What a pity it is not rabbits! You are small enough to creep down their burrows. But these precious things of yours under the ground which no one but you can find—it is absurd.’

‘It is an absurdity, then, which fills Persons’ chimney-places with Pieces and Thin Papers. Listen, ma Tante!’ I all but howled. ‘The world I came from was stuffed with things underground which all Persons desired. This world here is also rich in them, but I—I alone—can bring them to light!’

She repeated acridly, ‘Here is not there. It should have been rabbits.’

I turned to go. I was at the end of my forces.

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‘You talk too much of the world whence you came,’ my Aunt sneered. ‘Where is that world?’

‘I do not know,’ I answered miserably and crawled under my faggots. As a matter of routine, when my report had been made to my Aunt, I would take post on the foot of His bed where I should be available in case of bandits. But my Aunt’s words had barred that ever-open door.

My suspicions worked like worms in my system. If He chose, He could kick me off on to the floor—beyond sound of His desired voice—into the rabid procession of fears and flights whence He had delivered me. Whither, then, should I go? . . . There remained only my lost world where Persons knew the value of Truffles and of Those of Us who could find them. I would seek that world!

With this intention, and a bitterness in my belly as though I had mouthed a toad, I came out after dawn and fled to the edge of the woods through which He and I had wandered so often. They were bounded by a tall stone wall, along which I quested for an opening. I found none till I reached a small house beside shut gates. Here an officious One of Us advanced upon me with threats. I was in no case to argue or even to expostulate. I hastened away and attacked the wall again at another point.

But after a while, I found myself back at the house of the Officious One. I recommenced my circuit, but—there was no end to that Wall. I remembered crying aloud to it in hope it might fall down and pass me through. I remember appealing to the Vicomte to come to my aid. I remember a flight of big black birds, calling the very name of my lost world—“Aa-or”—above my head. But soon they scattered in all directions. Only the Wall continued to continue, and I blindly at its foot. Once a She-Person stretched out her hand towards me. I fled—as I fled from an amazed rabbit who, like myself, existed by favour and accident.

Another Person coming upon me threw stones. This turned me away from the Wall and so broke its attraction. I subsided into an aimless limp of hours, until some woods that seemed familiar received me into their shades . . . .

I found me at the back of the large white Château in the hollow, which I had seen only once, far off, on the first day of my arrival in this world. I looked down through bushes on to ground divided by strips of still water and stone. Here were birds, bigger than turkeys, with enormous voices and tails which they raised one against the other, while a white-haired She-Person dispensed them food from a pan she held between sparkling hands. My Nose told me that she was unquestionably of race-descended from champion strains. I would have crawled nearer, but the greedy birds forbade. I retreated uphill into the woods, and, moved by I know not what agonies of frustration and bewilderment, threw up my head and lamented.

The harsh imperative call of my Aunt cut through my self-pity. I found her on duty in pastures still bounded by that Wall which encircled my world. She charged me at once with having some disreputable affair, and, for its sake, deserting my post with the Girl. I could but pant. Seeing, at last, my distress, she said, ‘Have you been seeking that lost world of yours?’ Shame closed my mouth. She continued, in softer tones, ‘Except when it concerns My Bone, do not take all that I say at full-fang. There are others as foolish as you. Wait my return.’

She left me with an affectation, almost a coquetry, of extreme fatigue. To her charge had been added a new detachment of sheep who wished to escape. They had scattered into separate crowds, each with a different objective and a different speed. My Aunt, keeping the high ground, allowed them to disperse, till her terrible voice, thrice lifted, brought them to halt. Then, in one long loop of flight, my Aunt, a dumb fury lying wide on their flank, swept down with a certainty, a speed, and a calculation which almost reminded me of my friend the Vicomte. Those diffuse and errant imbeciles reunited and inclined away from her in a mob of mixed smells and outcries—to find themselves exquisitely penned in an angle of the fence, my Aunt, laid flat at full length, facing them! One after another their heads dropped and they resumed their eternal business of mutton-making.

My Aunt came back, her affectation of decrepitude heightened to heighten her performance. And who was I, an Artist also, to mock her?

‘You wonder why my temper is not of the bluntest?’ she said. ‘You could not have done that!’

‘But at least I can appreciate it,’ I cried. ‘It was superb! It was unequalled! It was faultless! You did not even nip one of them.’

‘With sheep that is to confess failure,’ she said. ‘Do you, then, gnaw your Truffles?’ It was the first time that she had ever admitted their existence! My genuine admiration, none the worse for a little flattery, opened her heart. She spoke of her youthful triumphs at sheep- herding expositions; of rescues of lost lambs, or incapable mothers found reversed in ditches. Oh, she was all an Artist, my thin-flanked, haggard-eyed Aunt by enforced adoption. She even let me talk of the Vicomte!

Suddenly (the shadows had stretched) she leaped, with a grace I should never have suspected, on to a stone wall and stood long at far gaze. ‘Enough of this nonsense,’ she said brutally. ‘You are rested now. Get to your work. If you could see, my Nephew, you would observe the Ferret and the Goose walking there, three fields distant. They have come again for My Bone. They will keep to the path made for Persons. Go at once to the cottage before they arrive and—do what you can to harass them. Run—run—mountebank of a yellow imbecile that you are!’

I turned on my tail, as We say, and took the direct line through my well-known woods at my utmost speed since her orders dispatched me without loss of dignity towards my heart’s one desire. And I was received by Him, and by the Girl with unfeigned rapture. They passed me from one to the other like the rarest of Truffles; rebuked me, not too severely, for my long absence; felt me for possible injuries from traps; brought me bread and milk, which I sorely needed; and by a hundred delicate attentions showed me the secure place I occupied in their hearts. I gave my dignity to the cats, and it is not too much to say that we were all engaged in a veritable pas de trois when a shadow fell across our threshold and the Two Enemies most rudely entered!

I conceived, and gave vent to, instant detestation which, for a while, delayed their attack. When it came, He and the Girl accepted it as yoked oxen receive the lash across the eyes—with the piteous dignity which Earth, having so little to give them, bestows upon her humbles. Like oxen, too, they backed side by side and pressed closer together. I renewed my comminations from every angle as I saw how these distracted my adversaries. They then pointed passionately to me and my pan of bread and milk which joy had prevented me from altogether emptying. Their tongues I felt were foul with reproach.

At last He spoke. He mentioned my name more than once, but always (I could tell in my defence. The Girl backed His point. I assisted with—and it was something—all that I had ever heard in my lost world from the sans-kennailerie of the Street of the Fountain. The Enemies renewed the charge. Evidently my Aunt was right. Their plan was to take the Girl away in exchange for pieces of paper. I saw the Ferret wave a paper beneath His nose. He shook His head and launched that peasant’s ‘No,’ which is one in all languages.

Here I applauded vehemently, continuously, monotonously, on a key which, also, I had learned in the Street of the Fountain. Nothing could have lived against it. The Enemies threatened, I could feel, some prodigious action or another; but at last they marched out of our presence. I escorted them to the charcoal-heap—the limit of our private domain—in a silence charged with possibilities for their thick ankles.

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I returned to find my Two sunk in distress, but upon my account. I think they feared I might run away again, for they shut the door. They frequently and tenderly repeated my name, which, with them, was ‘Teem.’ Finally He took a Thin Paper from the chimney-piece, slid me into His outside pocket and walked swiftly to the Village, which I had never smelt before.

In a place where a She-Person was caged behind bars, He exchanged the Thin Paper for one which he laid under my nose, saying ‘Teem! Look! This is Licence-and-Law all-right!’ In yet another place, I was set down before a Person who exhaled a grateful flavour of dried skins. My neck was then encircled by a Collar bearing a bright badge of office. All Persons round me expressed admiration and said ‘Lor!’ many times. On our return through the Village I stretched my decorated neck out of His pocket, like one of the gaudy birds at the Château, to impress Those of Us who might be abroad that I was now under full protection of Monsieur Le Law (whoever he might be), and thus the equal of my exacting Aunt.

That night, by the Girl’s bed, my Aunt was at her most difficult. She cut short my history of my campaign, and cross-examined me coldly as to what had actually passed. Her interpretations were not cheering. She prophesied our Enemies would return, more savage for having been checked. She said that when they mentioned my name (as I have told you) it was to rebuke Him for feeding me, a vagabond, on good bread and milk, when I did not, according to Monsieur Law, belong to Him. (She herself, she added, had often been shocked by His extravagance in this regard.) I pointed out that my Collar now disposed of inconvenient questions. So much she ungraciously conceded, but—I had described the scene to her—argued that He had taken the Thin Paper out of its hiding-place because I had cajoled Him with my ‘lapdog’s tricks,’ and that, in default of that Paper, He would go without food, as well as without what he burned under His nose, which to Him would be equally serious.

I was aghast. ‘But, Ma Tante,’ I pleaded, ‘show me—make me any way to teach Him that the earth on which He walks so loftily can fill His chimneys with Thin Papers, and I promise you that She shall eat chicken!’ My evident sincerity—perhaps, too, the finesse of my final appeal—shook her. She mouthed a paw in thought.

‘You have shown Him those wonderful underground-things of yours?’ she resumed.

‘But often. And to your Girl also. They thought they were stones to throw. It is because of my size that I am not taken seriously.’ I would have lamented, but she struck me down. Her Girl was coughing.

‘Be silent, unlucky that you are! Have you shown your Truffles, as you call them, to anyone else?’

‘Those Two are all I have ever met in this world, my Aunt.’

‘That was true till yesterday,’ she replied. ‘But at the back of the Château—this afternoon—eh?’ (My friend the Vicomte was right when he warned me that all elderly Shes have six ears and ten noses. And the older the more!)

‘I saw that Person only from a distance. You know her, then, my Aunt?’

‘If I know Her! She met me once when I was lamed by thorns under my left heel-pad. She stopped me. She took them out. She also put her hand on my head.’

‘Alas, I have not your charms!’ I riposted.

‘Listen, before my temper snaps, my Nephew. She has returned to her Château. Lay one of those things that you say you find, at her feet. I do not credit your tales about them, but it is possible that She may. She is of race. She knows all. She may make you that way for which you ask so loudly. It is only a chance. But, if it succeeds, and My Bone does not eat the chickens you have promised her, I will, for sure, tear out your throat.’

‘My Aunt,’ I replied, ‘I am infinitely obliged. You have, at least, shown me a way. What a pity you were born with so many thorns under your tongue!’ And I fled to take post at the foot of His bed, where I slept vigorously—for I had lived that day!—till time to bring Him His morning boots.

We then went to our charcoal. As official Guardian of the Coat I permitted myself no excursions till He was busied stopping the vents of little flames on the flanks of the mound. Then I moved towards a patch of ground which I had noted long ago. On my way, a chance of the air told me that the Born One of the Château was walking on the verge of the wood. I fled to my patch, which was even more fruitful than I had thought. I had unearthed several Truffles when the sound of her tread hardened on the bare ground beneath the trees. Selecting my largest and ripest, I bore it reverently towards her, dropped it in her path, and took a pose of humble devotion. Her Nose informed her before her eyes. I saw it wrinkle and sniff deliciously. She stooped and with sparkling hands lifted my gift to smell. Her sympathetic appreciation emboldened me to pull the fringe of her clothes in the direction of my little store exposed beneath the oak. She knelt and, rapturously inhaling their aroma, transferred them to a small basket on her arm. (All Born Ones bear such baskets when they walk upon their own earths.)

Here He called my name. I replied at once that I was coming, but that matters of the utmost importance held me for the moment. We moved on together, the Born One and I, and found Him beside His coat setting apart for me my own bread and cheese. We lived, we two, each always in the other’s life!

I had often seen that Pierrounet my Master, who delivered me to strangers, uncover and bend at the side-door of the Château in my lost world over yonder. At no time was he beautiful. But He—My Own Bone to me!—though He too was uncovered, stood beautifully erect and as a peasant of race should bear himself when He and His are not being tortured by Ferrets or Geese. For a short time, He and the Born One did not concern themselves with me. They were obviously of old acquaintance. She spoke; she waved her sparkling hands; she laughed. He responded gravely, at dignified ease, like my friend the Vicomte. Then I heard my name many times. I fancy He may have told her something of my appearance in this world. (We peasants do not tell all to any one.) To prove to her my character, as He conceived it, He threw a stone. With as much emphasis as my love for Him allowed, I signified that this game of lapdogs was not mine. She commanded us to return to the woods. There He said to me as though it were some question of His magnificent boots, ‘Seek, Teem! Find, Teem!’ and waved His arms at random. He did not know! Even then, My Bone did not know!

But I—I was equal to the occasion! Without unnecessary gesture; stifling the squeaks of rapture that rose in my throat; coldly, almost, as my Father, I made point after point, picked up my lines and worked them (His attendant spade saving me the trouble of digging) till the basket was full. At this juncture the Girl—they were seldom far apart—appeared with all the old miseries on her face, and, behind her (I had been too occupied with my Art, or I should have yelled on their scent) walked the Two Enemies!

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They had not spied us up there among the trees, for they rated her all the way to the charcoal-heap. Our Born One descended upon them softly as a mist through which shine the stars, and greeted them in the voice of a dove out of summer foliage. I held me still. She needed no aid, that one! They grew louder and more loud; she increasingly more suave. They flourished at her one of their detestable papers which she received as though it had been all the Truffles in the world. They talked of Monsieur Le Law. From her renewed smiles I understood that he, too, had the honour of her friendship. They continued to talk of him . . . . Then . . . she abolished them! How? Speaking with the utmost reverence of both, she reminded me of my friend the Vicomte disentangling an agglomeration of distracted, and therefore dangerous, beefs at the Railway Station. There was the same sage turn of the head, the same almost invisible stiffening of the shoulders, the very same small voice out of the side of the mouth, saying ‘I charge myself with this.’ And then—and then—those insupportable offspring of a jumped-up gentilhommier were transformed into amiable and impressed members of their proper class, giving ground slowly at first, but finally evaporating—yes, evaporating—like bad smells—in the direction of the world whence they had intruded.

During the relief that followed, the Girl wept and wept and wept. Our Born One led her to the cottage and consoled. We showed her our bed beside the faggots and all our other small dispositions, including a bottle out of which the Girl was used to drink. (I tasted once some that had been spilt. It was like unfresh fish—fit only for cats.) She saw, she heard, she considered all. Calm came at her every word. She would have given Him some Pieces, in exchange, I suppose, for her filled basket. He pointed to me to show that it was my work. She repeated most of the words she had employed before—my name among them—because one must explain many times to a peasant who desires not to comprehend. At last He took the Pieces.

Then my Born One stooped down to me beside His foot and said, in the language of my lost world, ‘Knowest thou, Teem, that this is all thy work? Without thee we can do nothing. Knowest thou, my little dear Teem?’ If I knew! Had He listened to me at the first the situation would have been regularised half a season before. Now I could fill his chimney-places as my Father had filled that of that disgusting Pierrounet. Logically, of course, I should have begun a fresh demonstration of my Art in proof of my zeal for the interests of my famille. But I did not. Instead, I ran—I rolled—I leaped—I cried aloud—I fawned at their knees What would you? It was hairless, toothless sentiment, but it had the success of a hurricane! They accepted me as though I had been a Person—and He more unreservedly than any of them. It was my supreme moment!

I have at last reduced my famille to the Routine which is indispensable to the right-minded among Us. For example: At intervals He and I descend to the Château with our basket of Truffles for our Born One. If she is there she caresses me. If elsewhere, her basket pursues her in a stink-cart. So does, also, her Chef, a well-scented Person and, I can testify, an Artist. This, I understand, is our exchange for the right to exploit for ourselves all other Truffles that I may find inside the Great Wall. These we dispense to another stink-cart, filled with delightful comestibles, which waits for us regularly on the stink-cart-road by the House of the Gate where the Officious One pursued me. We are paid into the hand (trust us peasants!) in Pieces or Papers, while I stand guard against bandits.

As a result, the Girl has now a wooden-roofed house of her own—open at one side and capable of being turned round against winds by His strong one hand. Here she arranges the bottles from which she drinks, and here comes—but less and less often—a dry Person of mixed odours, who applies his ear at the end of a stick, to her thin back. Thus, and owing to the chickens which, as I promised my Aunt, she eats, the Taint of her distemper diminishes. My Aunt denies that it ever existed, but her infatuation—have I told you?—has no bounds! She has been given honourable demission from her duties with sheep and has frankly installed herself in the Girl’s outside bed-house, which she does not encourage me to enter. I can support that. I too have My Bone . . . .

Only it comes to me, as it does to most of Us who live so swiftly, to dream in my sleep. Then I return to my lost world—to the whistling, dry-leaved, thin oaks that are not these giant ones—to the stony little hillsides and treacherous river-pits that are not these secure pastures—to the sharp scents that are not these scents—to the companionship of poor Pluton and Dis—to the Street of the Fountain up which marches to meet me, as when I was a rude little puppy, my friend, my protector, my earliest adoration, Monsieur le Vicomte Bouvier de Brie.

At this point always, I wake; and not till I feel His foot beneath the bedderie, and hear His comfortable breathing, does my lost world cease to bite . . . .

Oh, wise and well-beloved guardian and playmate of my youth—it is true—it is true, as thou didst warn me—Outside his Art an Artist must never dream!

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WESTWARD from a town by the Mouths of the Rhône, runs a road so mathematically straight, so barometrically level, that it ranks among the world’s measured miles and motorists use it for records. I had attacked the distance several times, but always with a Mistral blowing, or the unchancy cattle of those parts on the move. But once, running from the East, into a high-piled, almost Egyptian, sunset, there came a night which it would have been sin to have wasted. It was warm with the breath of summer in advance; moonlit till the shadow of every rounded pebble and pointed cypress wind-break lay solid on that vast flat-floored waste; and my Mr. Leggatt, who had slipped out to make sure, reported that the roadsurface was unblemished.

‘Now,’ he suggested, ‘we might see what she’ll do under strict road-conditions. She’s been pullin’ like the Blue de Luxe all day. Unless I’m all off, it’s her night out.’

We arranged the trial for after dinner—thirty kilometres as near as might be; and twenty-two of them without even a level crossing.

There sat beside me at table d’hôte an elderly, bearded Frenchman wearing the rosette of by no means the lowest grade of the Legion of Honour, who had arrived in a talkative Citroën. I gathered that he had spent much of his life in the French Colonial Service in Annam and Tonquin. When the war came, his years barring him from the front line, he had supervised Chinese wood-cutters who, with axe and dynamite, deforested the centre of France for trench-props. He said my chauffeur had told him that I contemplated an experiment. He was interested in cars—had admired mine—would, in short, be greatly indebted to me if I permitted him to assist as an observer. One could not well refuse; and, knowing my Mr. Leggatt, it occurred to me there might also be a bet in the background.

While he went to get his coat, I asked the proprietor his name. ‘Voiron—Monsieur André Voiron,’ was the reply. ‘And his business?’ ‘Mon Dieu! He is Voiron! He is all those things, there!’ The proprietor waved his hands at brilliant advertisements on the dining-room walls, which declared that Voiron Frères dealt in wines, agricultural implements, chemical manures, provisions and produce throughout that part of the globe.

He said little for the first five minutes of our trip, and nothing at all for the next ten—it being, as Leggatt had guessed, Esmeralda’s night out. But, when her indicator climbed to a certain figure and held there for three blinding kilometres, he expressed himself satisfied, and proposed to me that we should celebrate the event at the hotel. ‘I keep yonder,’ said he, ‘a wine on which I should value your opinion.’

On our return, he disappeared for a few minutes, and I heard him rumbling in a cellar. The proprietor presently invited me to the dining-room, where, beneath one frugal light, a table had been set with local dishes of renown. There was, too, a bottle beyond most known sizes, marked black on red, with a date. Monsieur Voiron opened it, and we drank to the health of my car. The velvety, perfumed liquor, between fawn and topaz, neither too sweet nor too dry, creamed in its generous glass. But I knew no wine composed of the whispers of angels’ wings, the breath of Eden and the foam and pulse of Youth renewed. So I asked what it might be.

‘It is champagne,’ he said gravely.

‘Then what have I been drinking all my life?’

‘If you were lucky, before the War, and paid thirty shillings a bottle, it is possible you may have drunk one of our better-class tisanes.’

‘And where does one get this?’

‘Here, I am happy to say. Elsewhere, perhaps, it is not so easy. We growers exchange these real wines among ourselves.’

I bowed my head in admiration, surrender, and joy. There stood the most ample bottle, and it was not yet eleven o’clock. Doors locked and shutters banged throughout the establishment. Some last servant yawned on his way to bed. Monsieur Voiron opened a window and the moonlight flooded in from a small pebbled court outside. One could almost hear the town of Chambres breathing in its first sleep. Presently, there was a thick noise in the air, the passing of feet and hooves, lowings, and a stifled bark or two. Dust rose over the courtyard wall, followed by the strong smell of cattle.

‘They are moving some beasts,’ said Monsieur Voiron, cocking an ear. ‘Mine, I think. Yes, I hear Christophe. Our beasts do not like automobiles—so we move at night. You do not know our country—the Crau, here, or the Camargue? I was—I am now, again—of it. All France is good; but this is the best.’ He spoke, as only a Frenchman can, of his own loved part of his own lovely land.

‘For myself, if I were not so involved in all these affairs’—he pointed to the advertisements—‘I would live on our farm with my cattle, and worship them like a Hindu. You know our cattle of the Camargue, Monsieur? No? It is not an acquaintance to rush upon lightly. There are no beasts like them. They have a mentality superior to that of others. They graze and they ruminate, by choice, facing our Mistral, which is more than some automobiles will do. Also they have in them the potentiality of thought—and when cattle think—I have seen what arrives.’

‘Are they so clever as all that?’ I asked idly.

‘Monsieur, when your sportif chauffeur camouflaged your limousine so that she resembled one of your Army lorries, I would not believe her capacities. I bet him—ah—two to one—she would not touch ninety kilometres. It was proved that she could. I can give you no proof, but will you believe me if I tell you what a beast who thinks can achieve?’

‘After the War,’ said I spaciously, ‘everything is credible.’

‘That is true! Everything inconceivable has happened; but still we learn nothing and we believe nothing. When I was a child in my father’s house—before I became a Colonial Administrator—my interest and my affection were among our cattle. We of the old rock live here—have you seen?—in big farms like castles. Indeed, some of them may have been Saracenic. The barns group round them—great white-walled barns, and yards solid as our houses. One gate shuts all. It is a world apart; an administration of all that concerns beasts. It was there I learned something about cattle. You see, they are our playthings in the Camargue and the Crau. The boy measures his strength against the calf that butts him in play among the manure-heaps. He moves in and out among the cows, who are—not so amiable. He rides with the herdsmen in the open to shift the herds. Sooner or later, he meets as bulls the little calves that knocked him over. So it was with me—till it became necessary that I should go to our Colonies.’ He laughed. ‘Very necessary. That is a good time in youth, Monsieur, when one does these things which shock our parents. Why is it always Papa who is so shocked and has never heard of such things—and Mamma who supplies the excuses? . . .

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And when my brother—my elder who stayed and created the business—begged me to return and help him, I resigned my Colonial career gladly enough. I returned to our own lands, and my well-loved, wicked white and yellow cattle of the Camargue and the Crau. My Faith, I could talk of them all night, for this stuff unlocks the heart, without making repentance in the morning . . . . Yes! It was after the War that this happened. There was a calf, among Heaven knows how many of ours—a bull-calf—an infant indistinguishable from his companions. He was sick, and he had been taken up with his mother into the big farmyard at home with us. Naturally the children of our herdsmen practised on him from the first. It is in their blood. The Spaniards make a cult of bull-fighting. Our little devils down here bait bulls as automatically as the English child kicks or throws balls. This calf would chase them with his eyes open, like a cow when she hunts a man. They would take refuge behind our tractors and wine-carts in the centre of the yard: he would chase them in and out as a dog hunts rats. More than that, he would study their psychology, his eyes in their eyes. Yes, he watched their faces to divine which way they would run. He himself, also, would pretend sometimes to charge directly at a boy. Then he would wheel right or left—one could never tell—and knock over some child pressed against a wall who thought himself safe. After this, he would stand over him, knowing that his companions must come to his aid; and when they were all together, waving their jackets across his eyes and pulling his tail, he would scatter them—how he would scatter them! He could kick, too, sideways like a cow. He knew his ranges as well as our gunners, and he was as quick on his feet as our Carpentier. I observed him often. Christophe—the man who passed just now—our chief herdsman, who had taught me to ride with our beasts when I was ten—Christophe told me that he was descended from a yellow cow of those days that had chased us once into the marshes. “He kicks just like her,” said Christophe. “He can side-kick as he jumps. Have you seen, too, that he is not deceived by the jacket when a boy waves it? He uses it to find the boy. They think they are feeling him. He is feeling them always. He thinks, that one.” I had come to the same conclusion. Yes—the creature was a thinker along the lines necessary to his sport; and he was a humorist also, like so many natural murderers. One knows the type among beasts as well as among men. It possesses a curious truculent mirth—almost indecent but infallibly significant——’

Monsieur Voiron replenished our glasses with the great wine that went better at each descent.

‘They kept him for some time in the yards to practise upon. Naturally he became a little brutal; so Christophe turned him out to learn manners among his equals in the grazing lands, where the Camargue joins the Crau. How old was he then? About eight or nine months, I think. We met again a few months later—he and I. I was riding one of our little half-wild horses, along a road of the Crau, when I found myself almost unseated. It was he! He had hidden himself behind a wind-break till we passed, and had then charged my horse from behind. Yes, he had deceived even my little horse! But I recognised him. I gave him the whip across the nose, and I said: “Apis, for this thou goest to Arles! It was unworthy of thee, between us two.” But that creature had no shame. He went away laughing, like an Apache. If he had dismounted me, I do not think it is I who would have laughed—yearling as he was.’

‘Why did you want to send him to Arles?’ I asked.

‘For the bull-ring. When your charming tourists leave us, we institute our little amusements there. Not a real bull-fight, you understand, but young bulls with padded horns, and our boys from hereabouts and in the city go to play with them. Naturally, before we send them we try them in our yards at home. So we brought up Apis from his pastures. He knew at once that he was among the friends of his youth—he almost shook hands with them—and he submitted like an angel to padding his horns. He investigated the carts and tractors in the yards, to choose his lines of defence and attack. And then—he attacked with an élan, and he defended with a tenacity and forethought that delighted us. In truth, we were so pleased that I fear we trespassed upon his patience. We desired him to repeat himself, which no true artist will tolerate. But he gave us fair warning. He went out to the centre of the yard, where there was some dry earth; he kneeled down and—you have seen a calf whose horns fret him thrusting and rooting into a bank? He did just that, very deliberately, till he had rubbed the pads off his horns. Then he rose, dancing on those wonderful feet that twinkled, and he said: “Now, my friends, the buttons are off the foils. Who begins?” We understood. We finished at once. He was turned out again on the pastures till it should be time to amuse them at our little metropolis. But, some time before he went to Arles—yes, I think I have it correctly—Christophe, who had been out on the Crau, informed me that Apis had assassinated a young bull who had given signs of developing into a rival. That happens, of course, and our herdsmen should prevent it. But Apis had killed in his own style—at dusk, from the ambush of a wind-break—by an oblique charge from behind which knocked the other over. He had then disembowelled him. All very possible, but—the murder accomplished—Apis went to the bank of a wind-break, knelt, and carefully, as he had in our yard, cleaned his horns in the earth. Christophe, who had never seen such a thing, at once borrowed (do you know, it is most efficacious when taken that way?) some Holy Water from our little chapel in those pastures, sprinkled Apis (whom it did not affect), and rode in to tell me. It was obvious that a thinker of that bull’s type would also be meticulous in his toilette; so, when he was sent to Arles, I warned our consignees to exercise caution with him. Happily, the change of scene, the music, the general attention, and the meeting again with old friends—all our bad boys attended—agreeably distracted him. He became for the time a pure farceur again; but his wheelings, his rushes, his rat-huntings were more superb than ever. There was in them now, you understand, a breadth of technique that comes of reasoned art, and, above all, the passion that arrives after experience. Oh, he had learned, out there on the Crau! At the end of his little turn, he was, according to local rules, to be handled in all respects except for the sword, which was a stick, as a professional bull who must die. He was manoeuvred into, or he posed himself in, the proper attitude; made his rush; received the point on his shoulder and then—turned about and cantered toward the door by which he had entered the arena. He said to the world: “My friends, the representation is ended. I thank you for your applause. I go to repose myself.” But our Arlesians, who are—not so clever as some, demanded an encore, and Apis was headed back again. We others from his country, we knew what would happen. He went to the centre of the ring, kneeled, and, slowly, with full parade, plunged his horns alternately in the dirt till the pads came off. Christophe shouts: “Leave him alone, you straight-nosed imbeciles! Leave him before you must.” But they required emotion; for Rome has always debauched her loved Provincia with bread and circuses. It was given. Have you, Monsieur, ever seen a servant, with pan and broom, sweeping round the base-board of a room? In a half-minute Apis has them all swept out and over the barrier. Then he demands once more that the door shall be opened to him. It is opened and he retires as though—which, truly, is the case—loaded with laurels.’

Monsieur Voiron refilled the glasses, and allowed himself a cigarette, which he puffed for some time.

‘And afterwards?’ I said.

‘I am arranging it in my mind. It is difficult to do it justice. Afterwards—yes, afterwards—Apis returned to his pastures and his mistresses and I to my business. I am no longer a scandalous old “sportif” in shirt-sleeves howling encouragement to the yellow son of a cow. I revert to Voiron Frères—wines, chemical manures, et cetera. And next year, through some chicane which I have not the leisure to unravel, and also, thanks to our patriarchal system of paying our older men out of the increase of the herds, old Christophe possesses himself of Apis. Oh, yes, he proves it through descent from a certain cow that my father had given his father before the Republic. Beware, Monsieur, of the memory of the illiterate man! An ancestor of Christophe had been a soldier under our Soult against your Beresford, near Bayonne. He fell into the hands of Spanish guerrillas. Christophe and his wife used to tell me the details on certain Saints’ Days when I was a child. Now, as compared with our recent war, Soult’s campaign and retreat across the Bidassoa——’

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‘But did you allow Christophe just to annex the bull?’ I demanded.

‘You do not know Christophe. He had sold him to the Spaniards before he informed me. The Spaniards pay in coin—douros of very pure silver. Our peasants mistrust our paper. You know the saying: “A thousand francs paper; eight hundred metal, and the cow is yours.” Yes, Christophe sold Apis, who was then two and a half years old, and to Christophe’s knowledge thrice at least an assassin.’

‘How was that?’ I said.

‘Oh, his own kind only; and always, Christophe told me, by the same oblique rush from behind, the same sideways overthrow, and the same swift disembowelment, followed by this levitical cleaning of the horns. In human life he would have kept a manicurist—this Minotaur. And so, Apis disappears from our country. That does not trouble me. I know in due time I shall be advised. Why? Because, in this land, Monsieur, not a hoof moves between Berre and the Saintes Maries without the knowledge of specialists such as Christophe. The beasts are the substance and the drama of their lives to them. So when Christophe tells me, a little before Easter Sunday, that Apis makes his debut in the bull-ring of a small Catalan town on the road to Barcelona, it is only to pack my car and trundle there across the frontier with him. The place lacked importance and manufactures, but it had produced a matador of some reputation, who was condescending to show his art in his native town. They were even running one special train to the place. Now our French railway system is only execrable, but the Spanish——’

‘You went down by road, didn’t you?’ said I.

‘Naturally. It was not too good. Villamarti was the matador’s name. He proposed to kill two bulls for the honour of his birthplace. Apis, Christophe told me, would be his second. It was an interesting trip, and that little city by the sea was ravishing. Their bull-ring dates from the middle of the seventeenth century. It is full of feeling. The ceremonial too—when the horsemen enter and ask the Mayor in his box to throw down the keys of the bull-ring—that was exquisitely conceived. You know, if the keys are caught in the horseman’s hat, it is considered a good omen. They were perfectly caught. Our seats were in the front row beside the gates where the bulls enter, so we saw everything.

‘Villamarti’s first bull was not too badly killed. The second matador, whose name escapes me, killed his without distinction—a foil to Villamarti. And the third, Chisto, a laborious, middle-aged professional who had never risen beyond a certain dull competence, was equally of the background. Oh, they are as jealous as the girls of the Comédie Française, these matadors! Villamarti’s troupe stood ready for his second bull. The gates opened, and we saw Apis, beautifully balanced on his feet, peer coquettishly round the corner, as though he were at home. A picador—a mounted man with the long lance-goad—stood near the barrier on his right. He had not even troubled to turn his horse, for the capeadors—the men with the cloaks—were advancing to play Apis—to feel his psychology and intentions, according to the rules that are made for bulls who do not think . . . . I did not realise the murder before it was accomplished! The wheel, the rush, the oblique charge from behind, the fall of horse and man were simultaneous. Apis leaped the horse, with whom he had no quarrel, and alighted, all four feet together (it was enough), between the man’s shoulders, changed his beautiful feet on the carcass, and was away, pretending to fall nearly on his nose. Do you follow me? In that instant, by that stumble, he produced the impression that his adorable assassination was a mere bestial blunder. Then, Monsieur, I began to comprehend that it was an artist we had to deal with. He did not stand over the body to draw the rest of the troupe. He chose to reserve that trick. He let the attendants bear out the dead, and went on to amuse himself among the capeadors. Now to Apis, trained among our children in the yards, the cloak was simply a guide to the boy behind it. He pursued, you understand, the person, not the propaganda—the proprietor, not the journal. If a third of our electors of France were as wise, my friend! . . . But it was done leisurely, with humour and a touch of truculence. He romped after one man’s cloak as a clumsy dog might do, but I observed that he kept the man on his terrible left side. Christophe whispered to me: “Wait for his mother’s kick. When he has made the fellow confident it will arrive.” It arrived in the middle of a gambol. My God! He lashed out in the air as he frisked. The man dropped like a sack, lifted one hand a little towards his head, and—that was all. So you see, a body was again at his disposition; a second time the cloaks ran up to draw him off, but, a second time, Apis refused his grand scene. A second time he acted that his murder was accident and he convinced his audience! It was as though he had knocked over a bridge-gate in the marshes by mistake. Unbelievable? I saw it.’

The memory sent Monsieur Voiron again to the champagne, and I accompanied him.

‘But Apis was not the sole artist present. They say Villamarti comes of a family of actors. I saw him regard Apis with a new eye. He, too, began to understand. He took his cloak and moved out to play him before they should bring on another picador. He had his reputation. Perhaps Apis knew it. Perhaps Villamarti reminded him of some boy with whom he had practised at home. At any rate Apis permitted it—up to a certain point; but he did not allow Villamarti the stage. He cramped him throughout. He dived and plunged clumsily and slowly, but always with menace and always closing in. We could see that the man was conforming to the bull—not the bull to the man; for Apis was playing him towards the centre of the ring, and, in a little while—I watched his face—Villamarti knew it. But I could not fathom the creature’s motive. “Wait,” said old Christophe. “He wants that picador on the white horse yonder. When he reaches his proper distance he will get him. Villamarti is his cover. He used me once that way.” And so it was, my friend! With the clang of one of our own Seventy-fives, Apis dismissed Villamarti with his chest—breasted him over—and had arrived at his objective near the barrier. The same oblique charge; the head carried low for the sweep of the horns; the immense sideways fall of the horse, broken-legged and half-paralysed; the senseless man on the ground, and—behold Apis between them, backed against the barrier—his right covered by the horse; his left by the body of the man at his feet. The simplicity of it! Lacking the carts and tractors of his early parade-grounds he, being a genius, had extemporised with the materials at hand, and dug himself in. The troupe closed up again, their left wing broken by the kicking horse, their right immobilised by the man’s body which Apis bestrode with significance. Villamarti almost threw himself between the horns, but—it was more an appeal than an attack. Apis refused him. He held his base. A picador was sent at him—necessarily from the front, which alone was open. Apis charged—he who, till then, you realise, had not used the horn! The horse went over backwards, the man half beneath him. Apis halted, hooked him under the heart, and threw him to the barrier. We heard his head crack, but he was dead before he hit the wood. There was no demonstration from the audience. They, also, had begun to realise this Foch among bulls! The arena occupied itself again with the dead. Two of the troupe irresolutely tried to play him—God knows in what hope!—but he moved out to the centre of the ring. “Look!” said Christophe. “Now he goes to clean himself. That always frightened me.” He knelt down; he began to clean his horns. The earth was hard. He worried at it in an ecstasy of absorption. As he laid his head along and rattled his ears, it was as though he were interrogating the Devils themselves upon their secrets, and always saying impatiently: “Yes, I know that—and that—and that! Tell me more—more!’ In the silence that covered us, a woman cried: “He digs a grave! Oh, Saints, he digs a grave!” Some others echoed this—not loudly—as a wave echoes in a grotto of the sea.

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And when his horns were cleaned, he rose up and studied poor Villamarti’s troupe, eyes in eyes, one by one, with the gravity of an equal in intellect and the remote and merciless resolution of a master in his art. This was more terrifying than his toilette.’

‘And they—Villamarti’s men?’ I asked.

‘Like the audience, were dominated. They had ceased to posture, or stamp, or address insults to him. They conformed to him. The two other matadors stared. Only Chisto, the oldest, broke silence with some call or other, and Apis turned his head towards him. Otherwise he was isolated, immobile—sombre—meditating on those at his mercy. Ah!

For some reason the trumpet sounded for the banderillas—those gay hooked darts that are planted in the shoulders of bulls who do not think, after their neck-muscles are tired by lifting horses. When such bulls feel the pain, they check for an instant, and, in that instant, the men step gracefully aside. Villamarti’s banderillero answered the trumpet mechanically—like one condemned. He stood out, poised the darts and stammered the usual patter of invitation . . . . And after? I do not assert that Apis shrugged his shoulders, but he reduced the episode to its lowest elements, as could only a bull of Gaul. With his truculence was mingled always—owing to the shortness of his tail—a certain Rabelaisian abandon, especially when viewed from the rear. Christophe had often commented upon it. Now, Apis brought that quality into play. He circulated round that boy, forcing him to break up his beautiful poses. He studied him from various angles, like an incompetent photographer. He presented to him every portion of his anatomy except his shoulders. At intervals he feigned to run in upon him. My God, he was cruel! But his motive was obvious. He was playing for a laugh from the spectators which should synchronise with the fracture of the human morale. It was achieved. The boy turned and ran towards the barrier. Apis was on him before the laugh ceased; passed him; headed him—what do I say?—herded him off to the left, his horns beside and a little in front of his chest: he did not intend him to escape into a refuge. Some of the troupe would have closed in, but Villamarti cried: “If he wants him he will take him. Stand!” They stood. Whether the boy slipped or Apis nosed him over I could not see. But he dropped, sobbing. Apis halted like a car with four brakes, struck a pose, smelt him very completely and turned away. It was dismissal more ignominious than degradation at the head of one’s battalion. The representation was finished. Remained only for Apis to clear his stage of the subordinate characters.

‘Ah! His gesture then! He gave a dramatic start—this Cyrano of the Camargue—as though he was aware of them for the first time. He moved. All their beautiful breeches twinkled for an instant along the top of the barrier. He held the stage alone! But Christophe and I, we trembled! For, observe, he had now involved himself in a stupendous drama of which he only could supply the third act. And, except for an audience on the razor-edge of emotion, he had exhausted his material. Molière himself—we have forgotten, my friend, to drink to the health of that great soul—might have been at a loss. And Tragedy is but a step behind Failure. We could see the four or five Civil Guards, who are sent always to keep order, fingering the breeches of their rifles. They were but waiting a word from the Mayor to fire on him, as they do sometimes at a bull who leaps the barrier among the spectators. They would, of course, have killed or wounded several people—but that would not have saved Apis.’

Monsieur Voiron drowned the thought at once, and wiped his beard.

‘At that moment Fate—the Genius of France, if you will—sent to assist in the incomparable finale, none other than Chisto, the eldest, and I should have said (but never again will I judge!) the least inspired of all; mediocrity itself, but at heart—and it is the heart that conquers always, my friend—at heart an artist. He descended stiffly into the arena, alone and assured. Apis regarded him, his eyes in his eyes. The man took stance, with his cloak, and called to the bull as to an equal: “Now, Señor, we will show these honourable caballeros something together.” He advanced thus against this thinker who at a plunge—a kick—a thrust—could, we all knew, have extinguished him. My dear friend, I wish I could convey to you something of the unaffected bonhomie, the humour, the delicacy, the consideration bordering on respect even, with which Apis, the supreme artist, responded to this invitation. It was the Master, wearied after a strenuous hour in the atelier, unbuttoned and at ease with some not inexpert but limited disciple. The telepathy was instantaneous between them. And for good reason! Christophe said to me: “All’s well. That Chisto began among the bulls. I was sure of it when I heard him call just now. He has been a herdsman. He’ll pull it off.” There was a little feeling and adjustment, at first, for mutual distances and allowances.

Oh, yes! And here occurred a gross impertinence of Villamarti. He had, after an interval, followed Chisto—to retrieve his reputation. My Faith! I can conceive the elder Dumas slamming his door on an intruder precisely as Apis did. He raced Villamarti into the nearest refuge at once. He stamped his feet outside it, and he snorted: “Go! I am engaged with an artist.” Villamarti went—his reputation left behind for ever.

‘Apis returned to Chisto saying: “Forgive the interruption. I am not always master of my time, but you were about to observe, my dear confrere . . . ?” Then the play began. Out of compliment to Chisto, Apis chose as his objective (every bull varies in this respect) the inner edge of the cloak—that nearest to the man’s body. This allows but a few millimetres clearance in charging. But Apis trusted himself as Chisto trusted him, and, this time, he conformed to the man, with inimitable judgment and temper. He allowed himself to be played into the shadow or the sun, as the delighted audience demanded. He raged enormously; he feigned defeat; he despaired in statuesque abandon, and thence flashed into fresh paroxysms of wrath—but always with the detachment of the true artist who knows he is but the vessel of an emotion whence others, not he, must drink. And never once did he forget that honest Chisto’s cloak was to him the gauge by which to spare even a hair on the skin. He inspired Chisto too. My God! His youth returned to that meritorious beef-sticker—the desire, the grace, and the beauty of his early dreams. One could almost see that girl of the past for whom he was rising, rising to these present heights of skill and daring. It was his hour too—a miraculous hour of dawn returned to gild the sunset. All he knew was at Apis’ disposition. Apis acknowledged it with all that he had learned at home, at Arles and in his lonely murders on our grazing-grounds. He flowed round Chisto like a river of death—round his knees, leaping at his shoulders, kicking just clear of one side or the other of his head; behind his back, hissing as he shaved by; and once or twice—inimitable!—he reared wholly up before him while Chisto slipped back from beneath the avalanche of that instructed body. Those two, my dear friend, held five thousand people dumb with no sound but of their breathings—regular as pumps. It was unbearable. Beast and man realised together that we needed a change of note—a détente. They relaxed to pure buffoonery. Chisto fell back and talked to him outrageously. Apis pretended he had never heard such language. The audience howled with delight. Chisto slapped him; he took liberties with his short tail, to the end of which he clung while Apis pirouetted; he played about him in all postures; he had become the herdsman again—gross, careless, brutal, but comprehending. Yet Apis was always the more consummate clown. All that time (Christophe and I saw it) Apis drew off towards the gates of the toril where so many bulls enter but—have you ever heard of one that returned? We knew that Apis knew that as he had saved Chisto, so Chisto would save him. Life is sweet to us all; to the artist who lives many lives in one, sweetest. Chisto did not fail him. At the last, when none could laugh any longer, the man threw his cape across the bull’s back, his arm round his neck. He flung up a hand at the gate, as Villamarti, young and commanding but not a herdsman, might have raised it, and he cried: “Gentlemen, open to me and my honourable little donkey.” They opened—I have misjudged Spaniards in my time!—those gates opened to the man and the bull together, and closed behind them. And then? From the Mayor to the Guardia Civil they went mad for five minutes, till the trumpets blew and the fifth bull rushed out—an unthinking black Andalusian. I suppose some one killed him. My friend, my very dear friend, to whom I have opened my heart, I confess that I did not watch. Christophe and I, we were weeping together like children of the same Mother. Shall we drink to Her?’

[a short tale]

THE Doctor of the Gaol and his wife had gone to tennis in the Gardens, leaving their six-year-old son, William, in nominal care of his ayah, but actually to One Three Two and old Mahmud Ali, his mother’s dharzi, or sewing-man, who had made frocks for her mother since the day when skirts were skirts.One Three Two was a ‘lifer,’ who had unluckily shot a kinsman a little the wrong side of the British frontier. The killing was a matter he could no more have shirked than a decent Englishman his Club dues. The error in geography came from a head-wound picked up at Festubert, which had affected his co-ordinations. But the judge who tried the case made no allowance, and One Three Two only escaped the gallows on an appeal engineered and financed by the Colonel and officers of his old regiment, which he had left after twenty years of spotless service with a pension and—as was pointed out at the trial—urgent private affairs to settle.

His prison duties—he had been a noncommissioned officer—were to oversee the convicts working in the Doctor’s garden, where, bit by bit, he took it upon his battered and dishonoured head to be William’s bodyguard or, as he called it, ‘sacrifice.’ Few people are more faithful to such trusts than the man of one fair killing, and William made him chief of all his court, with honorary title of Busi-bandah, which means much the same as ‘Goosey-gander.’

So, when William came out with his scooter into the afternoon smell of newly watered paths, which attracts little snakes, One Three Two, with a long-handled hoe, kept within striking distance of him at every turn, till the child wearied of the play.

‘Put away, Busi-bandah,’ he commanded, and climbed up the veranda steps to old Mahmud, cross-legged on the carpet, surrounded by beautiful coloured stuffs. It was a dinner dress, and Mahmud held a seam of it between his toes.

‘Drink tobacco,’ said William spaciously. ‘They will not return till dark.’

‘But this stuff will tell,’ said Mahmud above the frock, ‘for the smell of hukah tobacco clings.’

‘Take of my father’s cigarettes.’ William pointed indoors with his chin.

One Three Two went into the drawing-room and came back with a couple of cigarettes from the store beside the wireless cabinet.

‘What word of the Padishah’s sickness?’ he asked.

William swelled importantly. It was one of his prerogatives to announce what the Man in the Box said about the sick Padishah.

‘He slept little last night, because of the fever. He does not desire to eat. None the less his strength holds. Five doctors have taken oath to this. There will be no more talk out of the Bokkus till after I am asleep.’

‘What does thy father say?’ Mahmud asked.

‘My father says that it is in the balance—thus!’ William picked up Mahmud’s embroidery-scissors and tried to make them ride on his forefinger.

‘Have a care! They may cut. Give me.’ Mahmud took them back again.

‘But my mother says that, now all people everywhere are praying for the Padishah’s health, their prayers will turn the balance, and he will be well.’

‘If Allah please,’ said Mahmud, who in private life was Imam or leader of the little mud mosque of the village by the Gaol gates, where he preached on Fridays.

‘I also pray every night,’ William confided cheerily. ‘After “Make me a good boy,” I stand to ’tenshin, and I say: “God save the King.” Is that good namaz (prayer)?’

‘There is neither hem nor border nor fringe to the Mercy of Allah,’ Mahmud quoted.

‘Well spoken, tailor-man.’ One Three Two laughed. He was a hard-bitten Afridi from the Khaiber hills, who, except among infidels, rode his faith with a light hand.

‘Good talk,’ William echoed. ‘For when I had the fever last year, and my father said it was tach-an-go—that is, in the balance—my mother prayed for me, and I became well. Oh, here is my blue buttony-bokkus! ‘ He reached out for Mahmud’s lovely, old, lacquered Kashmiri pencase, where oddments were kept, and busied himself with the beads and sequins. One Three Two rolled a deep-set eye towards Mahmud.

‘That news of the Padishah is bad,’ said he. ‘Hast thou inquired of the Names, Imam, since his sickness came?’

The Koran discourages magic, but it is lawful to consult the Names of Allah according to a system called the Abjad, in which each letter of the Arabic alphabet carries one of the Nine-and-ninety Names of God beginning with that letter. Each Name has its arbitrary Number, Quality, Element, Zodiacal sign, Planet, and so forth. These tables are often written out and used as amulets. Even William, who thought he knew everything, did not know that Mahmud had sewn an Abjad into the collar of his cold-weather dressing-gown.

‘All the world has questioned,’ Mahmud began.

‘Doubtless. But I do not know much of the world from here. How came it with thee?’

‘I took the age of the Padishah, which is sixty-and-three. Now the Number Sixty carries for its attribute the Hearer. This may be good or bad, for Allah hears all things. Its star is Saturn, the outermost of the Seven. That is good and commanding. But its sign is the Archer, which is also the sign of the month (November) in which his sickness first struck the Padishah. Twice, then, must the Archer afflict the Padishah.’

One Three Two nodded. That seemed reasonable enough.

‘As for the Number Three, its attribute is the Assembler, which again may be good or bad. For who knows to what judgment Allah calls men together? Its sign is the Crab, which, being female, is in friendship with the Archer. It may be, then, that if the Archer spare the Padishah both now and later—for he will surely smite twice—the Padishah will be clear of his malady in the month of the Crab (late June or early July).’

‘And what is the Planet of the Number Three?’ said the other.

‘Mars assuredly. He is King. The Abjad does not lie. Hast thou used it?’

‘There was a priest of ours cast it for me, when I would learn how my affairs would go. The dog said, truly enough, that I should punish my cousin, but he said nothing of my punishment here.’

‘Did he reckon by thy name-letters or by thy age?’

‘By my name, I think. I am no great scholar.’

“Be merciful!’ said Mahmud. ‘No wonder thou art afflicted, O Zuhan Khan. Thy letter is Zad, which carries for its Name the Punisher. Its attribute is Terrible, and its quality Hate.’

‘All true,’ One Three Two returned. ‘Am I not here till I die? I submit myself to the fixed decree. And, certainly, were I free’—he chuckled impiously—‘my kin on the hills would kill me. But I live. Why? Because a man may draw back-pay, as it were, for his good deeds. I dug my Captain, who is now Colonel, out of some ground that fell upon him in Frangistan (France). It was part of our work. He said nothing—nor I. But seven years after—when I was condemned for that affair of my burnt cousin—he spent money like water on lawyers and lying witnesses for my sake. Otherwise——’ One Three Two jerked his beard towards a little black shed on a roof outside the high garden wall. No one had ever told William what it was for.

‘It may be thy good deed in saving that Captain’s life was permitted to count in thy balance,’ Mahmud volunteered.

‘And I am no more than a convict. . . . What is the order, Baba? I am here.’

William had suddenly shut the pencase. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Bring again my eskootah, Busi-bandah. I will be a horseman. I will play polo.’

Now little snakes, who have a habit of coming out on damp garden-paths, cast no warning shadow when a low sun is blinded by thick mango-trees.

‘It is brought,’ said One Three Two; but in place of getting it he said to Mahmud: ‘While he rides, I will tell thee a tale of the Padishah which my Colonel told me.’

‘No! Let be my eskootah. I will listen to that tale. Make me my place!’ said William.

It was not five steps to the man’s side, but by the time William had taken them, an inviting lap awaited him, into which he dropped, his left cheek on the right shoulder in its prison blanket, his right hand twined in the beard, and the rest of him relaxed along the curve of the right arm.

‘Begin, Busi-bandah,’ he commanded from off his throne.

‘By thy permission,’ One Three Two began. ‘Early in the year when thou wast born, which was the year I came to be with thee, Baba, my Colonel told me this tale to comfort my heart. It was when I—when I——’

‘Was to be hanged for thy bad cousin,’ said William, screwing up his eyes as he pointed with his left third finger to the hut on the roof. ‘I know.’

‘“Keep a thing from women and children, and sieves will hold water,”’ Mahmud chuckled in his big, silver-black beard.

‘Yes, Baba, that was the time,’ said One Three Two, recovering himself. ‘My Colonel told me that after the war in Frangistan was ended, the Padishah commanded that every man who had died in his service—and there were multitudes upon multitudes—should be buried according to his faith.’

William nodded. When he went out, he always met funeral processions on their way to the Moslem cemetery near the race-course; and, being a child below the age of personality, there were few details of wedding or burial that he had not known since he could ask questions.

‘This was done as commanded, and to each man was his tomb, with his name, rank, and service cut in white stone, all one pattern, whether he had been General or Sweeper—Sahib—Mussulman—Yahudi—Hubashi—or heathen. My Colonel told me that the burial-places resembled walled towns, divided by paths, and planted with trees and flowers, where all the world might come and walk.’

‘On Fridays,’ murmured William. Friday is the day when Muhammedan families visit their dead. He had often begged afternoons off for the servants to go there.

‘And every day. And when all was done, and the People of the Graves were laid at ease and in honour, it pleased the Padishah to cross the little water between Belait and Frangistan, and look upon them. He give order for his going in this way. He said: “Let there be neither music nor elephants nor princes about my way, nor at my stirrup. For it is a pilgrimage. I go to salute the People of the Graves.” Then he went over. And where he saw his dead laid in their multitudes, there he drew rein; there he saluted; there he laid flowers upon great stones after the custom of his people: And for that matter,’ One Three Two addressed Mahmud, ‘so do our women on Fridays. Yes, and the old women and the little staring children of Frangistan pressed him close, as he halted among the bricks and the ashes and the broken wood of the towns which had been killed in the War.’

‘Killed in the War,’ William answered vaguely.

‘But the People of the Graves waited behind their white walls, among the grass and flowers—orderly in their lines—as it were an inspection with all gear set out on the cots.’

One Three Two gathered the child closer as he grew heavier.

‘My Colonel told me this. And my Colonel said—and Allah be my witness I know!—it was killing cold weather. Frangistan is colder than all my own hills in winter—cold that cuts off a man’s toes. Yes! That is why I lack two toes, Baba. And bitter it was when the Padishah came in spring. The sun shone, but the winds cut. And, at the last, and the last, was a narrow cemetery, walled with high walls, entered by one door in a corner. Yes—like this Gaol-Khana. It was filled with our own people for the most part—Mussulmans who had served. It lay outside a city, among fields where the winds blew. Now, in the order of the Padishah’s pilgrimage, it was commanded that wheresoever he chose to draw rein, there should wait on him some General-sahib, who had fought near that place in the long War. Not princes, priests, nor elephants, but a General of his service. And so to this narrow, high-walled burial-place of the one gate came a General-sahib, sworded and spurred, with many medals, to wait the Padishah’s coming. And while he waited he clothed himself—for he had been sick—in his big coat, his Baritish warrum.’

‘I know,’ said William, rousing himself. ‘Mahmud made me a little one out of the old one of my father, when he came back. But Mahmud would not sew me any crowns or stars on the shoulder.’

Mahmud drew a quick breath (he had been putting away his hand sewing-machine) and went softly into the house. The sun was setting, and there was a change in the air.

‘Yes, all the world knows Baritish warrum. So the General waited, sheltering himself from the wind that blew through that gate till the feet of the Padishah were heard walking across the waste ground without.’

One Three Two reached up his left hand, took the cold-weather dressing-gown that Mahmud fetched from the nursery, and laid it lightly over William.

His voice went on in a soothing purr. ‘And when the feet of the Padishah were heard without the gate, that General stripped off his heavy coat and stood forth in his medalled uniform, as the order is. Then the Padishah entered. The General saluted, but the Padishah did not heed. He signed with his open hand thus, from right to left—my Colonel showed me—and he cried out “By Allah, O man, I conjure thee put on that coat on one breath! This is no season to catch sickness.” And he named the very sickness that was to fall upon himself five years after. So the General cast himself into that big coat again with speed, and in one breath the Padishah became in all respects again the Padishah. His equerries rehearsed the General’s name and honours, and the General saluted and put forward his sword-hilt to be touched, and he did the Padishah duty and attendance in that place through the appointed hour. And on the out-going the Padishah said to him: “ Take heed that never again, O man, do I find thee at such seasons without thy thick coat upon thee. For the good are scarce.” And he went down to the sea, and they cast off in the silence of ten thousand bare-headed. (He had forbidden music because it was a haj [pilgrimage].) And thus it was accomplished; and this, my Colonel told me, was his last act in his haj to the People of the Graves. . . . Wait thy prayer awhile, Mahmud. The child sleeps. When the Padishah was gone the General said to my Colonel, who was on leave in Frangistan, “By Allah, to the Padishah do I owe my life, for an hour coatless in that chill would have slain me!”’

‘The Padishah forenamed the sickness that fell upon himself?’ Mahmud asked.

William breathed evenly.

‘That very sickness—five full years before it fell.’

‘It may be a sign,’ Mahmud conceded, ‘even though it is a little one.’

‘A man’s life is not a little thing. See what a tamasha (circus) that fat Hindu pig of a judge made over the one I spilled.’

‘A little thing beside the great things which the Padishah does daily, in his power.’

‘What do we know of them? He is Padishah. The more part of his rule is worked by his headmen—as, but for my Colonel, my hanging would have been. Nay! Nay! We say, in the Regiment: “How does a man bear himself off parade?” And we say in our Hills, of those cursed crooked Kabul-made rifles: A gun does not throw true unless it has been bored true.” But thou art no soldier.’

‘True! And yet in my trade we say: “As the silk, so the least shred of it. As the heart, so the hand.”’

‘And it is truth! This deed that the Padishah did among the People of the Graves declared the quality and nature of the Padishah himself. It was a fair blood-debt between a man and a man. The life of that General is owing to the Padishah. I hold it will be paid to him, and that the Padishah will live.’

‘If God please,’ said Mahmud, and laid out his mat. The sun had set, and it was time for the fourth prayer of the day. Mahmud, as Imam of a mosque, was strict in ritual, but One Three Two only prayed at dawn and full dark. So he sat till he heard the Doctor’s car challenged at the Gaol gate before he carried William in to the nursery.

‘What did the Man in the Bokkus tell about the King?’ William asked his mother when she kissed him good-night in his cot. He was all but asleep.

‘Only the same as this morning. Shall I hear your prayers, little man?’

‘No need! ‘ muttered William. Then he sat bolt upright, intensely awake, and speaking in chosen English: ‘Because Busi-bandah says the King will get well, anyhow. He says it is his back-pay for making the cold General put on his Baritish warrum.’

He flopped back, burrowed in his pillow, grunted, and dived far beneath the floods of sleep.

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EVERY one in the village knew that Helen Turrell did her duty by all her world, and by none more honourably than by her only brother’s unfortunate child. The village knew, too, that George Turrell had tried his family severely since early youth, and were not surprised to be told that, after many fresh starts given and thrown away, he, an Inspector of Indian Police, had entangled himself with the daughter of a retired noncommissioned officer, and had died of a fall from a horse a few weeks before his child was born. Mercifully, George’s father and mother were both dead, and though Helen, thirty-five and independent, might well have washed her hands of the whole disgraceful affair, she most nobly took charge, though she was, at the time, under threat of lung trouble which had driven her to the South of France. She arranged for the passage of the child and a nurse from Bombay, met them at Marseilles, nursed the baby through an attack of infantile dysentery due to the carelessness of the nurse, whom she had had to dismiss, and at last, thin and worn but triumphant, brought the boy late in the autumn, wholly restored, to her Hampshire home.All these details were public property, for Helen was as open as the day, and held that scandals are only increased by hushing them up. She admitted that George had always been rather a black sheep, but things might have been much worse if the mother had insisted on her right to keep the boy. Luckily, it seemed that people of that class would do almost anything for money, and, as George had always turned to her in his scrapes, she felt herself justified—her friends agreed with her—in cutting the whole non-commissioned officer connection, and giving the child every advantage. A christening, by the Rector, under the name of Michael, was the first step. So far as she knew herself, she was not, she said, a child-lover, but, for all his faults, she had been very fond of George, and she pointed out that little Michael had his father’s mouth to a line; which made something to build upon.

As a matter of fact, it was the Turrell forehead, broad, low, and well-shaped, with the widely spaced eyes beneath it, that Michael had most faithfully reproduced. His mouth was somewhat better cut than the family type. But Helen, who would concede nothing good to his mother’s side, vowed he was a Turrell all over, and, there being no one to contradict, the likeness was established.

In a few years Michael took his place, as accepted as Helen had always been—fearless, philosophical, and fairly good-looking. At six, he wished to know why he could not call her ‘Mummy’, as other boys called their mothers. She explained that she was only his auntie, and that aunties were not quite the same as mummies, but that, if it gave him pleasure, he might call her ‘Mummy’ at bedtime, for a pet-name between themselves.

Michael kept his secret most loyally, but Helen, as usual, explained the fact to her friends; which when Michael heard, he raged.

‘Why did you tell? Why did you tell?’ came at the end of the storm.

‘Because it’s always best to tell the truth,’ Helen answered, her arm round him as he shook in his cot.

‘All right, but when the troof’s ugly I don’t think it’s nice.’

‘Don’t you, dear!’

‘No, I don’t, and’—she felt the small body stiffen—‘now you’ve told, I won’t call you “Mummy” any more—not even at bedtimes.

‘But isn’t that rather unkind?’ said Helen softly.

‘I don’t care! You’ve hurted me in my insides and I’l hurt you back. I’ll hurt you as long as I live!’

‘Don’t, oh, don’t talk like that, dear! You don’t know what—’

‘I will! And when I’m dead I’ll hurt you worse!’

‘Thank goodness, I shall be dead long before you, darling.’

‘Huh! Emma says, “‘Never know your luck.”’ (Michael had been talking to Helen’s elderly flat-faced maid.) ‘Lots of little boys die quite soon. So’ll I. Then you’ll see!’

Helen caught her breath and moved towards the door, but the wail of ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ drew her back again, and the two wept together.

At ten years old, after two terms at a prep. school, something or somebody gave him the idea that his civil status was not quite regular. He attacked Helen on the subject, breaking down her stammered defences with the family directness.

‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ he said, cheerily, at the end. ‘People wouldn’t have talked like they did if my people had been married. But don’t you bother, Auntie. I’ve found out all about my sort in English Hist’ry and the Shakespeare bits. There was William the Conqueror to begin with, and—oh, heaps more, and they all got on first-rate. ’Twon’t make any difference to you, my being that—will it?’

‘As if anything could—’ she began.

‘All right. We won’t talk about it any more if it makes you cry.’ He never mentioned the thing again of his own will, but when, two years later, he skilfully managed to have measles in the holidays, as his temperature went up to the appointed one hundred and four he muttered of nothing else, till Helen’s voice, piercing at last his delirium, reached him with assurance that nothing on earth or beyond could make any difference between them.

The terms at his public school and the wonderful Christmas, Easter, and Summer holidays followed each other, variegated and glorious as jewels on a string; and as jewels Helen treasured them. In due time Michael developed his own interests, which ran their courses and gave way to others; but his interest in Helen was constant and increasing throughout. She repaid it with all that she had of affection or could command of counsel and money; and since Michael was no fool, the War took him just before what was like to have been a most promising career.

He was to have gone up to Oxford, with a scholarship, in October. At the end of August he was on the edge of joining the first holocaust of public-school boys who threw themselves into the Line; but the captain of his OTC, where he had been sergeant for nearly a year, headed him off and steered him directly to a commission in a battalion so new that half of it still wore the old Army red, and the other half was breeding meningitis through living overcrowdedly in damp tents. Helen had been shocked at the idea of direct enlistment. ‘But it’s in the family,’ Michael laughed.

‘You don’t mean to tell me that you believed that old story all this time?’ said Helen. (Emma, her maid, had been dead now several years.) ‘I gave you my word of honour—and I give it again—that—that it’s all right. It is indeed.’

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‘Oh, that doesn’t worry me. It never did,’ he replied valiantly. ‘What I meant was, I should have got into the show earlier if I’d enlisted—like my grandfather.

‘Don’t talk like that! Are you afraid of its ending so soon, then!’

‘No such luck. You know what K says.’

‘Yes. But my banker told me last Monday it couldn’t possibly last beyond Christmas—for financial reasons.’

‘Hope he’s right, but our Colonel—and he’s a Regular—says it’s going to be a long job.’

Michael’s battalion was fortunate in that, by some chance which meant several ‘leaves’, it was used for coast-defence among shallow trenches on the Norfolk coast; thence sent north to watch the mouth of a Scotch estuary, and, lastly, held for weeks on a baseless rumour of distant service. But, the very day that Michael was to have met Helen for four whole hours at a railway-junction up the line, it was hurled out, to help make good the wastage of Loos, and he had only just time to send her a wire of farewell.

In France luck again helped the battalion. It was put down near the Salient, where it led a meritorious and unexacting life, while the Somme was being manufactured; and enjoyed the peace of the Armentieres and Laventie sectors when that battle began. Finding that it had sound views on protecting its own flanks and could dig, a prudent Commander stole it out of its own Division, under pretence of helping to lay telegraphs, and used it round Ypres at large.

A month later, just after Michael had written Helen that there was nothing special doing and therefore no need to worry, a shell-splinter dropping out of a wet dawn killed him at once. The next shell uprooted and laid down over the body what had been the foundation of a barn wall, so neatly that none but an expert would have guessed that anything unpleasant had happened.

By this time the village was old in experience of war, and, English fashion, had evolved a ritual to meet it. When the postmistress handed her seven-year-old daughter the official telegram to take to Miss Turrell, she observed to the Rector’s gardener: ‘It’s Miss Helen’s turn now.’ He replied, thinking of his own son: ‘Well, he’s lasted longer than some.’ The child herself came to the front-door weeping aloud, because Master Michael had often given her sweets. Helen, presently, found herself pulling down the house-blinds one after one with great care, and saying earnestly to each: ‘Missing always means dead.’ Then she took her place in the dreary procession that was impelled to go through an inevitable series of unprofitable emotions. The Rector, of course, preached hope and prophesied word, very soon, from a prison camp. Several friends, too, told her perfectly truthful tales, but always about other women, to whom, after months and months of silence, their missing had been miraculously restored. Other people urged her to communicate with infallible Secretaries of organizations who could communicate with benevolent neutrals, who could extract accurate information from the most secretive of Hun prison commandants. Helen did and wrote and signed everything that was suggested or put before her.

Once, on one of Michael’s leaves, he had taken her over munition factory, where she saw the progress of a shell from blank-iron to the all but finished article. It struck her at the time that the wretched thing was never left alone for a single second; and ‘I’m being manufactured into a bereaved next of kin,’ she told herself, as she prepared her documents.

In due course, when all the organizations had deeply or sincerely regretted their inability to trace, etc., something gave way within her and all sensation—save of thankfulness for the release—came to an end in blessed passivity. Michael had died and her world had stood still and she had been one with the full shock of that arrest. Now she was standing still and the world was going forward, but it did not concern her—in no way or relation did it touch her. She knew this by the ease with which she could slip Michael’s name into talk and incline her head to the proper angle, at the proper murmur of sympathy.

In the blessed realization of that relief, the Armistice with all its bells broke over her and passed unheeded. At the end of another year she had overcome her physical loathing of the living and returned young, so that she could take them by the hand and almost sincerely wish them well. She had no interest in any aftermath, national or personal, of the war, but, moving at an immense distance, she sat on various relief committees and held strong views—she heard herself delivering them—about the site of the proposed village War Memorial.

Then there came to her, as next of kin, an official intimation, backed by a page of a letter to her in indelible pencil, a silver identity-disc, and a watch, to the effect that the body of Lieutenant Michael Turrell had been found, identified, and re-interred in Hagenzeele Third Military Cemetery—the letter of the row and the grave’s number in that row duly given.

So Helen found herself moved on to another process of the manufacture—to a world full of exultant or broken relatives, now strong in the certainty that there was an altar upon earth where they might lay their love. These soon told her, and by means of time-tables made clear, how easy it was and how little it interfered with life’s affairs to go and see one’s grave.

‘So different,’ as the Rector’s wife said, ‘if he’d been killed in Mesopotamia, or even Gallipoli.’

The agony of being waked up to some sort of second life drove Helen across the Channel, where, in a new world of abbreviated titles, she learnt that Hagenzeele Third could be comfortably reached by an afternoon train which fitted in with the morning boat, and that there was a comfortable little hotel not three kilometres from Hagenzeele itself, where one could spend quite a comfortable night and see one’s grave next morning. All this she had from a Central Authority who lived in a board and tar-paper shed on the skirts of a razed city full of whirling lime-dust and blown papers.

‘By the way,’ said he, ‘you know your grave, of course!’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Helen, and showed its row and number typed on Michael’s own little typewriter. The officer would have checked it, out of one of his many books; but a large Lancashire woman thrust between them and bade him tell her where she might find her son, who had been corporal in the A.S.C. His proper name, she sobbed, was Anderson, but, coming of respectable folk, he had of course enlisted under the name of Smith; and had been killed at Dickiebush, in early ’Fifteen. She had not his number nor did she know which of his two Christian names he might have used with his alias; but her Cook’s tourist ticket expired at the end of Easter week, and if by then she could not find her child she should go mad. Whereupon she fell forward on Helen’s breast; but the officer’s wife came out quickly from a little bedroom behind the office, and the three of them lifted the woman on to the cot.

‘They are often like this,’ said the officer’s wife, loosening the tight bonnet-strings. ‘Yesterday she said he’d been killed at Hooge. Are you sure you know your grave? It makes such a difference.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Helen, and hurried out before the woman on the bed should begin to lament again.

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Tea in a crowded mauve and blue striped wooden structure, with a false front, carried her still further into the nightmare. She paid her bill beside a stolid, plain-featured Englishwoman, who, hearing her inquire about the train to Hagenzeele, volunteered to come with her.

‘I’m going to Hagenzeele myself,’ she explained .’Not to Hagenzeele Third; mine is Sugar Factory, but they call it La Rosière now. It’s just south of Hagenzeele Three. Have you got your room at the hotel there!’

‘Oh yes, thank you. I’ve wired.’

‘That’s better. Sometimes the place is quite full, and at others there’s hardly a soul. But they’ve put bathrooms into the old Lion d’Or—that’s the hotel on the west side of Sugar Factory—and it draws off a lot of people, luckily.’

‘It’s all new to me. This is the first time I’ve been over.’

‘Indeed! This is my ninth time since the Armistice. Not on my own account. I haven’t lost any one, thank God—but, like every one else, I’ve a lot of friends at home who have. Coming over as often as I do, I find it helps them to have some one just look at the—the place and tell them about it afterwards. And one can take photos for them, too. I get quite a list of commissions to execute.’ She laughed nervously and tapped her slung Kodak. ‘There are two or three to see at Sugar Factory this time, and plenty of others in the cemeteries all about. My system is to save them up, and arrange them, you know. And when I’ve got enough commissions for one area to make it worth while, I pop over and execute them. It does comfort people.’

‘I suppose so,’ Helen answered, shivering as they entered the little train.

‘Of course it does. (Isn’t it lucky we’ve got window-seats!) It must do or they wouldn’t ask one to do it, would they! I’ve a list of quite twelve or fifteen commissions here’—she tapped the Kodak again—‘I must sort them out tonight. Oh, I forgot to ask you. What’s yours!’

‘My nephew,’ said Helen. ‘But I was very fond of him.’

‘Ah, yes! I sometimes wonder whether they know after death! What do you think?’

‘Oh, I don’t—I haven’t dared to think much about that sort of thing,’ said Helen, almost lifting her hands to keep her off.

‘Perhaps that’s better,’ the woman answered. ‘The sense of loss must be enough, I expect. Well, I won’t worry you any more.’

Helen was grateful, but when they reached the hotel Mrs Scarsworth (they had exchanged names) insisted on dining at the same table with her, and after the meal, in the little, hideous salon full of low-voiced relatives, took Helen through her ‘commissions’ with biographies of the dead, where she happened to know them, and sketches of their next of kin. Helen endured till nearly half-past nine, ere she fled to her room.

Almost at once there was a knock at her door and Mrs Scarsworth entered; her hands, holding the dreadful list, clasped before her.

‘Yes—yes—I know,’ she began. ‘You’re sick of me, but I want to tell you something. You—you aren’t married, are you? Then perhaps you won’t … But it doesn’t matter. I’ve got to tell some one. I can’t go on any longer like this.’

‘But please—’ Mrs Scarsworth had backed against the shut door, and her mouth worked dryly.

In a minute,’ she said. ‘You—you know about these graves of mine I was telling you about downstairs, just now! They really are commissions. At least several of them are.’ Her eye wandered round the room. ‘What extraordinary wall-papers they have in Belgium, don’t you think? …Yes. I swear they are commissions. But there’s one, d’you see, and—and he was more to me than anything else in the world. Do you understand?’

Helen nodded.

‘More than any one else. And, of course, he oughtn’t to have been. He ought to have been nothing to me. But he was. He is. That’s why I do the commissions, you see. That’s all.’

‘But why do you tell me!’ Helen asked desperately.

‘Because I’m so tired of lying. Tired of lying—always lying—year in and year out. When I don’t tell lies I’ve got to act ’em and I’ve got to think ’em, always. You don’t know what that means. He was everything to me that he oughtn’t to have been—the one real thing—the only thing that ever happened to me in all my life; and I’ve had to pretend he wasn’t. I’ve had to watch every word I said, and think out what lie I’d tell next, for years and years!’

‘How many years?’ Helen asked.

‘Six years and four months before, and two and three-quarters after. I’ve gone to him eight times, since. Tomorrow’ll make the ninth, and—and I can’t—I can’t go to him again with nobody in the world knowing. I want to be honest with some one before I go. Do you understand! It doesn’t matter about me. I was never truthful, even as a girl. But it isn’t worthy of him. So I—I had to tell you. I can’t keep it up any longer. Oh, I can’t.’

She lifted her joined hands almost to the level of her mouth and brought them down sharply, still joined, to full arms’ length below her waist. Helen reached forward, caught them, bowed her head over them, and murmured: ‘Oh, my dear! My—’ Mrs Scarsworth stepped back, her face all mottled.

‘My God!’ said she. ‘Is that how you take it!’

Helen could not speak, and the woman went out; but it a long while before Helen was able to sleep.

Next morning Mrs Scarsworth left early on her round of commissions, and Helen walked alone to Hagenzeele Third. The place was still in the making, and stood some five or six feet above the metalled road, which it flanked for hundred yards. Culverts across a deep ditch served for entrances through the unfinished boundary wall. She climbed a few wooden-faced earthen steps and then met the entire crowded level of the thing in one held breath. She did not know Hagenzeele Third counted twenty-one thousand dead already. All she saw was a merciless sea of black crosses, bearing little strips of stamped tin at all angles across their faces. She could distinguish no order or arrangement in their mass; nothing but a waist-high wilderness as of weeds stricken dead, rushing at her. She went forward, moved to the left and the right hopelessly, wondering by what guidance she should ever come to her own. A great distance away there was a line of whiteness. It proved to be a block of some two or three hundred graves whose headstones had already been set, whose flowers planted out, and whose new-sown grass showed green. Here she could see clear-cut letters at the ends of the rows, referring to her slip, realized that it was not here she must look.

A man knelt behind a line of headstones—evidently a gardener, for he was firming a young plant in the soft earth. She went towards him, her paper in her hand. He rose at her approach and without prelude or salutation asked: ‘Who are you looking for?’

‘Lieutenant Michael Turrell—my nephew,’ said Helen slowly and word for word, as she had many thousands of times in her life.

The man lifted his eyes and looked at her with infinite compassion before he turned from the fresh-sown grass toward the naked black crosses.

‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘and I will show you where your son lies.’

When Helen left the Cemetery she turned for a last look. In the distance she saw the man bending over his young plants; and she went away, supposing him to be the gardener.

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IN THE LODGE of Instruction attached to ‘Faith and Works No. 5837 E.C.,’ which has already been described, Saturday afternoon was appointed for the weekly clean-up, when all visiting Brethren were welcome to help under the direction of the Lodge Officer of the day: their reward was light refreshment and the meeting of companions.This particular afternoon—in the autumn of ’20—Brother Burges, P.M., was on duty and, finding a strong shift present, took advantage of it to strip and dust all hangings and curtains, to go over every inch of the Pavement—which was stone, not floorcloth—by hand; and to polish the Columns, Jewels, Working outfit and organ. I was given to clean some Officers’ Jewels—beautiful bits of old Georgian silver-work humanised by generations of elbow-grease—and retired to the organ-loft; for the floor was like the quarterdeck of a battleship on the eve of a ball. Half-a-dozen brethren had already made the Pavement as glassy as the aisle of Greenwich Chapel; the brazen chapiters winked like pure gold at the flashing Marks on the Chairs; and a morose one-legged brother was attending to the Emblems of Mortality with, I think, rouge.

‘They ought,’ he volunteered to Brother Burges as we passed, ‘to be betwixt the colour of ripe apricots an’ a half-smoked meerschaum. That’s how we kept ’em in my Mother-Lodge—a treat to look at.’

‘I’ve never seen spit-and-polish to touch this,’ I said.

‘Wait till you see the organ,’ Brother Burges replied. ‘You could shave in it when they’ve done. Brother Anthony’s in charge up there—the taxi-owner you met here last month. I don’t think you’ve come across Brother Humberstall, have you?’

‘I don’t remember—’ I began.

‘You wouldn’t have forgotten him if you had. He’s a hairdresser now, somewhere at the back of Ebury Street. ’Was Garrison Artillery. ’Blown up twice.’

‘Does he show it?’ I asked at the foot of the organ-loft stairs.

‘No-o. Not much more than Lazarus did, I expect.’ Brother Burges fled off to set some one else to a job.

Brother Anthony, small, dark, and humpbacked, was hissing groom-fashion while he treated the rich acacia-wood panels of the Lodge organ with some sacred, secret composition of his own. Under his guidance Humberstall, an enormous, flat-faced man, carrying the shoulders, ribs, and loins of the old Mark ’14 Royal Garrison Artillery, and the eyes of a bewildered retriever, rubbed the stuff in. I sat down to my task on the organ-bench, whose purple velvet cushion was being vacuum-cleaned on the floor below.

‘Now,’ said Anthony, after five minutes’ vigorous work on the part of Humberstall. ‘Now we’re gettin’ somethin’ worth lookin’ at! Take it easy, an’ go on with what you was tellin’ me about that Macklin man.’

‘I—I ’adn’t anything against ’im,’ said Humberstall, ’excep’ he’d been a toff by birth; but that never showed till he was bosko absoluto. Mere bein’ drunk on’y made a common ’ound of ’im. But when bosko, it all came out. Otherwise, he showed me my duties as mess-waiter very well on the ’ole.’

‘Yes, yes. But what in ’ell made you go back to your Circus? The Board gave you down-an’-out fair enough, you said, after the dump went up at Eatables? ‘

‘Board or no Board, I ’adn’t the nerve to stay at ’ome—not with Mother chuckin’ ’erself round all three rooms like a rabbit every time the Gothas tried to get Victoria; an’ sister writin’ me aunts four pages about it next day. Not for me, thank you! till the war was over. So I slid out with a draft—they wasn’t particular in ’17, so long as the tally was correct—and I joined up again with our Circus somewhere at the back of Lar Pug Noy, I think it was.’ Humberstall paused for some seconds and his brow wrinkled. ‘Then I—I went sick, or somethin’ or other, they told me; but I know when I reported for duty, our Battery Sergeant-Major says that I wasn’t expected back, an’—an’, one thing leadin’ to another—to cut a long story short—I went up before our Major—Major—I shall forget my own name next-Major——’

‘Never mind,’ Anthony interrupted. ‘Go on! It’ll come back in talk!’

‘’Alf a mo’. ’Twas on the tip o’ my tongue then.’

Humberstall dropped the polishing-cloth and knitted his brows again in most profound thought. Anthony turned to me and suddenly launched into a sprightly tale of his taxi’s collision with a Marble Arch refuge on a greasy day after a three-yard skid.

‘’Much damage?’ I asked.

‘Oh no! Ev’ry bolt an’ screw an’ nut on the chassis strained; but nothing carried away, you understand me, an’ not a scratch on the body. You’d never ’ave guessed a thing wrong till you took ’er in hand. It was a wop too: ’ead-on—like this!’ And he slapped his tactful little forehead to show what a knock it had been.

‘Did your Major dish you up much?’ he went on over his shoulder to Humberstall, who came out of his abstraction with a slow heave.

‘We-ell! He told me I wasn’t expected back either; an’ he said ’e couldn’t ’ang up the ’ole Circus till I’d rejoined; an’ he said that my ten-inch Skoda which I’d been Number Three of, before the dump went up at Eatables, had ’er full crowd. But, ’e said, as soon as a casualty occurred he’d remember me. “Meantime,” says he, “I particularly want you for actin’ mess-waiter.”

‘“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” I says perfectly respectful; “but I didn’t exactly come back for that, sir.”

‘“Beggin’ your pardon, ’Umberstall,” says ’e, “but I ’appen to command the Circus! Now, you’re a sharp-witted man,” he says; “an’ what we’ve suffered from fool-waiters in Mess ’as been somethin’ cruel. You’ll take on, from now—under instruction to Macklin ’ere.” So this man, Macklin, that I was tellin’ you about, showed me my duties . . . . ’Ammick! I’ve got it! ’Ammick was our Major, an’ Mosse was Captain!’ Humberstall celebrated his recapture of the name by labouring at the organ-panel on his knee.

‘Look out! You’ll smash it,’ Anthony protested.

‘Sorry! Mother’s often told me I didn’t know my strength. Now, here’s a curious thing. This Major of ours—it’s ail comin’ back to me—was a high-up divorce-court lawyer; an’ Mosse, our Captain, was Number One o’ Mosses Private Detective Agency. You’ve heard of it? ’Wives watched while you wait, an’ so on. Well, these two ’ad been registerin’ together, so to speak, in the Civil line for years on end, but hadn’t ever met till the War. Consequently, at Mess their talk was mostly about famous cases they’d been mixed up in. ’Ammick told the Law-courts’ end o’ the business, an’ all what had been left out of the pleadin’s; an’ Mosse ’ad the actual facts concernin’ the errin’ parties—in hotels an’ so on. I’ve heard better talk in our Mess than ever before or since. It comes o’ the Gunners bein’ a scientific corps.’

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‘That be damned!’ said Anthony. ‘If anythin’ ’appens to ’em they’ve got it all down in a book. There’s no book when your lorry dies on you in the ’Oly Land. That’s brains.’

‘Well, then,’ Humberstall continued, ‘come on this secret society business that I started tellin’ you about. When those two—’Ammick an’ Mosse—’ad finished about their matrimonial relations—and, mind you, they weren’t radishes—they seldom or ever repeated—they’d begin, as often as not, on this Secret Society woman I was tellin’ you of—this Jane. She was the only woman I ever ’eard ’em say a good word for. ’Cordin’ to them Jane was a none-such. I didn’t know then she was a Society. ’Fact is, I only ’ung out ’arf an ear in their direction at first, on account of bein’ under instruction for mess-duty to this Macklin man. What drew my attention to her was a new Lieutenant joinin’ up. We called ’im “Gander” on account of his profeel, which was the identical bird. ’E’d been a nactuary—workin’ out ’ow long civilians ’ad to live. Neither ’Ammick nor Mosse wasted words on ’im at Mess. They went on talking as usual, an’ in due time, as usual, they got back to Jane. Gander cocks one of his big chilblainy ears an’ cracks his cold finger joints. “By God! Jane?” says ’e. “Yes, Jane,” says ’Ammick pretty short an’ senior. “Praise ’Eaven!” says Gander. “ It was ‘Bubbly’ where I’ve come from down the line.” (Some damn revue or other, I expect.) Well, neither ’Ammick nor Mosse was easy-mouthed, or for that matter mealy-mouthed; but no sooner ’ad Gander passed that remark than they both shook ’ands with the young squirt across the table an’ called for the port back again. It was a password, all right! Then they went at it about Jane—all three, regardless of rank. That made me listen. Presently, I ’eard ’Ammick say——’

‘’Arf a mo’,’ Anthony cut in. ‘But what was you doin’ in Mess?’

‘Me an’ Macklin was refixin’ the sand-bag screens to the dug-out passage in case o’ gas. We never knew when we’d cop it in the ’Eavies, don’t you see? But we knew we ’ad been looked for for some time, an’ it might come any minute. But, as I was sayin’, ’Ammick says what a pity ’twas Jane ’ad died barren. “I deny that,” says Mosse. “I maintain she was fruitful in the ’ighest sense o’ the word.” An’ Mosse knew about such things, too. “I’m inclined to agree with ’Ammick,” says young Gander. “Any’ow, she’s left no direct an’ lawful prog’ny.” I remember every word they said, on account o’ what ’appened subsequently. I ’adn’t noticed Macklin much, or I’d ha’ seen he was bosko absoluto. Then ’e cut in, leanin’ over a packin’-case with a face on ’im like a dead mackerel in the dark. “Pa-hardon me, gents,” Macklin says, “but this is a matter on which I do ’appen to be moderately well-informed. She did leave lawful issue in the shape o’ one son; an’ ’is name was ’Enery James.”

‘“By what sire? Prove it,” says Gander, before ’is senior officers could get in a word.

‘“I will,” says Macklin, surgin’ on ’is two thumbs. An’, mark you, none of ’em spoke! I forget whom he said was the sire of this ’Enery James-man; but ’e delivered ’em a lecture on this Jane-woman for more than a quarter of an hour. I know the exact time, because my old Skoda was on duty at ten-minute intervals reachin’ after some Jerry formin’-up area; and her blast always put out the dug-out candles. I relit ’em once, an’ again at the end. In conclusion, this Macklin fell flat forward on ’is face, which was how ’e generally wound up ’is notion of a perfect day. Bosko absoluto!

‘“Take ’im away,” says ’Ammick to me. “’E’s sufferin’ from shell-shock.”

‘To cut a long story short, that was what first put the notion into my ’ead. Wouldn’t it you? Even ’ad Macklin been a ’ighup Mason——’

‘Wasn’t ’e, then?’ said Anthony, a little puzzled.

‘’E’d never gone beyond the Blue Degrees, ’e told me. Any’ow, ’e’d lectured ’is superior officers up an’ down; ’e’d as good as called ’em fools most o’ the time, in ’is toff’s voice. I ’eard ’im an’ I saw ’im. An’ all he got was—me told off to put ’im to bed! And all on account o’ Jane! Would you have let a thing like that get past you? Nor me, either! Next mornin’, when his stummick was settled, I was at him full-cry to find out ’ow it was worked. Toff or no toff, ’e knew his end of a bargain. First, ’e wasn’t takin’ any. He said I wasn’t fit to be initiated into the Society of the Janeites. That only meant five bob more—fifteen up to date.

‘“Make it one Bradbury,” ’e says. “It’s dirt-cheap. You saw me ’old the Circus in the ’ollow of me ’and?”

‘No denyin’ it. I ’ad. So, for one pound, he communicated me the Password of the First Degree, which was Tilniz an’ trap-doors.

‘“I know what a trap-door is,” I says to ’im, “ but what in ’ell’s Tilniz? “

‘“You obey orders,” ’e says, “an’ next time I ask you what you’re thinkin’ about you’ll answer, ‘Tilniz an’ trap-doors,’ in a smart and soldierly manner. I’ll spring that question at me own time. All you’ve got to do is to be distinck.”

‘We settled all this while we was skinnin’ spuds for dinner at the back o’ the rear-truck under our camouflage-screens. Gawd, ’ow that glue-paint did stink! Otherwise, ’twasn’t so bad, with the sun comin’ through our pantomime-leaves, an’ the wind marcelling the grasses in the cutting. Well, one thing leading to another, nothin’ further ’appened in this direction till the afternoon. We ’ad a high standard o’ livin’ in Mess—an’ in the Group, for that matter. I was talon’ away Mosses lunch—dinner ’e would never call it—an’ Mosse was fillin’ ’is cigarette-case previous to the afternoon’s duty. Macklin, in the passage, comin’ in as if ’e didn’t know Mosse was there, slings ’is question at me, an’ I give the countersign in a low but quite distinck voice, makin’ as if I ’adn’t seen Mosse. Mosse looked at me through and through, with his cigarette-case in his ’and. Then ’e jerks out ’arf a dozen—best Turkish—on the table an’ exits. I pinched ’em an’ divvied with Macklin.

‘“You see ’ow it works,” says Macklin. “Could you ’ave invested a Bradbury to better advantage?”

‘“So far, no,” I says. “Otherwise, though, if they start provin’ an’ tryin’ me, I’m a dead bird. There must be a lot more to this Janeite game.”

‘“’Eaps an’ ’eaps,” he says. “But to show you the sort of ’eart I ’ave, I’ll communicate you all the ’Igher Degrees among the Janeites, includin’ the Charges, for another Bradbury; but you’ll ’ave to work, Dobbin.” ‘

‘’Pretty free with your Bradburys, wasn’t you?’ Anthony grunted disapprovingly.

‘What odds? Ac-tually, Gander told us, we couldn’t expect to av’rage more than six weeks longer apiece, an’, any’ow, I never regretted it. But make no mistake—the preparation was somethin’ cruel. In the first place, I come under Macklin for direct instruction re Jane.’

‘Oh! Jane was real, then?’ Anthony glanced for an instant at me as he put the question. ‘I couldn’t quite make that out.’

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‘Real!’ Humberstall’s voice rose almost to a treble. ‘Jane? Why, she was a little old maid ’oo’d written ’alf a dozen books about a hundred years ago. ’Twasn’t as if there was anythin’ to ’em, either. I know. I had to read ’em. They weren’t adventurous, nor smutty, nor what you’d call even interestin’—all about girls o’ seventeen (they begun young then, I tell you), not certain ’oom they’d like to marry; an’ their dances an’ card-parties an’ picnics, and their young blokes goin’ off to London on ’orseback for ’air-cuts an’ shaves. It took a full day in those days, if you went to a proper barber. They wore wigs, too, when they was chemists or clergymen. All that interested me on account o’ me profession, an’ cuttin’ the men’s ’air every fortnight. Macklin used to chip me about bein’ an ’air-dresser. ’E could pass remarks, too!’

Humberstall recited with relish a fragment of what must have been a superb comminationservice, ending with, ‘You lazy-minded, lousyheaded, long-trousered, perfumed perookier.’

‘An’ you took it?’ Anthony’s quick eyes ran over the man.

‘Yes. I was after my money’s worth; an’ Macklin, havin’ put ’is ’and to the plough, wasn’t one to withdraw it. Otherwise, if I’d pushed ’im, I’d ha’ slew ’im. Our Battery Sergeant Major nearly did. For Macklin had a wonderful way o’ passing remarks on a man’s civil life; an’ he put it about that our B.S.M. had run a dope an’ dolly-shop with a Chinese woman, the wrong end o’ Southwark Bridge. Nothin’ you could lay ’old of, o’ course; but——’ Humberstall let us draw our own conclusions.

‘That reminds me,’ said Anthony, smacking his lips. ‘I ’ad a bit of a fracas with a fare in the Fulham Road last month. He called me a paras-tit-ic Forder. I informed ’im I was owner-driver, an’ ’e could see for ’imself the cab was quite clean. That didn’t suit ’im. ’E said it was crawlin’.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘One o’ them blue-bellied Bolshies of postwar Police (neglectin’ point-duty, as usual) asked us to flirt a little quieter. My joker chucked some Arabic at ’im. That was when we signed the Armistice. ’E’d been a Yeoman—a perishin’ Gloucestershire Yeoman—that I’d helped gather in the orange crop with at Jaffa, in the ’Oly Land ! ‘

‘And after that?’ I continued.

‘It ’ud be ’ard to say. I know ’e lived at Hendon or Cricklewood. I drove ’im there. We must ’ave talked Zionism or somethin’, because at seven next mornin’ him an’ me was tryin’ to get petrol out of a milkshop at St. Albans. They ’adn’t any. In lots o’ ways this war has been a public noosance, as one might say, but there’s no denyin’ it ’elps you slip through life easier. The dairyman’s son ’ad done time on Jordan with camels. So he stood us rum an’ milk.’

‘Just like ’avin’ the Password, eh?’ was Humberstall’s comment.

‘That’s right! Ours was Imshee kelb. Not so ’ard to remember as your Jane stuff.’

‘Jane wasn’t so very ’ard—not the way Macklin used to put ’er,’ Humberstall resumed. ‘I ’ad only six books to remember. I learned the names by ’eart as Macklin placed ’em. There was one called Persuasion, first; an’ the rest in a bunch, except another about some Abbey or other—last by three lengths. But, as I was sayin’, what beat me was there was nothin’ to ’em nor in ’em. Nothin’ at all, believe me.’

‘You seem good an’ full of ’em, any’ow,’ said Anthony.

‘I mean that ’er characters was no use! They was only just like people you run across any day. One of ’em was a curate—the Reverend Collins—always on the make an’ lookin’ to marry money. Well, when I was a Boy Scout, ’im or ’is twin brother was our troop-leader. An’ there was an upstandin’ ’ard-mouthed Duchess or a Baronet’s wife that didn’t give a curse for any one ’oo wouldn’t do what she told ’em to; the Lady—Lady Catherine (I’ll get it in a minute) De Bugg. Before Ma bought the ’airdressin’ business in London I used to know of an ’olesale grocer’s wife near Leicester (I’m Leicestershire myself) that might ’ave been ’er duplicate. And—oh yes—there was a Miss Bates; just an old maid runnin’ about like a hen with ’er ’ead cut off, an’ her tongue loose at both ends. I’ve got an aunt like ’er. Good as gold—but, you know.’

‘Lord, yes!’ said Anthony, with feeling. ‘An’ did you find out what Tilniz meant? I’m always huntin’ after the meanin’ of things mesel�’

‘Yes, ’e was a swine of a Major-General, retired, and on the make. They’re all on the make, in a quiet way, in Jane. ’E was so much of a gentleman by ’is own estimation that ’e was always be’avin’ like a hound. You know the sort. ‘Turned a girl out of ’is own ’ouse because she ’adn’t any money—after, mark you, encouragin’ ’er to set ’er cap at his son, because ’e thought she had.’

‘But that ’appens all the time,’ said Anthony. ‘Why, me own mother——’

‘That’s right. So would mine. But this Tilney was a man, an’ some’ow Jane put it down all so naked it made you ashamed. I told Macklin that, an’ he said I was shapin’ to be a good Janeite. ’Twasn’t his fault if I wasn’t. ’Nother thing, too; ’avin’ been at the Bath Mineral Waters ’Ospital in ’Sixteen, with trench-feet, was a great advantage to me, because I knew the names o’ the streets where Jane ’ad lived. There was one of ’em—Laura, I think, or some other girl’s name—which Macklin said was ’oly ground. “If you’d been initiated then,” he says, “you’d ha’ felt your flat feet tingle every time you walked over those sacred pavin’-stones.”

‘“My feet tingled right enough,” I said, “but not on account of Jane. Nothin’ remarkable about that,” I says.

‘“’Eaven lend me patience!” he says, combin’ ’is ’air with ’is little hands. “Every dam’ thing about Jane is remarkable to a pukka Janeite! It was there,” he says, “that Miss What’s—herName” (he had the name; I’ve forgotten it) “made up ’er engagement again, after nine years, with Captain T’other Bloke.” An’ he dished me out a page an’ a half of one of the books to learn by ’eart—Persuasion, I think it was.’

‘’You quick at gettin’ things off by ’eart?’ Anthony demanded.

‘Not as a rule. I was then, though, or else Macklin knew ’ow to deliver the Charges properly. ’E said ’e’d been some sort o’ schoolmaster once, and he’d make my mind resume work or break ’imself. That was just before the Battery Sergeant-Major ’ad it in for him on account o’ what he’d been sayin’ about the Chinese wife an’ the dollyshop.’

‘What did Macklin really say?’ Anthony and I asked together. Humberstall gave us a fragment. It was hardly the stuff to let loose on a pious post-war world without revision.

‘And what had your B.S.M. been in civil life?’ I asked at the end.

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‘’Ead-embalmer to an ’olesale undertaker in the Midlands,’ said Humberstall; ‘but, o’ course, when he thought ’e saw his chance he naturally took it. He came along one mornin’ lickin’ ’is lips. “You don’t get past me this time,” ’e says to Macklin. “You’re for it, Professor.”

‘“’Ow so, me gallant Major,” says Macklin; “an’ what for?”

‘“For writin’ obese words on the breech o’ the ten-inch,” says the B.S.M. She was our old Skoda that I’ve been tellin’ you about. We called ’er “Bloody Eliza.” She ’ad a badly wore obturator an’ blew through a fair treat. I knew by Macklin’s face the B.S.M. ’ad dropped it somewhere, but all he vow’saifed was, “Very good, Major. We will consider it in Common Room,” The B.S.M, couldn’t ever stand Macklin’s toff’s way o’ puttin’ things; so he goes off rumblin’ like ’ell’s bells in an ’urricane, as the Marines say. Macklin put it to me at once, what had I been doin’? Some’ow he could read me like a book.

‘Well, all I’d done—an’ I told ’im he was responsible for it—was to chalk the guns. ’Ammick never minded what the men wrote up on ’em. ’E said it gave ’em an interest in their job. You’d see all sorts of remarks chalked on the sideplates or the gear-casin’s.’

‘What sort of remarks?’ said Anthony keenly.

‘Oh! ’Ow Bloody Eliza, or Spittin’ Jim—that was our old Mark Five Nine-point-two—felt that morning, an’ such things. But it ’ad come over me—more to please Macklin than anythin’ else—that it was time we Janeites ’ad a look in. So, as I was tellin’ you, I’d taken an’ rechristened all three of ’em, on my own, early that mornin’. Spittin’ Jim I ’ad chalked “The Reverend Collins”—that Curate I was tellin’ you about; an’ our cut-down Navy Twelve, “General Tilney,” because it was worse wore in the groovin’ than anything I’d ever seen. The Skoda (an’ that was where I dropped it) I ’ad chalked up “The Lady Catherine De Bugg.” I made a clean breast of it all to Macklin. He reached up an’ patted me on the shoulder. “You done nobly,” he says. “You’re bringin’ forth abundant fruit, like a good Janeite. But I’m afraid your spellin’ has misled our worthy B.S.M. That’s what it is,” ’e says, slappin’ ’is little leg. “’Ow might you ’ave spelt De Bourgh for example?”

‘I told ’im. ’Twasn’t right; an’ ’e nips off to the Skoda to make it so. When ’e comes back, ’e says that the Gander ’ad been before ’im an’ corrected the error. But we two come up before the Major, just the same, that afternoon after lunch ; ’Ammick in the chair, so to speak, Mosse in another, an’ the B.S.M, chargin’ Macklin with writin’ obese words on His Majesty’s property, on active service. When it transpired that me an’ not Macklin was the offendin’ party, the B.S.M, turned ’is hand in and sulked like a baby. ’E as good as told ’Ammick ’e couldn’t hope to preserve discipline unless examples was made—meanin’, o’ course, Macklin.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard all that,’ said Anthony, with a contemptuous grunt. ‘The worst of it is, a lot of it’s true.’

‘’Ammick took ’im up sharp about Military Law, which he said was even more fair than the civilian article.’

‘My Gawd!’ This came from Anthony’s scornful midmost bosom.

‘“Accordin’ to the unwritten law of the ’Eavies,” says ’Ammick, “there’s no objection to the men chalkin’ the guns, if decency is preserved. On the other ’and,” says he, “we ’aven’t yet settled the precise status of individuals entitled so to do. I ’old that the privilege is confined to combatants only.”

‘“With the permission of the Court,” says Mosse, who was another born lawyer, “I’d like to be allowed to join issue on that point. Prisoner’s position is very delicate an’ doubtful, an’ he has no legal representative.”

‘“Very good,” says ‘Ammick. “Macklin bein’ acquitted——”

‘“With submission, me lud,” says Mosse. “I hope to prove ’e was accessory before the fact.”

‘“As you please,” says ’Ammick. “But in that case, ’oo the ’ell’s goin’ to get the port I’m tryin’ to stand the Court?”

‘“I submit,” says Mosse, “prisoner, bein’ under direct observation o’ the Court, could be temporarily enlarged for that duty.”

‘So Macklin went an’ got it, an’ the B.S.M. had ’is glass with the rest. Then they argued whether mess servants an’ non-combatants was entitled to chalk the guns (’Ammick versus Mosse). After a bit, ’Ammick as C.O. give ’imself best, an’ me an’ Macklin was severely admonished for trespassin’ on combatants’ rights, an’ the B.S.M. was warned that if we repeated the offence ’e could deal with us summ’rily. He ’ad some glasses o’ port an’ went out quite ’appy. Then my turn come, while Macklin was gettin’ them their tea; an’ one thing leadin’ to another, ’Ammick put me through all the Janeite Degrees, you might say. ’Never ’ad such a doin’ m my life.’

‘Yes, but what did you tell ’em?’ said Anthony. ‘I can’t ever think my lies quick enough when I’m for it.’

‘No need to lie. I told ’em that the backside view o’ the Skoda, when she was run up, put Lady De Bugg into my ’ead. They gave me right there, but they said I was wrong about General Tilney. ’Cordin’ to them, our Navy twelve-inch ought to ’ave been christened Miss Bates. I said the same idea ’ad crossed my mind, till I’d seen the General’s groovin’. Then I felt it had to be the General or nothin’. But they give me full marks for the Reverend Collins—our Nine-point-two.’

‘An’ you fed ’em that sort o’ talk?’ Anthony’s fox-coloured eyebrows climbed almost into his hair.

‘While I was assistin’ Macklin to get tea—yes. Seem’ it was an examination, I wanted to do ’im credit as a Janeite.’

‘An’—an’ what did they say?’

‘They said it was ’ighly creditable to us both. I don’t drink, so they give me about a hundred fags.’

‘Gawd! What a Circus you must ’ave been,’ was Anthony’s gasping comment.

‘It was a ’appy little Group. I wouldn’t ’a changed with any other.’

Humberstall sighed heavily as he helped Anthony slide back the organ-panel. We all admired it in silence, while Anthony repocketed his secret polishing mixture, which lived in a tin tobacco-box. I had neglected my work for listening to Humberstall. Anthony reached out quietly and took over a Secretary’s jewel and a rag. Humberstall studied his reflection in the glossy wood.

‘Almost,’ he said critically, holding his head to one side.

‘Not with an Army. You could with a Safety, though,’ said Anthony. And, indeed, as Brother Burges had foretold, one might have shaved in it with comfort.

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‘Did you ever run across any of ’em afterwards, any time?’ Anthony asked presently.

‘Not so many of ’em left to run after, now. With the ’Eavies it’s mostly neck or nothin’. We copped it. In the neck. In due time.’

‘Well, you come out of it all right.’ Anthony spoke both stoutly and soothingly; but Humberstall would not be comforted.

‘That’s right; but I almost wish I ’adn’t,’ he sighed. ‘I was ’appier there than ever before or since. Jerry’s March push in ’Eighteen did us in; an’ yet, ’ow could we ’ave expected it? ’Ow could we ’ave expected it? We’d been sent back for rest an’ runnin’-repairs, back pretty near our base; an’ our old loco’ that used to shift us about o’ nights, she’d gone down the line for repairs. But for ’Ammick we wouldn’t even ’ave ’ad our camouflage-screens up. He told our Brigadier that, whatever ’e might be in the Gunnery line, as a leadin’ Divorce lawyer he never threw away a point in argument. So ’e ’ad us all screened in over in a cuttin’ on a little spur-line near a wood; an’ ’e saw to the screens ’imself. The leaves weren’t more than comin’ out then, an’ the sun used to make our glue-paint stink. Just like actin’ in a theatre, it was! But ’appy. But ’appy! I expect if we’d been caterpillars, like the new big six-inch hows, they’d ha’ remembered us. But we was the old La Bassée ’15 Mark o’ Heavies that ran on rails—not much more good than scrap-iron that late in the war. An’, believe me, gents—or Brethren, as I should say—we copped it cruel. Look ’ere! It was in the afternoon, an’ I was watchin’ Gander instructin’ a class in new sights at Lady Catherine. All of a sudden I ’eard our screens rip overhead, an’ a runner on a motor-bike come sailin’, sailin’ through the air—like that bloke that used to bicycle off Brighton Pier—and landed one awful wop almost atop o’ the class. “’Old ’ard,” says Gander. “That’s no way to report. What’s the fuss?” “Your screens ’ave broke my back, for one thing,” says the bloke on the ground; “an’ for another, the ’ole front’s gone.” “Nonsense,” says Gander. ’E ’adn’t more than passed the remark when the man was vi’lently sick an’ conked out. ’E ’ad plenty papers on ’im from Brigadiers and C.O.’s reporting ’emselves cut off an’ askin’ for orders. ’E was right both ways—his back an’ our front. The ’ole Somme front washed out as clean as kiss-me-’and!’ His huge hand smashed down open on his knee.

‘We ’eard about it at the time in the ’Oly Land. Was it reelly as quick as all that?’ said Anthony.

‘Quicker! Look ’ere! The motor—bike dropped in on us about four pip-emma. After that, we tried to get orders o’ some kind or other, but nothin’ came through excep’ that all available transport was in use and not likely to be released. That didn’t ’elp us any. About nine o’clock comes along a young Brass ’At in brown gloves. We was quite a surprise to ’im. ’E said they were evacuating the area and we’d better shift. “Where to?” says ’Ammick, rather short.

‘“Oh, somewhere Amiens way,” he says. “Not that I’d guarantee Amiens for any length o’ time; but Amiens might do to begin with.” I’m giving you the very words. Then ’e goes off swingin’ ’is brown gloves, and ’Ammick sends for Gander and orders ’im to march the men through Amiens to Dieppe; book thence to New’aven, take up positions be’ind Seaford, an’ carry on the war. Gander said ’e’d see ’im damned first. ’Ammick says ’e’d see ’im courtmartialled after. Gander says what ’e meant to say was that the men ’ud see all an’ sundry damned before they went into Arniens with their gunsights wrapped up in their puttees. ’Ammick says ’e ’adn’t said a word about puttees, an’ carryin’ off the gunsights was purely optional. “Well, anyhow,” says Gander, “puttees or drawers, they ain’t goin’ to shift a step unless you lead the procession.”

‘“Mutinous ’ounds,” says ’Amrnick. “But we live in a democratic age. D’you suppose they’d object to kindly diggin’ ’emselves in a bit?” “Not at all,” says Gander. “The B.S.M.’s kept ’em at it like terriers for the last three hours.” “That bein’ so,” says ’Ammick, “Macklin’ll now fetch us small glasses o’ port.” Then Mosse comes in—he could smell port a mile off—an’ he submits we’d only add to the congestion in Amiens if we took our crowd there, whereas, if we lay doggo where we was, Jerry might miss us, though he didn’t seem to be missin’ much that evenin’.

‘The ’ole country was pretty noisy, an’ our dumps we’d lit ourselves flarin’ heavens-high as far as you could see. Lyin’ doggo was our best chance. I believe we might ha’ pulled it off, if we’d been left alone, but along towards midnight—there was some small stuff swishin’ about, but nothin’ particular—a nice little bald-headed old gentleman in uniform pushes into the dug-out wipin’ his glasses an’ sayin’ ’e was thinkin’ o’ formin’ a defensive flank on our left with ’is battalion which ’ad just come up. ’Ammick says ’e wouldn’t form much if ’e was ’im. “Oh, don’t say that,” says the old gentleman, very shocked. “One must support the Guns, mustn’t one?” “’Ammick says we was refittin’ an’ about as effective, just then, as a public lav’tory. “Go into Amiens,” he says, “an’ defend ’em there.” “Oh no,” says the old gentleman, “me an’ my laddies must make a defensive flank for you,” an’ he flips out of the dug-out like a performin’ bullfinch, chirruppin’ for his “laddies.” Gawd in ’Eaven knows what sort o’ push they was—little boys mostly—but they ’ung on to ’is coat-tails like a Sunday-school treat, an’ we ’eard ’em muckin’ about in the open for a bit. Then a pretty tight barrage was slapped down for ten minutes, an’ ’Ammick thought the laddies had copped it already. “It’ll be our turn next,” says Mosse. “There’s been a covey o’ Gothas messin’ about for the last ’alf-hour—lookin’ for the Railway Shops, I expect. They’re just as likely to take us.” “Arisin’ out o’ that,” says ’Ammick, “one of ’em sounds pretty low down now. We’re for it, me learned colleagues!” “Jesus!” says Gander, “I believe you’re right, sir.” And that was the last word I ’eard on the matter.’

‘Did they cop you then?’ said Anthony.

‘They did. I expect Mosse was right, an’ they took us for the Railway Shops. When I come to, I was lyin’ outside the cuttin’, which was pretty well filled up. The Reverend Collins was all right; but Lady Catherine and the General was past prayin’ for. I lay there, takin’ it in, till I felt cold an’ I looked at meself. Otherwise, I ’adn’t much on excep’ me boots. So I got up an’ walked about to keep warm. Then I saw somethin’ like a mushroom in the moonlight. It was the nice old gentleman’s bald ’ead. I patted it. ’im and ’is laddies ’ad copped it right enough. Some battalion run out in a ’urry from England, I suppose. They ’adn’t even begun to dig in—pore little perishers! I dressed myself off ’em there, an’ topped off with a British warm. Then I went back to the cuttin’ an’ some one says to me: “Dig, you ox, dig! Gander’s under.” So I ’elped shift things till I threw up blood an’ bile mixed. Then I dropped, an’ they brought Gander out—dead—an’ laid ’im next me. ’Ammick ’ad gone too—fair tore in ’alf, the B.S.M. said; but the funny thing was he talked quite a lot before ’e died, an’ nothin’ to ’im below ’is stummick, they told me. Mosse we never found. ’E’d been standing by Lady Catherine. She’d up-ended an’ gone back on ’em, with ’alf the cuttin’ atop of ’er, by the look of things.’

‘And what come to Macklin?’ said Anthony.

‘Dunno. . . . ’E was with ’Ammick. I expect I must ha’ been blown clear of all by the first bomb; for I was the on’y Janeite left. We lost about half our crowd, either under, or after we’d got ’em out. The B.S.M. went off ’is rocker when mornin’ came, an’ he ran about from one to another sayin’ : “That was a good push! That was a great crowd! Did ye ever know any push to touch ’em?” An’ then ’e’d cry. So what was left of us made off for ourselves, an’ I came across a lorry, pretty full, but they took me in.’

‘Ah!’ said Anthony with pride. ‘“They all take a taxi when it’s rainin’.” ’Ever ’eard that song?’

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‘They went a long way back. Then I walked a bit, an’ there was a hospital-train fillin’ up, an’ one of the Sisters—a grey-headed one—ran at me wavin’ ’er red ’ands an’ sayin’ there wasn’t room for a louse in it. I was past carin’. But she went on talkin’ and talkin’ about the war, an’ her pa in Ladbroke Grove, an’ ’ow strange for ’er at ’er time of life to be doin’ this work with a lot o’ men, an’ next war, ’ow the nurses ’ud ’ave to wear khaki breeches on account o’ the mud, like the Land Girls; an’ that reminded ’er, she’d boil me an egg if she could lay ’ands on one, for she’d run a chicken-farm once. You never ’eard anythin’ like it—outside o’ Jane. It set me off laughin’ again. Then a woman with a nose an’ teeth on ’er, marched up. “What’s all this?” she says. “What do you want?” “Nothing,” I says, “only make Miss Bates, there, stop talkin’ or I’ll die.” “Miss Bates?” she says. “What in ’Eaven’s name makes you call ’er that?” “Because she is,” I says. “D’you know what you’re sayin’?” she says, an’ slings her bony arm round me to get me off the ground. “’Course I do,” I says, “an’ if you knew Jane you’d know too.” “That’s enough,” says she. “You’re comin’ on this train if I have to kill a Brigadier for you,” an’ she an’ an ord’ly fair hove me into the train, on to a stretcher close to the cookers. That beef-tea went down well! Then she shook ’ands with me an’ said I’d hit off Sister Molyneux in one, an’ then she pinched me an extra blanket. It was ’er own ’ospital pretty much. I expect she was the Lady Catherine de Bourgh of the area. Well, an’ so, to cut a long story short, nothing further transpired.’

‘’Adn’t you ’ad enough by then?’ asked Anthony.

‘I expect so. Otherwise, if the old Circus ’ad been carryin’ on, I might ’ave ’ad another turn with ’em before Armistice. Our B.S.M. was right. There never was a ’appier push. ’Ammick an’ Mosse an’ Gander an’ the B.S.M. an’ that pore little Macklin man makin’ an’ passin’ an’ raisin’ me an’ gettin’ me on to the ’ospital train after ’e was dead, all for a couple of Bradburys. I lie awake nights still, reviewing matters. There never was a push to touch ours—never! ‘

Anthony handed me back the Secretary’s Jewel resplendent.

‘Ah,’ said he. ‘No denyin’ that Jane business was more useful to you than the Roman Eagles or the Star an’ Garter. ’Pity there wasn’t any of you Janeites in the ’Oly Land. I never come across ’em.’

‘Well, as pore Macklin said, it’s a very select Society, an’ you’ve got to be a Janeite in your ’eart, or you won’t have any success. An’ yet he made me a Janeite! I read all her six books now for pleasure ’tween times in the shop; an’ it brings it all back—down to the smell of the glue-paint on the screens. You take it from me, Brethren, there’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place. Gawd bless ’er, whoever she was.’

Worshipful Brother Burges, from the floor of the Lodge, called us all from Labour to Refreshment. Humberstall hove himself up—so very a cart-horse of a man one almost expected to hear the harness creak on his back—and descended the steps.

He said he could not stay for tea because he had promised his mother to come home for it, and she would most probably be waiting for him now at the Lodge door.

‘One or other of ’em always comes for ’im. He’s apt to miss ’is gears sometimes,’ Anthony explained to me, as we followed.

‘Goes on a bust, d’you mean?’

‘’Im! He’s no more touched liquor than ’e ’as women since ’e was born. No, ’e’s liable to a sort o’ quiet fits, like. They came on after the dump blew up at Eatables. But for them, ’e’d ha’ been Battery Sergeant-Major.’

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I couldn’t make out why he took on as mess-waiter when he got back to his guns. That explains things a bit.’

‘’Is sister told me the dump goin’ up knocked all ’is Gunnery instruction clean out of ’im. The only thing ’e stuck to was to get back to ’is old crowd. Gawd knows ’ow ’e worked it, but ’e did. He fair deserted out of England to ’em, she says; an’ when they saw the state ’e was in, they ’adn’t the ’eart to send ’im back or into ’ospital. They kep’ ’im for a mascot, as you might say. That’s all dead-true. ’Is sister told me so. But I can’t guarantee that Janeite business, excep’ ’e never told a lie since ’e was six. ’Is sister told me so. What do you think? ‘

‘He isn’t likely to have made it up out of his own head,’ I replied.

‘But people don’t get so crazy-fond o’ books as all that, do they? ’E’s made ’is sister try to read ’em. She’d do anythin’ to please him. But, as I keep tellin’ ’er, so’d ’is mother. D’you ’appen to know anything about Jane? ‘

‘I believe Jane was a bit of a match-maker in a quiet way when she was alive, and I know all her books are full of match-making,’ I said. ‘You’d better look out.’

‘Oh, that’s as good as settled,’ Anthony replied, blushing.

‘If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts.’— I COR. XV. 32.

HER cinnabar-tinted topsail, nicking the hot blue horizon, showed she was a Spanish wheat-boat hours before she reached Marseilles mole. There, her mainsail brailed itself, a spritsail broke out forward, and a handy driver aft; and she threaded her way through the shipping to her berth at the quay as quietly as a veiled woman slips through a bazaar. The blare of her horns told her name to the port. An elderly hook-nosed Inspector came aboard to see if her cargo had suffered in the run from the South, and the senior ship-cat purred round her captain’s legs as the after-hatch was opened.

‘If the rest is like this—’ the Inspector sniffed—‘you had better run out again to the mole and dump it.’

‘That’s nothing,’ the captain replied. ‘All Spanish wheat heats a little. They reap it very dry.’

‘’Pity you don’t keep it so, then. What would you call that—crop or pasture?’

The Inspector pointed downwards. The grain was in bulk, and deck-leakage, combined with warm weather, had sprouted it here and there in sickly green films.

‘So much the better,’ said the captain brazenly. ‘That makes it waterproof. Pare off the top two inches, and the rest is as sweet as a nut.’

‘I told that lie, too, when I was your age. And how does she happen to be loaded?’

The young Spaniard flushed, but kept his temper.

‘She happens to be ballasted, under my eye, on lead-pigs and bagged copper-ores.’

‘I don’t know that they much care for verdigris in their dole-bread at Rome. But—you were saying?’

‘I was trying to tell you that the bins happen to be grain-tight, two-inch chestnut, floored and sided with hides.’

‘Meaning dressed African leathers on your private account?’

‘What has that got to do with you? We discharge at Port of Rome, not here.’

‘So your papers show. And what might you have stowed in the wings of her?’

‘Oh, apes! Circumcised apes—just like you!’

‘Young monkey! Well, if you are not above taking an old ape’s advice, next time you happen to top off with wool and screw in more bales than are good for her, get your ship undergirt before you sail. I know it doesn’t look smart coming into Port of Rome, but it ’ll save your decks from lifting worse than they are.’

There was no denying that the planking and waterways round the after-hatch had lifted a little. The captain lost his temper.

‘I know your breed!’ he stormed. ‘You promenade the quays all summer at Caesar’s expense, jamming your Jew-bow into everybody’s business; and when the norther blows, you squat over your brazier and let us skippers hang in the wind for a week!’

‘You have it! Just that sort of a man am I now,’ the other answered. ‘That’ll do, the quarter-hatch!’

As he lifted his hand the falling sleeve showed the broad gold armlet with the triple vertical gouges which is only worn by master mariners who have used all three seas—Middle, Western, and Eastern.

‘Gods!’ the captain saluted. ‘ I thought you were——’

‘A Jew, of course. Haven’t you used Eastern ports long enough to know a Red Sidonian when you see one?’

‘Mine the fault—yours be the pardon, my father!’ said the Spaniard impetuously. ‘Her topsides are a trifle strained. There was a three days’ blow coming up. I meant to have had her undergirt off the Islands, but hawsers slow a ship so—and one hates to spoil a good run.’

‘To whom do you say it?’ The Inspector looked the young man over between horny sun and salt creased eyelids like a brooding pelican. ‘But if you care to get up your girt-hawsers to-morrow, I can find men to put ’em overside. It’s no work for open sea. Now! Main-hatch, there! . . . I thought so. She’ll need another girt abaft the foremast.’ He motioned to one of his staff, who hurried up the quay to where the port Guard-boat basked at her mooring-ring. She was a stoutly-built, single-banker, eleven a side, with a short punching ram; her duty being to stop riots in harbour and piracy along the coast.

‘Who commands her?’ the captain asked.

‘An old shipmate of mine, Sulinus—a River man. We’ll get his opinion.’

In the Mediterranean (Nile keeping always her name) there is but one river—that shifty-mouthed Danube, where she works through her deltas into the Black Sea. Up went the young man’s eyebrows.

‘Is he any kin to a Sulinor of Tomi, who used to be in the flesh-traffic—and a Free Trader? My uncle has told me of him. He calls him Mango.’

‘That man. He was my second in the wheat-trade my last five voyages, after the Euxine grew too hot to hold him. But he’s in the Fleet now. . . You know your ship best. Where do you think the after-girts ought to come?’

The captain was explaining, when a huge dishfaced Dacian, in short naval cuirass, rolled up the gangplank, carefully saluting the bust of Caesar on the poop, and asked the captain’s name.

‘Baeticus, for choice,’ was the answer.

They all laughed, for the sea, which Rome mans with foreigners, washes out many shore-names.

‘My trouble is this ’ Baeticus began, and they went into committee, which lasted a full hour. At the end, he led them to the poop, where an awning had been stretched, and wines set out with fruits and sweet shore water.

They drank to the Gods of the Sea, Trade, and Good Fortune, spilling those small cups overside, and then settled at ease.

‘Girting’s an all-day job, if it’s done properly,’ said the Inspector. ‘Can you spare a real working-party by dawn to-morrow, Mango?’

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‘But surely—for you, Red.’

‘I’m thinking of the wheat,’ said Quabil curtly. He did not like nicknames so early.

‘Full meals and drinks,’ the Spanish captain put in.

‘Good! Don’t return ’em too full. By the way’—Sulinor lifted a level cup—‘where do you get this liquor, Spaniard?’

‘From our Islands (the Balearics). Is it to your taste?’

‘It is.’ The big man unclasped his gorget in solemn preparation.

Their talk ran professionally, for though each end of the Mediterranean scoffs at the other, both unite to mock landward, wooden-headed Rome and her stiff-jointed officials.

Sulinor told a tale of taking the Prefect of the Port, on a breezy day, to Forum Julii, to see a lady, and of his lamentable condition when landed.

‘Yes,’ Quabil sneered. ‘Rome’s mistress of the world—as far as the foreshore.’

‘If Caesar ever came on patrol with me,’ said Sulinor, ‘he might understand there was such a thing as the Fleet.’

‘Then he’d officer it with well-born young Romans,’ said Quabil. ‘Be grateful you are left alone. You are the last man in the world to want to see Caesar.’

‘Except one,’ said Sulinor, and he and Quabil laughed.

‘What’s the joke?’ the Spaniard asked. Sulinor explained.

‘We had a passenger, our last trip together, who wanted to see Caesar. It cost us our ship and freight. That’s all.’

‘Was he a warlock—a wind-raiser?’

‘Only a Jew philosopher. But he had to see Caesar. He said he had; and he piled up the Eirene on his way.’

‘Be fair,’ said Quabil. ‘I don’t like the Jews—they lie too close to my own hold—but it was Caesar lost me my ship.’ He turned to Baeticus. ‘There was a proclamation, our end of the world, two seasons back, that Caesar wished the Eastern wheat-boats to run through the winter, and he’d guarantee all loss. Did you get it, youngster?’

‘No. Our stuff is all in by September. I wager Caesar never paid you! How late did you start?’

‘I left Alexandria across the bows of the Equinox—well down in the pickle, with Egyptian wheat—half pigeon’s dung—and the usual load of Greek sutlers and their women. The second day out the sou’-wester caught me. I made across it north for the Lycian coast, and slipped into Myra till the wind should let me get back into the regular grain-track again.’

Sailor-fashion, Quabil began to illustrate his voyage with date and olive stones from the table.

‘The wind went into the north, as I knew it would, and I got under way. You remember, Mango? My anchors were apeak when a Lycian patrol threshed in with Rome’s order to us to wait on a Sidon packet with prisoners and officers. Mother of Carthage, I cursed him!’

‘’Shouldn’t swear at Rome’s Fleet. ’Weatherly craft, those Lycian racers! Fast, too. I’ve been hunted by them! ’Never thought I’d command one,’ said Sulinor, half aloud.

‘And now I’m coming to the leak in my decks, young man,’ Quabil eyed Baeticus sternly. ‘Our slant north had strained her, and I should have undergirt her at Myra. Gods know why I didn’t! I set up the chain-staples in the cable-tier for the prisoners. I even had the girt-hawsers on deck—which saved time later; but the thing I should have done, that I did not.’

‘Luck of the Gods!’ Sulinor laughed. ‘It was because our little philosopher wanted to see Caesar in his own way at our expense.’

‘Why did he want to see him?’ said Baeticus.

‘As far as I ever made out from him and the centurion, he wanted to argue with Caesar—about philosophy.’

‘He was a prisoner, then?’

‘A political suspect—with a Jew’s taste for going to law,’ Quabil interrupted. ‘No orders for irons. Oh, a little shrimp of a man, but—but he seemed to take it for granted that he led everywhere. He messed with us.’

‘And he was worth talking to, Red,’ said Sulinor.

‘You thought so; but he had the woman’s trick of taking the tone and colour of whoever he talked to. Now—as I was saying. . .’

There followed another illustrated lecture on the difficulties that beset them after leaving Myra. There was always too much west in the autumn winds, and the Eirene tacked against it as far as Cnidus. Then there came a northerly slant, on which she ran through the Aegean Islands, for the tail of Crete; rounded that, and began tacking up the south coast.

‘Just darning the water again, as we had done from Myra to Cnidus,’ said Quabil ruefully. ‘I daren’t stand out. There was the bone-yard of all the Gulf of Africa under my lee. But at last we worked into Fairhaven—by that cork yonder. Late as it was, I should have taken her on, but I had to call a ship-council as to lying up for the winter. That Rhodian law may have suited open boats and cock-crow coasters, but it’s childish for ocean-traffic.’

‘I never allow it in any command of mine,’ Baeticus spoke quietly. ‘The cowards give the order, and the captain bears the blame.’

Quabil looked at him keenly. Sulinor took advantage of the pause.

‘We were in harbour, you see. So our Greeks tumbled out and voted to stay where we were. It was my business to show them that the place was open to many winds, and that if it came on to blow we should drive ashore.’

‘Then I,’ broke in Quabil, with a large and formidable smile, ‘advised pushing on to Phenike, round the cape, only forty miles across the bay. My mind was that, if I could get her undergirt there, I might later—er—coax them out again on a fair wind, and hit Sicily. But the undergirting came first. She was beginning to talk too much—like me now.’

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Sulinor chafed a wrist with his hand.

‘She was a hard-mouthed old water-bruiser in any sea,’ he murmured.

‘She could lie within six points of any wind,’ Quabil retorted, and hurried on. ‘What made Paul vote with those Greeks? He said we’d be sorry if we left harbour.’

‘Every passenger says that, if a bucketful comes aboard,’ Baeticus observed.

Sulinor refilled his cup, and looked at them over the brim, under brows as candid as a child’s, ere he set it down.

‘Not Paul. He did not know fear. He gave me a dose of my own medicine once. It was a morning watch coming down through the Islands. We had been talking about the cut of our topsail—he was right—it held too much lee wind—and then he went to wash before he prayed. I said to him: “You seem to have both ends and the bight of most things coiled down in your little head, Paul. If it’s a fair question, what is your trade ashore?” And he said: “I’ve been a man-hunter—Gods forgive me; and now that I think The God has forgiven me, I am man-hunting again.” Then he pulled his shirt over his head, and I saw his back. Did you ever see his back, Quabil?’

‘I expect I did—that last morning, when we all stripped; but I don’t remember.’

‘I shan’t forget it! There was good, sound lictor’s work and criss-cross Jew scourgings like gratings; and a stab or two; and, besides those, old dry bites—when they get good hold and rugg you. That showed he must have dealt with the Beasts. So, whatever he’d done, he’d paid for. I was just wondering what he had done, when he said: “No; not your sort of man-hunting.” “It’s your own affair,” I said: “but I shouldn’t care to see Caesar with a back like that. I should hear the Beasts asking for me.” “I may that, too, some day,” he said, and began sluicing himself, and—then—— What’s brought the girls out so early? Oh, I remember!’

There was music up the quay, and a wreathed shore-boat put forth full of Arlesian women. A long-snouted three-banker was hauling from a slip till her trumpets warned the benches to take hold. As they gave way, the hrmph-hrmph of the oars in the oar-ports reminded Sulinor, he said, of an elephant choosing his man in the Circus.

‘She has been here re-masting. They’ve no good rough-tree at Forum Julii,’ Quabil explained to Baeticus. ‘ The girls are singing her out.’

The shallop ranged alongside her, and the banks held water, while a girl’s voice came across the clock-calm harbour-face

‘Ah, would swift ships had never been about the seas to rove!
For then these eyes had never seen nor ever wept their love.
Over the ocean-rim he came—beyond that verge he passed,
And I who never knew his name must mourn him to the last!’
‘And you’d think they meant it,’ said Baeticus, half to himself.

‘That’s a pretty stick,’ was Quabil’s comment as the man-of-war opened the island athwart the harbour. ‘But she’s overmasted by ten foot. A trireme’s only a bird-cage.’

‘’Luck of the Gods I’m not singing in one now,’ Sulinor muttered. They heard the yelp of a bank being speeded up to the short sea-stroke.

‘I wish there was some way to save mainmasts from racking.’ Baeticus looked up at his own, bangled with copper wire.

‘The more reason to undergirt, my son,’ said Quabil. ‘I was going to undergirt that morning at Fairhaven. You remember, Sulinor? I’d given orders to overhaul the hawsers the night before. My fault! Never say “To-morrow.” The Gods hear you. And then the wind came out of the south, mild as milk. All we had to do was to slip round the headland to Phenike—and be safe.’

Baeticus made some small motion, which Quabil noticed, for he stopped.

‘My father,’ the young man spread apologetic palms, ‘is not that lying wind the in-draught of Mount Ida? It comes up with the sun, but later——’

‘You need not tell me! We rounded the cape, our decks like a fair (it was only half a day’s sail), and then, out of Ida’s bosom the full north-easier stamped on us! Run? What else? I needed a lee to clean up in. Clauda was a few miles down wind; but whether the old lady would bear up when she got there, I was not so sure.’

‘She did.’ Sulinor rubbed his wrists again. ‘We were towing our longboat half-full. I steered somewhat that day.’

‘What sail were you showing?’ Baeticus demanded.

‘Nothing—and twice too much at that. But she came round when Sulinor asked her, and we kept her jogging in the lee of the island. I said, didn’t I, that my girt-hawsers were on deck?’

Baeticus nodded. Quabil plunged into his campaign at long and large, telling every shift and device he had employed. ‘It was scanting daylight,’ he wound up, ‘but I daren’t slur the job. Then we streamed our boat alongside, baled her, sweated her up, and secured. You ought to have seen our decks!’

‘’Panic?’ said Baeticus.

‘A little. But the whips were out early. The centurion—Julius—lent us his soldiers.’

‘How did your prisoners behave?’ the young man went on.

Sulinor answered him. ‘Even when a man is being shipped to the Beasts, he does not like drowning in irons. They tried to rive the chain-staples out of her timbers.’

‘I got the main-yard on deck’—this was Quabil. ‘That eased her a little. They stopped yelling after a while, didn’t they?’

‘They did,’ Sulinor replied. ‘Paul went down and told them there was no danger. And they believed him! Those scoundrels believed him! He asked me for the keys of the leg-bars to make them easier. “I’ve been through this sort of thing before,” he said, “but they are new to it down below. Give me the keys.” I told him there was no order for him to have any keys; and I recommended him to line his hold for a week in advance, because we were in the hands of the Gods. “And when are we ever out of them?” he asked. He looked at me like an old gull lounging just astern of one’s taffrail in a full gale. You know that eye, Spaniard?’

page 4

‘Well do I!’

‘By that time’—Quabil took the story again‘ we had drifted out of the lee of Clauda, and our one hope was to run for it and pray we weren’t pooped. None the less, I could have made Sicily with luck. As a gale I have known worse, but the wind never shifted a point, d’ye see? We were flogged along like a tired ox.’

‘Any sights?’ Baeticus asked.

‘For ten days not a blink.’

‘Nearer two weeks,’ Sulinor corrected. ‘We cleared the decks of everything except our groundtackle, and put six hands at the tillers. She seemed to answer her helm—sometimes. Well, it kept me warm for one.’

‘How did your philosopher take it?’

‘Like the gull I spoke of. He was there, but outside it all. You never got on with him, Quabil?’

‘Confessed! I came to be afraid at last. It was not my office to show fear, but I was. He was fearless, although I knew that he knew the peril as well as I. When he saw that trying to—er—cheer me made me angry, he dropped it. ’Like a woman, again. You saw more of him, Mango?’

‘Much. When I was at the rudders he would hop up to the steerage, with the lower-deck ladders lifting and lunging a foot at a time, and the timbers groaning like men beneath the Beasts. We used to talk, hanging on till the roll jerked us into the scuppers. Then we’d begin again. What about? Oh! Kings and Cities and Gods and Caesar. He was sure he’d see Caesar. I told him I had noticed that people who worried Those Up Above’—Sulinor jerked his thumb towards the awning—‘were mostly sent for in a hurry.’

‘Hadn’t you wit to see he never wanted you for yourself, but to get something out of you?’ Quabil snapped.

‘Most Jews are like that—and all Sidonians!’ Sulinor grinned. ‘But what could he have hoped to get from anyone? We were doomed men all. You said it, Red.’

‘Only when I was at my emptiest. Otherwise I knew that with any luck I could have fetched Sicily! But I broke—we broke. Yes, we got ready—you too—for the Wet Prayer.’

‘How does that run with you?’ Baeticus asked, for all men are curious concerning the bride-bed of Death.

‘With us of the River,’ Sulinor volunteered, ‘we say: “I sleep; presently I row again.”’

‘Ah! At our end of the world we cry: “Gods, judge me not as a God, but a man whom the Ocean has broken.”’ Baeticus looked at Quabil, who answered, raising his cup: ‘We Sidonians say, “Mother of Carthage, I return my oar!” But it all comes to the one in the end.’ He wiped his beard, which gave Sulinor his chance to cut in.

‘Yes, we were on the edge of the Prayer when—do you remember, Quabil?—he clawed his way up the ladders and said: “No need to call on what isn’t there. My God sends me sure word that I shall see Caesar. And he has pledged me all your lives to boot. Listen! No man will be lost.” And Quabil said: “But what about my ship?”’ Sulinor grinned again.

‘That’s true. I had forgotten the cursed passengers,’ Quabil confirmed. ‘But he spoke as though my Eirene were a fig-basket. “Oh, she’s bound to go ashore, somewhere,” he said, “but not a life will be lost. Take this from me, the Servant of the One God.” Mad! Mad as a magician on market-day!’

‘No,’ said Sulinor. ‘Madmen see smooth harbours and full meals. I have had to—soothe that sort.’

‘After all,’ said Quabil, ‘he was only saying what had been in my head for a long time. I had no way to judge our drift, but we likely might hit something somewhere. Then he went away to spread his cook-house yarn among the crew. It did no harm, or I should have stopped him.’

Sulinor coughed, and drawled:

‘I don’t see anyone stopping Paul from what he fancied he ought to do. But it was curious that, on the change of watch, I——’

‘No—I!’ said Quabil.

‘Make it so, then, Red. Between us, at any rate, we felt that the sea had changed. There was a trip and a kick to her dance. You know, Spaniard. And then—I will say that, for a man half-dead, Quabil here did well.’

‘I’m a bosun-captain, and not ashamed of it. I went to get a cast of the lead. (Black dark and raining marlinspikes!) The first cast warned me, and I told Sulinor to clear all aft for anchoring by the stern. The next—shoaling like a slip-way—sent me back with all hands, and we dropped both bowers and spare and the stream.’

‘He’d have taken the kedge as well, but I stopped him,’ said Sulinor.

‘I had to stop her! They nearly jerked her stern out, but they held. And everywhere I could peer or hear were breakers, or the noise of tall seas against cliffs. We were trapped! But our people had been starved, soaked, and halfstunned for ten days, and now they were close to a beach. That was enough! They must land on the instant; and was I going to let them drown within reach of safety? Was there panic? I spoke to Julius, and his soldiers (give Rome her due!) schooled them till I could hear my orders again. But on the kiss-of-dawn some of the crew said that Sulinor had told them to lay out the kedge in the long-boat.’

‘I let ’em swing her out,’ Sulinor confessed.

‘I wanted ’em for warnings. But Paul told me his God had promised their lives to him along with ours, and any private sacrifice would spoil the luck. So, as soon as she touched water, I cut the rope before a man could get in. She was ashore—stove—in ten minutes.’

‘Could you make out where you were by then?’ Baeticus asked Quabil.

‘As soon as I saw the people on the beach—yes. They are my sort—a little removed. Phoenicians by blood. It was Malta—one day’s run from Syracuse, where I would have been safe! Yes, Malta and my wheat gruel. Good port-of-discharge, eh?’

They smiled, for Melita may mean ‘mash’ as well as ‘Malta.’

page 5

‘It puddled the sea all round us, while I was trying to get my bearings. But my lids were salt-gummed, and I hiccoughed like a drunkard.’

‘And drunk you most gloriously were, Red, half an hour later!’

‘Praise the Gods—and for once your pet Paul! That little man came to me on the fore-bitts, puffed like a pigeon, and pulled out a breastful of bread, and salt fish, and the wine—the good new wine. ‘Eat,” he said, “and make all your people eat, too. Nothing will come to them except another wetting. They won’t notice that, after they’re full. Don’t worry about your work either,” he said. “You can’t go wrong to-day. You are promised to me.” And then he went off to Sulinor.’

‘He did. He came to me with bread and wine and bacon—good they were! But first he said words over them, and then rubbed his hands with his wet sleeves. I asked him if he were a magician. “Gods forbid!” he said. “I am so poor a soul that I flinch from touching dead pig.” As a Jew, he wouldn’t like pork, naturally. Was that before or after our people broke into the store-room, Red?’

‘Had I time to wait on them?’ Quabil snorted. ‘I know they gutted my stores full-hand, and a double blessing of wine atop. But we all took that—deep. Now this is how we lay.’ Quabil smeared a ragged loop on the table with a wine-wet finger. ‘Reefs—see, my son—and overfalls to leeward here; something that loomed like a point of land on our right there; and, ahead, the blind gut of a bay with a Cyclops surf hammering it. How we had got in was a miracle. Beaching was our only chance, and meantime she was settling like a tired camel. Every foot I could lighten her meant that she’d take ground closer in at the last. I told Julius. He understood. “I’ll keep order,” he said. “Get the passengers to shift the wheat as long as you judge it’s safe.”’

‘Did those Alexandrian achators really work? ‘ said Baeticus.

‘I’ve never seen cargo discharged quicker. It was time. The wind was taking off in gusts, and the rain was putting down the swells. I made out a patch of beach that looked less like death than the rest of the arena, and I decided to drive in on a gust under the spitfire-sprit—and, if she answered her helm before she died on us, to humour her a shade to starboard, where the water looked better. I stayed the foremast; set the spritsail fore and aft, as though we were boarding; told Sulinor to have the rudders down directly he cut the cables; waited till a gust came; squared away the sprit, and drove.’

Sulinor carried on promptly:—

‘I had two hands with axes on each cable, and one on each rudder-lift; and, believe me, when Quabil’s pipe went, both blades were down and turned before the cable-ends had fizzed under! She jumped like a stung cow! She drove. She sheared. I think the swell lifted her, and overran. She came down, and struck aft. Her stern broke off under my toes, and all the guts of her at that end slid out like a man’s paunched by a lion. I jumped forward, and told Quabil there was nothing but small kindlings abaft the quarterhatch, and he shouted: “Never mind! Look how beautifully I’ve laid her!”’

‘I had. What I took for a point of land to starboard, y’see, turned out to be almost a bridge-islet, with a swell of sea ’twixt it and the main. And that meeting-swill, d’you see, surging in as she drove, gave her four or five foot more to cushion on. I’d hit the exact instant.’

‘Luck of the Gods, I think! Then we began to bustle our people over the bows before she went to pieces. You’ll admit Paul was a help there, Red?’

‘I dare say he herded the old judies well enough; but he should have lined up with his own gang.’

‘He did that, too,’ said Sulinor. ‘Some fool of an under-officer had discovered that prisoners must be killed if they look like escaping; and he chose that time and place to put it to Julius—sword drawn. Think of hunting a hundred prisoners to death on those decks! It would have been worse than the Beasts!’

‘But Julius saw—Julius saw it,’ Quabil spoke testily. ‘I heard him tell the man not to be a fool. They couldn’t escape further than the beach.’

‘And how did your philosopher take that?’ said Baeticus.

‘As usual,’ said Sulinor. ‘But, you see, we two had dipped our hands in the same dish for weeks; and, on the River, that makes an obligation between man and man.’

‘In my country also,’ said Baeticus, rather stiffly.

‘So I cleared my dirk—in case I had to argue. Iron always draws iron with me. But he said “Put it back. They are a little scared.” I said “Aren’t you?” “What?” he said; “of being killed, you mean? No. Nothing can touch me till I’ve seen Caesar.” Then he carried on steadying the ironed men (some were slaveringmad) till it was time to unshackle them by fives, and give ’em their chance. The natives made a chain through the surf, and snatched them out breast-high.’

‘Not a life lost! ’Like stepping off a jetty,’ Quabil proclaimed.

‘Not quite. But he had promised no one should drown.’

‘How could they—the way I had laid her—gust and swell and swill together?’

‘And was there any salvage?’

‘Neither stick nor string, my son. We had time to look, too. We stayed on the island till the first spring ship sailed for Port of Rome. They hadn’t finished Ostia breakwater that year.’

‘And, of course, Caesar paid you for your ship?’

‘I made no claim. I saw it would be hopeless; and Julius, who knew Rome, was against any appeal to the authorities. He said that was the mistake Paul was making. And, I suppose, because I did not trouble them, and knew a little about the sea, they offered me the Port Inspectorship here. There’s no money in it—if I were a poor man. Marseilles will never be a port again. Narbo has ruined her for good.’

‘But Marseilles is far from under-Lebanon,’ Baeticus suggested.

‘The further the better. I lost my boy three years ago in Foul Bay, off Berenice, with the Eastern Fleet. He was rather like you about the eyes, too. You and your circumcised apes!’

‘But—honoured one! My master! Admiral!—Father mine—how could I have guessed?’

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The young man leaned forward to the other’s knee in act to kiss it. Quabil made as though to cuff him, but his hand came to rest lightly on the bowed head.

‘Nah! Sit, lad! Sit back. It’s just the thing the Boy would have said himself. You didn’t hear it, Sulinor?’

‘I guessed it had something to do with the likeness as soon as I set eyes on him. You don’t so often go out of your way to help lame ducks.’

‘You can see for yourself she needs undergirting, Mango!’

‘So did that Tyrian tub last month. And you told her she might bear up for Narbo or bilge for all of you! But he shall have his working-party to-morrow, Red.’

Baeticus renewed his thanks. The River man cut him short.

‘Luck of the Gods,’ he said. ‘Five—four—years ago I might have been waiting for you anywhere in the Long Puddle with fifty River men—and no moon.’

Baeticus lifted a moist eye to the slip-hooks on his yardarm, that could hoist and drop weights at a sign.

‘You might have had a pig or two of ballast through your benches coming alongside,’ he said dreamily.

‘And where would my overhead-nettings have been?’ the other chuckled.

‘Blazing—at fifty yards. What are firearrows for?’

‘To fizzle and stink on my wet sea-weed blindages. Try again.’

They were shooting their fingers at each other, like the little boys gambling for olive-stones on the quay beside them.

‘Go on—go on, my son! Don’t let that pirate board,’ cried Quabil.

Baeticus twirled his right hand very loosely at the wrist.

‘In that case,’ he countered, ‘I should have fallen back on my foster-kin—my father’s island horsemen.’

Sulinor threw up an open palm.

‘Take the nuts,’ he said. ‘Tell me, is it true that those infernal Balearic slingers of yours can turn a bull by hitting him on the horns?’

‘On either horn you choose. My father farms near New Carthage. They come over to us for the summer to work. There are ten in my crew now.’

Sulinor hiccoughed and folded his hands magisterially over his stomach.

‘Quite proper. Piracy must be put down! Rome says so. I do so,’ said he.

‘I see,’ the younger man smiled. ‘But tell me, why did you leave the slave—the Euxine trade, O Strategos?’

‘That sea is too like a wine-skin. ’Only one neck. It made mine ache. So I went into the Egyptian run with Quabil here.’

‘But why take service in the Fleet? Surely the Wheat pays better?’

‘I intended to. But I had dysentery at Malta that winter, and Paul looked after me.’

‘Too much muttering and laying-on of hands for me,’ said Quabil; himself muttering about some Thessalian jugglery with a snake on the island.

‘You weren’t sick, Quabil. When I was getting better, and Paul was washing me off once, he asked if my citizenship were in order. He was a citizen himself. Well, it was and it was not. As second of a wheat-ship I was ex officio Roman citizen—for signing bills and so forth. But on the beach, my ship perished, he said I reverted to my original shtay—status—of an extra-provinshal Dacian by a Sich—Sish—Scythian—I think she was—mother. Awkward—what? All the Middle Sea echoes like a public bath if a man is wanted.’

Sulinor reached out again and filled. The wine had touched his huge bulk at last.

‘But, as I was saying, once in the Fleet nowadays one is a Roman with authority—no waiting twenty years for your papers. And Paul said to me: “Serve Caesar. You are not canvas I can cut to advantage at present. But if you serve Caesar you will be obeying at least some sort of law.” He talked as though I were a barbarian. Weak as I was, I could have snapped his back with my bare hands. I told him so. “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “But that is neither here nor there. If you take refuge under Caesar at sea, you may have time to think. Then I may meet you again, and we can go on with our talks. But that is as The God wills. What concerns you now is that, by taking service, you will be free from the fear that has ridden you all your life.”’

‘Was he right?’ asked Baeticus after a silence.

‘He was. I had never spoken to him of it, but he knew it. He knew! Fire—sword—the sea—torture even—one does not think of them too often. But not the Beasts! Aie! Not the Beasts! I fought two dog-wolves for the life on a sand-bar when I was a youngster. Look!’

Sulinor showed his neck and chest.

‘They set the sheep-dogs on Paul at some place or other once—because of his philosophy And he was going to see Caesar—going to see Caesar! And he—he had washed me clean after dysentery!’

‘Mother of Carthage, you never told me that! ‘ said Quabil.

‘Nor should I now, had the wine been weaker.’

page 1 of 3

THE visitor had been drawn twenty kilometres beyond the end of the communal road under construction, by a rumour of a small window of thirteenth-century glass, said to represent a haloed saint in a helmet—none other, indeed, than Saint Julian of Auvergne—and to be found in the village church of Saint Jubans, down the valley.But there was a wedding in the church, followed by the usual collection for charity. After the bridal procession had passed into the sunshine, two small acolytes began fighting over an odd sou. In a stride the tall old priest was upon them, knocked their heads together, unshelled them from their red, white-laced robes of office, and they rolled—a pair of black-gabardined gamins locked in war—out over the threshold on to the steep hillside.

He stood at the church door and looked down into the village beneath, half buried among the candles of the horse-chestnuts. It climbed up, house by house, from a busy river, to sharp, turfed slopes that lapped against live rock, whence, dominating the red valley, rose enormous ruins of an old château with bastions, curtains, and keeps, and a flying bridge that spanned the dry moat. Valerian and lilac in flower sprang wherever there was foothold.

‘All acolytes are little devils,’ said the priest benignly, and descended to the wedding-breakfast, which one could see in plan, set out by the stream in a courtyard of cut limes. His bearing was less that of a curé than a soldier, for his soutane swung like a marching-overcoat, and he lacked that bend of the neck, ‘the priest’s stoop,’ with which his Church stamps her sons when they are caught young.

The wedding-feast had ended, and the heat of the day was abated before he climbed up again, beneath an enormous umbrella, to find the visitor among the ruins beside the little church. . . .

‘I make a rule not to smoke unless it is offered. A thousand thanks! . . . This ought to be Smyrna. . . .’ He exhaled the smoke through his finely-cut nostrils. ‘Yes, it is Smyrna. . . . Good! And Monsieur appreciates our “Marylands” also? Hmm. I remember the time when our Government tobaccos were a national infamy. . . . How long here am I? Close upon forty years. . . . No. Never much elsewhere. It suffices me. . . .’

‘A good people. Composed of a few old clans—Meilhac—Leclos—Falloux—Poivrain—Ballart. Monsieur may have observed their names upon our Monument.’ He pointed downward to the little cast-iron poilu, which seemed to be standard pattern for War memorials in that region. ‘Neither rich nor poor. When the charabanc-road through the valley is made they will be richer. . . . Postcards for the tourists, an hotel, and an antiquity shop, for sure, here beside the church. A Syndicate of Initiative has, indeed, approached me to write on the attractions of the district, as well as on the life of Saint Jubanus. . . . But surely he existed! He was a Gaul commanding a Gaulish legion at the time when Christianity was spreading in the Roman Army. We were—he was engaged against the Bo—the Alemanni—and was on the eve of attack when some of his officers chose that moment to throw down their swords and embrace the Cross. Knowing that he had been baptized, they assumed his sympathy; but he charged them to wait till the battle was finished. He said, in effect “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Some obeyed. Some did not. But even with defaitist and demoralised forces he won the day. They would then have given him a triumph, but he put aside the laurel wreath, and from his own chariot publicly renounced his profession and the old deities. So—I expect it was necessary for discipline to be kept—he was beheaded on the field he had won. That is the legend. . . .

‘His miracles? But one only on record. He called a dying man back to life by whispering in his ear, and the man sat up and laughed. (I wish I knew that joke.) That is why we have a proverb in our valley: “It would take Saint Jubans himself to make you smile.” I imagine him as an old soldier, strict in his duty, but also something of a farceur. Every year I deliver on his Day a discourse in his honour. And you will perceive that when the War came his life applied with singular force to the situation. . . .

‘They called up the priests? Assuredly! I went. . . . It is droll to re-enter the old life in a double capacity. You see, one can sometimes—er—replace a casualty if—if—one has been—had experience. In that event, one naturally speaks secularly on secular subjects. A moment later one gives them Absolution as they advance. But they were good—good boys. And so wastefully used! . . . That is why I am of all matchmakers in our village the least scrupulous. Ask the old women! . . . Yes, monsieur . . . and I returned without a scar. . . . The good God spared me also the darkness of soul which covered, and which covers still, so many—the doubt—the defiance—the living damnation. I had thought—may He pardon me!—that it was hard to reach the hearts of my people here. I saw them, after the War, split open! Some entered hells of whose existence they had not dreamed—of whose terrors they lacked words to tell. So they—men distraught—needed more care in the years that followed the War than even at Chemin des Dames. . . . Yes, I was there, also, when it seemed that hope had quitted France. I know now how a man can lay hands upon himself out of pure fear!

‘And there were those, untouched, whom the War had immobilised from the soul outwards. In special, there was Martin Ballart, the only one of his family who returned—the son of a good woman who died at his birth. Him, frankly, I loved from the beginning, and, I think, he loved me. Yes, even when I took him for one of my acolytes—you saw the type at the wedding?—and I had very often to correct him. He was not clever nor handsome, but he had the eyes of a joyous faithful dog, and the laugh of Pan himself. And he came back at the last blasted, withered, dumb—a ghost that gnawed itself. There had been his girl, too. . . . When they met again he did not know her. She said: “No matter. I will wait.” But he remained as he was. He lived, at first, with his aunt down there. Oh, he worked—it was no time for idleness—but the work did not restore. And he would hide himself for an hour or two and come back visibly replunged in his torments. I watched him, of course. It was a little photograph—one of those accursed Kodak pictures, of a young man in a trench, dancing languorously with a skeleton. It was the nail of his obsession. . . . I left it with him. Had I taken it, there might have been a crisis. Short of that, I tried every expedient, even to exorcism. . But why not? You call them mick-robs. We call them Devils. . . . One thing only gave me hope. He took pleasure in my company. He looked at me with the eyes of a dog in pain, and followed me always. It came about in effect that he lived up here. He would sit still while I played piquet with our schoolmaster, Falloux. . . .

‘Ah, that was a type upon whom our War had done bad work! No, he had not served. He had some internal trouble, which I told him always was a mere constipation of Atheism. Oh yes—he was enormously a freethinker! A man with a thick black beard, and an intellect (he carried it in front of him like his stomach) never happy unless it was dirtily rude to the Bon Dieu and His Saints. Little unclean stories and epigrams, you understand. He called Saint Jubanus a militarist and an impostor—this defaitist of a Zeppelinistic belly! But he could play piquet, and he was safer at my house than infecting our estaminet with his witticisms. I told him always that he would be saved on account of “invincible ignorance.” Then he would thunder:

‘“But if your God has any logic, I shall be damned!”’

‘“Be content,” I would reply. “The Bon Dieu will never hear your name. You will be certified, together with the Cartel, by some totally inferior specialist of a demon as incapable of receiving even rudimentary instruction.”

page 2

‘Then he would clutch at his beard and throw down the cards, which poor Martin picked up for us. But apart from his rudeness to God and the Hierarchy, he was of exemplary life. Pardi, he had to be! She charged herself with that. Not believing in God, he had naturally married a devil before whom he trembled. She took him to Mass. That was why he was always most extravagant at my house on Monday evenings. His atheism, Monsieur, was, after all, but the panache without which a good little Frenchman cannot exist. A fond, there are few atheists in France. But, I concede, there are several arrivistes. Knowing this (and her), I hardly troubled to pray for him.

‘It was for poor Martin that I prayed always but not with full passion until his aunt told me she would take him to Lourdes. . . . Every man, besides being all the other base characters in Scripture, is a Naaman at heart. You have seen Lourdes, Monsieur? A-ah! . . .

‘So I exposed this new trouble and my own mean little soul to the Bon Dieu. It was He—I remember the very night—Who put it into my heart to pray seriously to Saint Jubanus. I had prayed to him, oh, many times before; but it occurred to me at that hour that my past demands had not, in view of his secular career, been sufficiently precised or underlined. The idea kept me awake. I got up. I went to the church, which is, as you see, not three steps. There—it is—it was—an old duty of my life in the world—I kept my—I walked up and down in the dark. At last I found myself, constating my case, not formally to a Saint, but officially as to my commanding officer. I said—substantially:

‘“Mon General, the time has come for action. You gave your single life to uphold the honour of your military obligation. There are some two million Gauls who have given up theirs for much the same object, as well as twenty-three out of your very own village here. Surely some of these must by now have appeared before you! I address you simply, then, as an old moustache who is trying to beat off an attack of the Devil on the soul of Martin Ballart, Corporal, 743rd of the Line, Two Citations. (One must be precise always with the Hierarchy.) I am at the end of my resources. God has ordered that I should report to you. I ask no obvious miracles, because, between ourselves, I do not in the least desire this pleasant retreat of ours to develop into a Lourdes. I beg only your help as my officer in the case of a good boy who, by fortune of war, is descending alive into Hell.” I concluded, textually: “Mon General, many reputations rest upon a single action. That also is the fortune of war. But I submit, with respect, after your sixteen-hundred years in retreat, it is not too much that an old and very tired combatant of your own race should signal for a small reinforcement from his Commandant. . . .”

‘I think—I know, indeed, from what happened afterwards—he was moved by this last thrust. It was as though all God’s good night had chuckled above me. I went to my bed again and slept in confidence. . . .

‘Did I look for a sign? Did Gouraud give any when he took our revenge for Chemin des Dames—when he let the enemy fall into the trap by their own momentum? No! I continued my work, and always I prayed for Martin. Then there came down the valley—as he does yearly—the itinerant mender of umbrellas, for whom my housekeeper stores up her repairs. She had acquired a piece of material to re-cover my umbrella, which, as you can see, is somewhat formidable in point of size, and of a certain antiquity. Indeed, I do not know whether there still exists another effective machine of its type, constructed, see you, from the authentic bone of the whale. Look! Vast as it is, it was still more vast when that artist arrived. My Mathilde’s piece of material was found to be inadequate in extent. But the man said that, with a small cutting down of the tips of the ribs, he could accommodate the area to the fabric. The result you behold. A fraction smaller, but essentially the same. And equally strong. Mon Dieu, that was needed! . . . Yes, sometimes I dare to think that that crapulous vagrant might have been Saint Jubanus himself! . . .

‘This was in the interval—while the good Saint prepared his second line just like our Gouraud. During that time I listened to poor Martin’s aunt making her arrangements to take him to Lourdes, of which officially I had to approve. For, what miracle had we to offer? Further, I endured the attacks of‘ that Falloux. Something that I may have said in respect to The Almighty diverted his dirtinesses from that quarter, and he fell back on Saint Jubanus. My own vanity—the Syndicate of Initiative having approached me, as I have told you, to write his life for prospective tourists—drew that on my head. I fear that, once or twice, I may have lost my dignity with him as a priest. He asserts that I swore like a Foot Chausseur, which had been his service. (Poor little rats of the Line!) . . .

‘And our Saint’s Day that year, was wet, so I knew all the world would attend. I had been summoned out of the village before the discourse—a couple of kilometres down the road. On my return, because it dripped water by rivers, I set my repaired umbrella to dry. . . . But we will go over to the church. It is not three steps, and I will show you the place. Also, it will be cooler in there. . . . It is true we are in horrible neglect, but, as you say, that window is a jewel. It represents beyond doubt Saint Jubanus. . . .

‘My umbrella? I deposited that behind this pillar here, outside the sacristy. And by the side of the pillar, as you see, is as much as we have of a vestiary—this press, with its shelves. Remark that I laid my umbrella, always open, in this spot, on its side. Thus! For myself, when I preach, though I am not an orator, I prefer the naked soutane—it hampers action less; but—out of respect for our Saint—I put on the cotta. At the same time I tell my two acolytes—who are of precisely the type you saw after the wedding; it is fixed by the Devil—to prepare me the vestments for the Service of the Benediction which would succeed my discourse. It was to them to extract these vestments with some decency from that press there. In this there was a little delay. I stepped aside to look, for—an acolyte is capable of anything—it seemed to me that they had chosen that hour to amuse themselves with my umbrella. I demanded why they did not leave it alone. One replied that he could not; and the other opened that terrible giggle of the nervous small boy. Heaven pardon me, but I am of limited patience! I signified that I had means of enforcing my orders. There is a reverberation in this place effective for the voice at dramatic moments.

‘But it was my umbrella which at that moment began to take the stage. It receded from me with those two young attached to different points of its circumference. At the same time it gyrated painfully in that shadow there. I followed, stupefied, and demanded some explanation of the outrage. It replied in two voices of an equal regret that it was attached and could not free itself. I hastened to aid. They said afterwards they misconstrued my motives. All I know is that my umbrella, open always, but tortured by unequal compressions, descended indescribably those three steps here into the body of the church, where the congregation awaited my discourse. On one side of its large circle, which you see, was an acolyte, facing inwards, clawing at the laces on his bosom and his elbow. On another was his companion, inextricably caught high up under the armpit, which he could not reach with the other hand, because he was facing outwards, pinned there by his vestments. The central effect, Monsieur, was that of an undevout pagoda conducting a pas de trois in a sacred edifice, to the accompaniment of increasing whimpers. This was before they collapsed, those young. Whether by accident or design, the child facing inwards snatched at the back of the head of the other. We shave our boys’ heads in France, fortunately; but he had nails, that one, and the other protested. . . .

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‘I? I followed, men said, step by step, slowly, with my mouth open. Some instinct doubtless warned me not to approach lest I should be—er—caught up by that chariot. Also, which often happens to me inopportunely, the incident struck me as humorous. I desired to see the end. . . . But this was but the beginning. My people gasped. My umbrella pursued its career, undecidedly but continuously. Then one of the little juggernauts—if that be the word—began to weep. The other followed. . . . And then? Then, Monsieur, that Falloux—that practical and logical atheist, who believes reason is the source of allleapt into the breach, crying: “But they are attached! Stand still, and I will detach you.” But that they would not do. My perambulating mosque of an umbrella resumed command. Its handle, see, tripped and slid over the stone floor like the pointed foot of a danseuse. This, with the natural elasticity of the ribs, furnished all the motifs of the ballet. As Falloux stooped to the rim of its circumference—being short-sighted in all respects—one side elevated itself, and the point of a rib caught him in the beard beneath the chin. It appeared then that he could not disengage. He made several gestures. Then he cried: “But it is I who am also attached! Stand still, you misbegotten little brats, till I detach myself!” And he laboured with his hands in the thickets of his beard like a suicide who has no time to lose. But he remained—he rested there—conforming with yelps of agony to the agonies of the rival circus, into whose orbit had now projected itself, at their own level, the head of their abominated preceptor, distorted and menacing. . . . And then? . . .

‘There are occasions, Monsieur, when one must lead or oneself mount the tumbril. I exploded a fraction of a second before my people, saving, doubtless, some a ruptured blood-vessel. We did not—see you—laugh greatly. We were beyond that point when we began. Soon—very soon—we could no more. We could but ache aloud, which I assure you is most painful—while my insolent umbrella promenaded its three adherents through pagan undulations and genuflexions. It was Salome’s basin, you understand, dancing by itself with every appearance of enjoyment, and offering to all quarters the head of the Apostle and of two of the Innocents. But not the Holy Ones!

‘Then she rose in her place, and said: “Imbecile! But stand still. I will bring the scissors.”

‘And she went out. It was cruel of the Saint to force us to recommence. We could do nothing except continue to ache and hiccough and implore Falloux to stand still. He would not—he could not—on account of those young, who, weeping with shame, continued to endeavour to extricate themselves individually. Falloux followed their movements in every particular. You see, he was attached to his troupe by hairs, which it hurts to pull—oh, exquisitely! But he did his best. I have never conceived such motions, even in dreams. You will comprehend, Monsieur, that there are certain physical phenomena inseparable from the contortions of a globose man labouring through unaccustomed exercises. These also were vouchsafed to us! . . .

‘It is said that I was on my knees beating my forehead against the back of a prie-Dieu, when we heard, above all, the laugh of Faunus himself—the dear, natural voice of my Martin, rich with innocent delight, crying: “But, do it again! If you love me, Uncle Falloux, do it all again!”

‘We turned as one, and Martin’s girl, who sits always where she can see him, took him in her arms. The miracle had happened! . . . Yes, from that moment Falloux lost the centre of his stage. Then she returned—like Atropos. She cut him free; she threw down the shears; she led him out. . . . I? I picked them up and I conducted my autopsy on my acolytes with more of circumspection. Beards renew themselves, but not our poor little church vestments when they are torn. . . .

‘The explanation? Modern and scientific, Monsieur. Saint Jubanus—the repairer of umbrellas—had, as I have told you, shortened the ribs of my umbrella. Look! He had then capped the point of each rib with a large, stamped, tin tip, which you perceive locks down. It bears some likeness to the old snap-hook on the pole of an Artillery waggon, and is perfectly calculated to catch in any fabric—or hair. But, to make sure, that inspired scoundrel had, in pushing on his labour-saving capsules—which are marked S.G.D.G. (that ought to be “A.M.D.G.”)—bent back the terminal laminae—fibres—what do you call them?—of the whale’s bone. You can see them protruding hungrily from the neck of each rib-cap, and also from the slits at the side of it. . . . Have you forgotten those heads of grass with which one used to entangle and wind up the silky hairs in the nape of a girl’s neck? Just that, Monsieur; but in a sufficiently gross beard, inextricable, and causing supreme torture at every twitch. . . .

‘Yes. We were all stilled after Martin had laughed, except Martin and his girl. They wept together—the tears from the soul. I said to them:

‘“Go out, my children. All the world is for you to-day Paradise. Enter there!”

‘I had reason. They would never have listened to my beautiful discourse. Ah! It was necessary to reconstruct that while we regained our gravity, because at that moment (it is true, Monsieur, that the Devil’s favourite lair is beneath the Altar), at that moment came my temptation! Falloux had been delivered into my hands by Saint Jubanus. He who had mocked and thrust out his chin against God and the Saints had, logically, by that very chin been caught and shaken in the face of the souk, as I myself—as I have seen a man handled at Sidi bel Abbas! Never should he survive it! With my single tongue I would unstick him from his office, his civilisation, and his self-respect. But I recalled that he was a Gaul who had been shamed in public, and was, therefore, now insane. One did—one should—not mock afresh a man who has thus suffered. For so I have seen many good soldiers lost to France. Also, he was a soul in my charge. . . .

‘Yet, you will concede, the volteface demanded skill. At that moment Saint Jubanus came to my aid. It was as though he himself had signalled: “To the next objective—charge! Martin is saved! Save now by any means the man whom I have used as his saviour. If necessary, old comrade, lie! Lie for the Honour of the Legion!” (’Pristi! What a Commander he must have been in his prime!) I took at once for my text our saying: “It would need Saint Jubans himself to make you laugh.”

‘I made plain to them first, of course, that his merits were wide enough to cover the sin of laughing in church. I demonstrated what that laughter had effected for our poor Martin, whose agonies they knew all. I told them—and it is true—that the Bon Dieu demands nothing better from honest people than honest laughter, and that he who awakens it is a benefactor. Then I extolled the instrument by which the miracle had been wrought. That is to say, I extolled Falloux, who had lent himself so willingly and with such self-sacrifice to this happy accident. (After all, he had sworn creditably enough—for a Foot Chasseur!) I said that we two had often discussed Martin together. (My orders were to lie, and I interpreted them liberally.) I made clear how a smaller-minded man than he would have broken loose (which he could not have done except by her scissors) before the experiment had terminated; but that he, Falloux, was of a moral stature sufficient to advance under a mitraille of derision to the complete awakening of Martin’s soul. I said that though a freethinker, Falloux—this same animal Falloux—realised the value of moral therapeuthy. (They were enormously delighted at this. They thought it was a new vice from Paris.) For Falloux himself, who—she told me later—was biting his nails in the hen-house convulsed with shame, I extemporised a special citation. No. Our village does not read Rabelais, but he did. So I compared—Heaven forgive me!—that unhappy costive soul with all its belly to Gargantua. Oh, only by implication, Monsieur! I stated that the grandeur of his moral gesture of self-effacement was Gargantuan in its abandon. That phrase impressed them also. They realised now that it was not a comedy at which they had assisted, but a Miracle. . . .

‘And thus I laboured with my people. Mon Dieu, but I sweated like an ox! At last they swung in the furrow, and I claimed their homage for him. And I succeeded! I led them down the hill to offer it en masse! He came out upon us like a wild beast. But when I had explained our objective, he—this enormity Falloux—was convinced that he had scientifically lent himself to a Gargantuan jest of abandoned self-abnegation because he was an expert in moral therapeutics! . . . That, setting aside my discourse, which was manifestly inspired, was the second miracle, Monsieur—the abasement of Falloux on—my faith!—his tenderest point. And his redemption! For it is she who is more the unbeliever of the two these days. She is a woman. She knows that I can be, on occasion, a liar almost as formidable. . . .

‘But this has been an orgy of the most excellent cigarettes, and, for me, a debauch of conversation. It demands at least that I offer a cup of coffee which may not be too detestable. Let us go. . . . But my little house is here—under the hand, see you—not three steps. . . . But think of the pleasure you give me, Monsieur! . . . What? What? What is it that thou singest to me there? . . . A thousand pardons for the phrase! But Saint Julian of Auvergne has no affinity whatever with Saint Jubanus. They are uniquely different. I implore you to abandon that heresy! Auvergne! Auvergne! “Famous for its colleges and kettles,” as I once read somewhere in the world. Impossible a million times! Saint Julian was a Roman officer—doubtless of unimpeachable sanctity—but a Latin; whereas our General was a Gaul—as Gallic as——’

He beckoned to a young man of the large-boned, well-fleshed, post-war type, who was ascending the hill from the fields behind a yoke of gold and silver oxen with sheepskin wigs. He moved up slowly, smiling.

‘As Gallic as he,’ the priest went on. ‘Look at him! He was that one who was pinned to my umbrella by his back on that day and—tell Monsieur what they call you in the village now.’

The youth’s smile widened to a heavenly grin. ‘Parapluie, Monsieur,’ said he, and climbed on.

The priest stopped at his own door. ‘Mathilde,’ he cried, ‘the larger bottle—er—from Martinique; thy gingerbread; and my African coffee for two. Pardi, Monsieur, forty years ago there would have been two pistols also, had I known or cared anything about the Saints in those days! . . . Saint Julian of Auvergne, indeed! But I will explain.’