"Whut makes you sing so dang loud, Plaster?" Pearline asked wearily, as she rested her head upon her hands. "You sounds like a brayin' jackace mournin' because he done tumbled down a open well."

"One time you said you liked my singin'," Plaster retorted.

"I couldn't tell you whut I really thought about it in dem sad days," Pearline remarked.

They ate their noon meal in silence because neither could think of anything to say. Plaster had got the hook at the very beginning of his musical career, and the things he thought of to say were not fit for utterance or publication.

As they rose from the table, they looked with surprise out of the window.

A long procession of negroes approached the cabin. All were dressed in their best clothes and the Rev. Vinegar Atts was in the lead.

The bridal pair suddenly remembered something, and they stepped out on the porch to receive them as they filled the space in front of the house.

Vinegar took his famous preaching attitude in front of the porch, inflated his lungs and began:

"Brudder an' Sister Sickety, us is all rejoiced dat you two honey-loves is got mighty nigh through wid yo' honey-tower widout no fuss or fight. We welcomes you back to our sawsiety wid glad arms. We hopes dat you will love each yuther mo' or less an' off an' on ferever! We knows dat you has well earnt dis house an' lot dat Marse John Flournoy has gib you an' we cullud folks wants to make you a present of a few change so you kin buy some nice house-furnicher an' start out fresh an' new."

Thereupon Vinegar laid his stove-pipe hat upside down upon the floor of the porch, turned and surveyed the assembly while he mopped his bald head with a yellow bandana handkerchief.

"Walk right up, brudders an' sisters, an' drap yo' few change in dis stove-pipe preachin'-hat!"

They came up one by one, laughingly depositing their money, and pausing to shake hands with the bride and groom.

When the ceremony ended, Vinegar emptied his hat upon the floor of the porch, placed it upon his head with a farewell flourish, and led the negroes out of the yard.

"Dis money is de fambly secret dem three nigger womens whispered to me, honey," Pearline giggled.

"Dat's de myst'ry dem three committee fellers tole me," Plaster chuckled.

The two sat down and counted the money—twenty-five dollars and thirty cents!

"Dat thuty cents is yourn to spend foolish, Pearline," Plaster said generously as he pushed three dimes toward her and clutched with both hands at the rest.

"Hol' on nigger!" Pearline snapped. "I ain't no bayou minnow to git jes' a little nibble of dat money—half of dat cash spondulix is mine."

"I needs my half right now," Pearline snapped, placing both her hands upon the clutching paws of Plaster Sickety.

"Whut you gwine do wid twelve dollars an' fo' bits?" Plaster demanded in irate tones.

"Buy me a hat!" Pearline told him.

"You's a fool!" Plaster informed her. "Female hats ain't furnicher."

"Dis money furnishes me wid a hat," she announced positively.

Then they sat for a few minutes in silence, both keeping their hands spread out over the money.

"Whut you gwine do wid yo' twelve dollars an' fo' bits?" Pearline demanded at last.

"I figgers on buyin' a fiddle," Plaster told her. "Plenty money kin be made playin' fiddles, an' I b'lieves I could learn to fiddle ef I had a good chance."

"I ain't gwine hab no fiddlin' nigger in my house," Pearline snorted. "I's druther be married to a phoneygraft."

"You ain't gwine be married to nothin' very long ef you don't leggo dis money, nigger!" Plaster snarled.

"I is."

"You ain't."

"Don't gimme no sass."

"You sassed me fust."

The woman raised one hand from the money and made an unexpected sideswipe at Plaster's jaw with her open palm. The blow landed with a smack that jarred the very marrow of his bones and keeled him over the edge of the porch to the ground. As he fell sprawling, the chain tightened and jerked Pearline off her perch and she fell to the ground with a squall. Then for ten minutes there was a Kilkenny cat scrap on the front lawn.

Pearline bit and scratched and pulled hair and tore clothes. She had decidedly the best of the rookus until her unusual activities caused her to get a twist of the chain around her neck. Plaster thanked the Lord and choked her into inaction and submission by the simple process of pretending to escape from her and thus tightening the chain.

When she was choked almost to suffocation, he edged her to the porch, lifted the twenty-five dollars and thirty cents into his own pockets, and released the chain.

When Pearline recovered her breath she dropped flat upon the ground at her feet and howled like a Comanche until the going down of the sun.

Plaster did not attempt to console or quiet her. When he spoke again, he reached out and touched the bawling woman with his foot.

"Git up idjit!" he exclaimed. "Marse John expecks us to come an' repote to him an' git dese here handcuffs tuck off."

Sheriff John Flournoy was waiting for them as they came across his lawn to the porch where he sat.

Then for half an hour he listened to a tirade of crimination and recrimination which crackled with profane expletives like thorns under a pot. When Plaster paused to breathe, Pearline took up the complaint. When Pearline stopped from exhaustion, Plaster resumed his lamentations.

When the storm of vituperation subsided, Flournoy sat in his chair like a man who had been pounded over the head with a brick. It was some time before he could formulate his ideas. Then he spoke with difficulty.

"I judge from what I have heard that your three days' experience together has convinced you that your tastes are entirely dissimilar and your natures incompatible."

"Yes, suh, dat's c'reck."

"The information you offer conveys to me the impression that a woman loves shadows, but a man loves sunshine and glare; a woman loves dress, but a man loves tobacco; a woman desires daintiness and neatness attended with any degree of discomfort, but a man prefers comfort with no matter how much litter and mess; a woman loves indoor sports, like sewing, and a man loves outdoor sports, like whittling sticks and making the acquaintance of a hound-dog with fleas on his body and mud on his feet; a man loves to sing and hear himself sing, and the woman prefers to hear some other man sing; a woman wants her female companions with their confidences and their secrets, and a man desires his male companions and their secrets, but neither party to the matrimonial alliance is willing that the partner should keep a secret. Am I right as far as I've gone?"

"Dat's right!" they said in positive tones.

"But de fuss part, Marse John, is de money!" the woman shrieked.

"Certainly," Flournoy agreed softly. "Matrimony is always a matter of money."

Then Flournoy took a key from his pocket and opened the bracelets on their wrists. The chain fell at their feet. The bride and bridegroom looked away, each ignoring the presence of the other.

Plaster Sickety thrust both hands into his pockets, brought out twenty-five dollars and thirty cents and laid it into the open palm of the sheriff.

"Fer Gawd's sake, git me a deevo'ce!" he pleaded.

"Make it two, Marse John," the girl urged. "I's plum' nauseated wid dat nigger man."

The bride and bridegroom turned and walked away, choosing different paths and going in opposite directions. They did not look back.

The sheriff stooped and picked up the rattling chain.

Then he went into the house and slammed the door.

The evening and the morning were the third day, and—

FOURTH TALE

PRINCESS OR PERCHERON

BY PERLEY POORE SHEEHAN

It was a chamber long, lofty and broad, walled and floored with the native Burgundy rock, richly carpeted, hung with tapestry. And down a portion of the length of this ran a wide table already spread with the viands of a wedding-feast—huge cold pasties, hams and boarheads beautifully jellied, fresh and candied fruits from Spain and Sicily, flagons and goblets of crystal, silver, and gold.

What aroused curiosity and conjecture to the highest point, however, was the discovery that the immense fireplace of the hall had been transformed into a forge. It was a forge complete—bellows and hearth, anvil and tub, hammers and tongs. There was even a smutty-faced imp there to tend the forge fire, which already hissed and glowed as he worked the bellows.

"Aha! So there was a smith mixed up in the affair, after all!"

"Mais oui! Gaspard, the smith, whose forge is down there on the banks of the Rhone."

"But what does the duke intend to do?"

It was a question which more than one was asking. There was never any forecasting what a whim of the duke might lead him to do even in ordinary circumstances—declare war on France, call a new Crusade. And now, with this menace of scandal in his family!

There in front of the fireplace where the forge had been set up, the valets had placed the ducal chair. All the same, the arrangements had something sinister about them. There fell a period of silence touched with panic. But not for long. Curiosity was too acute and powerful to be long suppressed. The whispering resumed:

"The duke surprised them together—the princess and her smith."

"It looks like the torture for one or both."

"They say the fellow's an Apollo, a Hercules."

"You wait until the duke—"

"Silence! He comes."

One of the large doors toward the farther end of the hall was thrown open, and through this there came a surge of music—hautboys, viols, and flutes. Two guardsmen came in, helmeted, swords drawn, and took up their stations at either side of the door.

There entered the duke.

He looked the philosopher, perhaps, if not the student—tall, bent, bony; a brush of white hair bristling over the top of his high and narrow head; a fleshless face, sardonic and humorous. The guests were pleased to see that his mood was amiable. He came forward smiling, waved his musicians into retreat; and half a dozen valets were assisting him into his chair as he greeted his guests. They all bent the knee to him. Some kissed his hand—and some he kissed, especially those who were fair and of the opposite sex.

If Princess Gabrielle had shown herself fragile in the matter of her affections, well, she had come by her failing honestly.

Seated in his chair, the duke delivered himself of a little pun which convulsed his audience—something about "court and courtship": "Je fais—la cour."

And with no other preliminary he spoke to a page:

"Summon mademoiselle."

Then to another:

"Fetch in the smith."

There was a bitter smile on his face as he sank back into his chair and studied the forge set up in the fireplace. The imp went white under his smudge and worked the bellows until the fire on the hearth was spouting like a miniature Vesuvius.

The wait was brief.

Once more the musicians struck into the royal march of Burgundy, and there was the Princess Gabrielle.

Every one who looked at her must have experienced some thrill of the heart—envy, desire, pure admiration. It was impossible to look at her without some emotion; for she was eighteen, slender, white and passionate; with dusky, copper-colored hair hanging in two heavy curls forward over her brilliantly tender shoulders; and she had a broad, red mouth, and slightly dilated nostrils; dark eyes, liquid and heavily fringed, with disquieting shadows under them.

She came forward with a number of maidens in her train, but she so dominated them that she appeared to be alone. She took her time. She was a trifle rebellious, perhaps. But she was brave, not to say bold. She tossed her head slightly. She smiled. She and her maidens, familiar with the duke's intentions, grouped themselves at one side of the improvised forge. Every one present was still looking at her when there came a rough command:

"Stand aside!"

A good many of the guests were not in the habit of hearing orders except from the duke himself; but the command came again:

"Stand aside! Let me pass—me and my people!"

At that there was a rapid shifting of the crowd and a whispered cry:

"The smith! It's Gaspard the smith!"

And he attracted even more attention than the princess had done; for, manifestly, here was not only a man who could play the game of love, but could play the game of life and death as well—to shout out like this, and come striding like this into the presence of his ruler.

But he looked the part.

He was all of six feet tall, blond and supple and beautifully fleshed. He was wearing his blacksmith's outfit of doeskin and leather, but he was scoured and shaven to the pink. His great arms were bare; and the exquisitely sculptured muscles of these slipped and played under a skin as white as a woman's.

He stood there with his shoulders back, his arms folded, feet apart. But, curiously, there was no insolence in the posture. Insolence is a quality of the little heart, the little soul, and shows itself in the eyes. Gaspard the smith had gentle blue eyes, large, dark, fearless, and with a certain brooding pride in them. There may have been even a hint of virgin bashfulness in them as well, during that moment he glanced at the Princess Gabrielle. Then he had looked at the duke, and all his courage had come back to him, perhaps also a suggestion of challenge.

But neither had the smith come into the ducal presence alone.

There were two old people—a man and a woman, peasants, both of them very poor, very humble, so frightened that they could breathe only with their mouths open; and so soon as they were inside the circle of guests, they had dropped to their knees. The other member of the smith's party would have done the same had he permitted. This was a girl of twenty or so, likewise a peasant, healthy, painfully abashed, but otherwise not notable. To her the smith had given a nudge and a word of encouragement, so that now she stood close to him and back of him.

"Our friends," said the duke, with studied nonchalance, "we are about to present to you the initial operation of scientific experiment. Like all scientific research, this also should be judged solely by its possible contribution to the advancement of human happiness. Ourself, we feel that this contribution will be great. God knows it is concerned with a problem that is both elusive and poignant."

All this was rather above Gaspard's head. He turned to the imp at the bellows.

"Stop blowing that fire so hard," he whispered. "You're wasting charcoal."

The duke smiled grimly.

"The problem," he continued, "is this: Can any man and woman, however devoted, continue to love each other if they are too closely held together?"

There was a slight movement among some of the younger gentlemen and ladies present—a few knowing smiles.

"There have always been those who answered No; there have always been those who answered Yes," the duke went on. "Which were right?" No answer. "My granddaughter here, while having her horse shod some weeks ago, became enamored of this worthy subject of mine." He nodded toward the smith. "She would have him. She would have no one else. We knew how hopeless would be any attempt to impose our will—in an affair of the heart." He smiled gallantly. "We are familiar with the breed."

"Long live the House of Burgundy," cried the chivalrous young Vicomte de Mâcon. But the duke silenced him with a look.

"And now," said the duke, "we wish to test this so great passion of hers—test it under conditions that while apparently extraordinary are none the less classical and scientific. Our experiment is this—"

For the first time since he began to speak the duke now leaned forward, and both his face and his voice took on that quality which made his name a source of trembling from Spain to Denmark.

"Our experiment is this:

"To have the princess and her smith, whom she is so sure she loves, handcuffed and linked together by a ten-foot chain."

II.

There was a gasp from the audience. Every one stared at the princess. Even the duke himself. Without turning his head he took her in with his furtive eyes.

"Mlle. la Princess," he said icily, "was good enough to insist upon the sacrifice."

At this, a stain of richer color slowly crept up the throat of the Princess Gabrielle; there came a touch of extra fire to her eyes. Perhaps she would have spoken. But the duke hadn't finished yet.

"We'll see whether she loves him so much or not," said the duke. "We'll give them three days of it—three days to go and come as they wish—and to do as they wish—together—always together—bound to each other by their ten-foot chain."

But while the excitement caused by the duke's announcement was still crisping the nerves of every one present, the smith had cast one more glance in the direction of the Princess Gabrielle. And this time their eyes met. There were those who saw a glint of terror—of delicious terror—in the eyes of the princess; and in the eyes of Gaspard a look intended to be reassuring.

Then the smith had unfolded his arms, thrust them forward.

"Wait," he cried.

At that there was a fresh sensation.

For it was seen that one of his wrists—his left—was already encircled by a bracelet of shining steel, forged there of a single piece, and that to the bracelet itself there was forged a link, fine but powerful, and that other links ran back over his shoulder.

"Ha!" snarled the duke. "So you've come prepared!"

"By the grace of God!" replied Gaspard the smith, unafraid. He cast a look about him, brought his eyes back to the duke. "Moi, Gaspard," he said, "I forge my own chains—always! I'm a smith, I am."

The two old people kneeling just back of him began to sob and to groan. Gaspard turned and looked down at them.

"Shut up," he ordered; "I'm talking."

He smiled at the duke. He explained.

"You see, they're frightened," he said. "When I found out what your highness and your highness's lady-granddaughter were planning up here in the castle, why, I went to these old folks and told them that I wanted their daughter Susette."

"I suppose you loved her," the duke put in with ironical intent.

But the smith saw no reason for irony.

"Eh, bon Dieu!" he ejaculated. "And save your highness's respect, we've loved each other ever since we were out of the cradle, we have. So I made the old folks consent. I'm a smith, I am. I forge my own chains. Stand around, Susette! His highness won't hurt you. Look!"

He stepped aside. He gave a gentle thrust to the girl who had been sheltering back of him. The chain rattled.

And there was another cry of surprise.

One of the girl's wrist's also was ornamented with a steel handcuff tightly welded. Not only that, but to this also was attached a chain. The smith threw up his arm. It was the same chain that was welded to his own handcuff—ten feet of it, glistening steel, unbreakable.

"There's your ten-foot chain, highness," cried Gaspard. "And it's no trick-chain, either," he added. "It's a chain that will hold. You bet it will. I forged it myself, and I know. It's a chain you couldn't buy. Why? Because—because the iron of it's mixed with love. Nor can it be cut, nor filed, nor broken. I'm a smith, I am. And each link of it I tempered myself—with sweat and blood."

There for a time it was a question—possibly a question in the mind of the duke himself—just how many minutes the smith still had to live. Many a valet had been executed for less. During a period of about thirty seconds the duke's face went black. Then the blackness dispersed. He slowly smiled.

After all, he wasn't to be cheated of his experiment.

But he answered the question that was in his own mind and the minds of all the others there as he looked at the smith and said:

"Fool, you'll be sufficiently punished—by your own device."

He let his eyes drift again to the Princess Gabrielle.

"And thou," he said, "art sufficiently punished already."

III.

It happened to be a day of late spring; and as Gaspard and this strangely wedded bride of his and her parents came out of the castle, both fed and forgiven, it must have seemed to all of them that this was the most auspicious moment of their lives. The old folks, who had partaken freely of the generous wines pressed upon them, had now passed from their trembling terror to a spirit of frolic. Arm in arm, their sabots clogging, they did a rigadoon down the winding road. It was a spirit of tender elation, though, that dominated Gaspard and Susette. They were like two beings distilled complete from the mild and fragrant air, the sweet mistiness of the verdant valley, the purpling solemnity of the Juras.

"What did he mean, his highness?" asked Susette as she pressed the smith's arm closer to her side. "What did he mean that you'd be punished by your own device?"

Gaspard looked down at her, pressed her manacled wrist to his lips, took thought.

"I don't know," he answered gently. "He must be crazy. It's like calling it punishment when a true believer receives the reward of paradise."

"You love me so much as that?"

"Pardi!" he ejaculated. "And thou?"

"So much," she palpitated, "so much that when you looked at the princess like that—I wished you were blind!"

At the bottom of the hill, the old folks, Burgundians to the souls of them, happily bade the young couple to be off about their own affairs. They knew how it was with young married people. The old were obstacles—so they themselves well recalled—albeit that was more than twenty years ago.

Said Gaspard fondly: "This business has put me back in my work; but we'll call this a holiday. Shall we go to my cottage or into the forest? I know of a secret place—"

"Into the forest," whispered Susette. "I don't like the forge. It makes me think—think of that cursed princess—and of the work that almost lost you to me." Her blue eyes filmed as she looked up at him. "Oh, Gaspard, I also have dreamed so much—of love—a life of love with thee!"

There was no one there to see. Some day, perhaps, in the far distant future, this part of the world would be thickly populated. But this was not yet the case. Gaspard brought his bride close to his breast, smiled gravely into her upturned face. He kissed her tears away. Sweet Susette! She was such a child! How little she knew of life!

And yet what was that fragile, fluttering, elusive, tiny suggestion of a regret in the back of his brain? Now he saw it; now it was gone—a silver moth of a thought, yet one, some instinct warned him, was there to gnaw a hole in his happiness.

He said nothing about this to Susette, of course; he chased it from his own joy. And this joy was a beautiful, tumultuous thing.

"It's like the source of the Rhone, which I saw one time—this joy of ours," he said with placid rapture. "All sparkling it was, and wild cataracts, and deep places, clean and full of mystery."

"Ah, I want it to be always like this," said Susette.

Gaspard let himself go in clear-sighted thought. They were seated on a grassy shelf that overhung the great river. The forest hemmed them in on three sides like a wedding-bower fashioned to order; but here they could follow the Rhone for miles—with its drifting barges, its red-sailed shallops, its hamlets, and villages.

"Yes, ever like the Rhone," he said; "but growing, like the Rhone, until it's broad and majestic and strong to carry burdens—"

Susette interrupted him.

"Kiss me," she said. "Kiss me again. No—not like that; like you did a while ago."

And Gaspard, laughing, did as he was bidden. But what was that silver glint of something like a regret, something like a loss, that came fluttering once more across the atmosphere of his thought? Susette, though, kept him diverted. She was forever popping in upon his reflections with innocent, childish questions; and he found this infinitely amusing.

"Did you desire me—more than the princess?"

"Beloved, I have desired you for years."

"Did you think me more beautiful—than she?"

Again Gaspard laughed; but it set him to thinking. He liked to think. He thought at his forge, at his meals, nights when he happened to be awake.

"Love and beauty," he said, "these are created by desire. As a stone-cutter desires what is hidden in the rock, and hews it out and loves the thing he shapes, though it be as ugly as a gargoyle, because of the desire that brought it forth—"

"Do you think that I'm a gargoyle?" queried Susette hastily.

"Certainly not."

"Then, why did you call me one?"

So he had to console her again, and took a certain joy in it, although she protracted the dear, silly dispute by telling him that he had chained her to him simply so that he could torture her, and that he had wanted to spare the princess such suffering, and that therefore it was clear that he loved the princess more.

"Why, no," said Gaspard; "as for that, she's really in love with that young Sieur de Mâcon."

But thereupon Susette wanted to know how he came to be so well informed as to the contents of the lady's heart. So the smith gave over any attempt to reason, except in the silences of his brain; and just confined his outer activities to cooings and caresses, as Susette would have him do.

Yet his thought would persist.

That was the trail of a great truth he had almost stated back there, about the place held by desire in the origins of love and beauty. He had watched a certain Italian named Botticelli do a mural painting in the duke's private chapel. Lord, there was a passion! He had helped in the building of the cathedral at Sens. Lord, what fervor the builders put into their work! They were all like young lovers.

The smith sat up. It was almost as if he had cornered that glinting moth of doubt.

Yes, they had been like young lovers—Sieur Botticelli, in pursuit of the beautiful; the church-builders in pursuit of God. But—and here was the point—what if their desire had been satisfied? The quest would have stopped. The vision of the artist would have faded. The steeple would have fallen down. For desire would have ceased to exist.

"I'm hungry and I'm thirsty," said Susette.

He kissed her pensively. They started home.

IV.

"Gaspard! Gaspard!"

The smith sat up swiftly on his couch.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

All the same, in spite of certain disquieting dreams, it struck him as sweet and curious to be awakened like that by Susette. But he perceived that she was alarmed.

"Some one hammers at the door," she said.

Then he heard it himself, that thing he had already been hearing obscurely in his sleep.

"Coming!" he yelled. And he smilingly explained to Susette: It's my old friend, Joseph, the carter. He'd bring his work to me if he had to travel five leagues." And he was for jumping up and running to the door.

"That's right," said Gaspard. "That confounded chain! I'd forgotten all about it." So he called out again to his friend, and the two of them held quite a conversation while Susette tried to make herself presentable. But Gaspard turned to her as she shook her hair out for the third time, starting to rearrange it. "Quick!" he urged. "He's in a hurry. One of his horses has cast a shoe."

"You can't show yourself like that, either," cried Susette, playing for time.

"Me?" laughed Gaspard. "I'm a smith. I'd like to see a smith who couldn't show himself in singlet and apron!"

"You look like a brigand."

But he merely laughed: "Joseph won't mind."

And, indeed, Joseph the carter did appear to have but little thought for anything except the work in hand. For that matter, neither, apparently, did Gaspard. After the first few brief civilities and the inevitable jests about the chain, their attention was absorbed at once by the horses. There were four of these—Percherons, huge monsters with shaggy fetlocks and massive feet; yet Joseph and Gaspard went about lifting these colossal hoofs, and considering them as tenderly as if the two had been young mothers concerned with the feet of babes.

At last Susette let out a little cry, and both men turned to look at her.

"I faint," she said weakly.

And Gaspard sprang over and caught her in his arms. He was filled with pity. He was all gentleness.

"Are you sick?" he asked.

"It was the odor of the horses," Susette replied in her small voice.

Joseph the carter seemed to take this as some aspersion on himself. "Those horses don't smell," he asserted stoutly.

But Gaspard signaled him to hold his place. "You'll be all right in a second or so," he told his wife. He spoke gently; although, as a matter of fact, he himself could find nothing about those magnificent animals to offend the most delicate sensibility. "You'll be all right. You can come into the forge and sit down while I shoe the big gray."

"That will be worse than ever," wailed Susette.

Joseph the carter was an outspoken man, gruff and honest.

"And there's a woman for you," he said, "to be not only wed but welded to a smith! Nom d'un tonnerre! Say, then, Gaspard, I'm in a hurry. Shall we start with the gray?"

"Yes," Gaspard answered softly, as he continued to support Susette.

"No, no, no!" cried Susette. "Not to-day! I'm too sick."

"Mais, chérie," Gaspard began.

"You love your work better than you do me," sobbed Susette.

"Nom d'un pourceau!" droned Joseph.

"But this work is important," Gaspard argued desperately. "The gray has not only cast a shoe, but the shoes on the others are loose. They've got to be attended to. It's work that will bring me in a whole écu."

"I don't care," said Susette. "I can't stand the smell of those horses, and I could never, never bear the smell of the hot iron on their hoofs."

"But I'm a smith," argued Gaspard.

It was his ultimate appeal.

"I told you that you loved your work more than you did me," whimpered Susette, beginning to cry. "'I'm a smith; I'm a smith'—that's all you've talked about since you got me in your power."

Joseph the carter went away. He did so shaking his head, followed by his shining Percherons, which were as majestic as elephants, but as gentle as sheep. There was a tugging at Gaspard's heart as he saw them go. Such horses! And no one could shoe a horse as could he. He looked down at Susette's bowed head as she lay there cuddled in his arms. That despairing cry was again swelling in his chest: "But I'm a smith." He silenced it. He stroked the girl's head.

As he did so, he was mindful as never before of the clink and jangle of the chain.

V.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked that afternoon as they lay out in the shade of the poplars along the river bank.

"I want you to love me," she answered.

"I do love you. But we can't live on love—can we, Susette?—however pleasant that would be. I've got to work."

"Ah, your sacré work!"

"Still, you'll admit that you can't pick up écus in the road."

"You're thinking still of that miserable carter."

"No; but I'm thinking of his horses. Somebody's got to shoe them. You can't let them go lame—or be lamed by a bungler. I could have done that job as it should have been done."

"But I tell you," declared Susette, pronouncing each word with an individual stress, "I can't support the grime and the odors and the racket of your forge. You ought to find some work that I do like. We could collect wild salads together—pick wild-flowers and sell them—something like that."

Gaspard sighed.

"But a man's work is his work," he averred.

"There you go again," said Susette, and the accusation was all the more damning in that it was spoken not in anger, but in grief. "Now that I've given myself to you—done all that you wished—you want to get rid of me; you want me to die."

"Haven't I told you a thousand times," cried Gaspard softly and passionately, "that I love you more than any man has ever loved any woman? Haven't I spent whole days and nights—yes, years—of my life desiring you? Haven't I proven it? Come into my arms, Susette. Ah, when I have you in my arms like this—"

"And it's only like this that I know happiness, my love," breathed the girl. "Yes; I'm jealous! Jealous of everything that can take you from me, body or spirit, if even for a moment. All women are like that. We live in jealousy. What's work? What's ambition, honor, duty, gold as compared with love?"

But late that night Gaspard the smith roused himself softly from his couch. He lay there leaning on his elbow and stared out of the window of his cottage. Susette stirred at his side, undisturbed by the metallic clinking. Otherwise the night was one of engulfing, mystical silence.

Just outside the cottage the great river Rhone flowed placid and free in the light of the young moon. Up from the river-bottoms ran the vine-clad slopes of Burgundy as fragrant as gardens. There was no wind. It was all swoon and mystery.

"Lord God!" cried Gaspard the smith in his heart.

It was a prayer as much as anything—an inspiration that he couldn't get otherwise into words.

He was of that race of artist-craftsmen whose forged iron and fretted steel would continue to stir all lovers of beauty for centuries to come.

"It's true," that inner voice of his spoke again, "that desire is the driving force of the world. 'Twas desire in the heart of God that led to creation. 'Tis so with us, His creatures—desire that makes us love and embellish. But when desire is satisfied, then desire is dead, and then—and then—"

And yet, as he lay there, buffeted by an emotion which he either would not or could not express, his eyes gradually focused on the castle of the great Duke of Burgundy up there on top of the hill—washed in moonlight, dim and vast; and it was as if he could see the Princess Gabrielle at her casement, kneeling there, communing with the night as he was doing.

Did she weep?

He had caught that message in her eyes as she had looked at him up there in the castle hall—had seen the same message before.

But never had she looked so beautiful—or as she looked now in retrospect—skin so white, mouth so tender, shape so stately, yet so slim and graceful. Oddly enough, thought of her now filled him with a vibrancy, with a longing.

And brave! Hadn't she shown herself to be brave though—to stand up like that there before her grandfather, him whom all Europe called Louis the Terrible, and declare herself ready to be welded to the man of her choice! She wouldn't faint in the presence of horses! And where couldn't a man go if led by a guardian angel like that? Slaves had become emperors; blacksmiths had forged armies, become the architects of cathedrals.

His breathing went deep, then deeper yet. The sweat was on his brow. He sat up. He seized the chain in his powerful hands, made as if he were going to tear it asunder.

But after that moment of straining silence he again lifted his face.

"Seigneur-Dieu," he panted; "if—if I only had it to do over again!"

VI.

"It's Gaspard the smith," said the frightened page. "He craves the honor of an interview."

The duke looked up from his parchment.

"Gaspard the smith?"

The duke was seated before the fireplace in the hall. The forge had been removed; and instead there were some logs smoldering there, for the morning was cool. But his glance recalled the circumstances of his last encounter with the smith. The watchful page was quick to seize his cue.

"He comes alone," the page announced.

The duke gave a start, then began to chuckle.

"Tiens! Tiens! He comes alone! 'Tis true, this is the time limit I set. Send the creature in."

And his highness continued to laugh all the time that the page was gone. But he laughed softly, for he was alone. Presently he heard a subdued clinking of steel. He greeted his subject with a sly smile.

Most subjects of Louis the Terrible would have been overjoyed to be received by their sovereign so graciously. But Gaspard the smith showed no special joy. He wasn't nearly so proud, either, as he had been that other time he had appeared before his lord. He bent his knee. He remained kneeling until the duke told him to get up. The duke was still smiling.

"So my three days were enough," said his highness.

"Enough and sufficient," quoth the smith.

Now that he was on his feet again he was once more the man. He and the duke looked at each other almost as equals.

"Tell me about it," said Louis.

"Well, I'll tell you," Gaspard began; "you see, I'm a smith."

"But incapable of forging a chain strong enough to hold a woman."

"I'm not so sure," Gaspard replied. "It was a good chain."

He put out his left wrist and examined it. The steel handcuff was still there. Up and back from it ran the chain which the smith had been carrying over his shoulder. He hauled the chain down. He displayed the other end of it, still ornamented by the companion bracelet.

"What happened? How did she get out of it?" queried the duke.

"She got thin," Gaspard responded with melancholy. "She didn't want me to work. She wanted the money that I could earn. Yes. She even wanted me to work. But it had to be her kind of work; something—something—how shall I say it?—something that wouldn't interfere with our love."

"And you didn't love her?"

"Sure I loved her," flared the smith. "Eh—bon Dieu! I wouldn't have coupled up with her if I hadn't loved her; but, also, I loved something else. I loved my work. I'm a smith. I'm a shoer of horses, a forger of iron, a worker in steel. I'm what the good God made me, and I've the good God's work to do!

"So after a certain amount of honeymoon I had to get back to my forge. Joseph the carter, his Percherons; who could shoe them but me?"

"And she didn't like that?"

"No. When I made her sit in my forge she pined and whined and refused to eat. I was crazy. But I did my work. And this morning when I awoke I found that she had slipped away."

"You were already enchained," said his highness, "by your work."

The smith misunderstood.

"You can see it was no trick chain," he said, holding up the chain he himself had forged and playing with the links.

"Aye," said the duke, for he loved these philosophic disquisitions, when he was in the mood for them. "Aye, chains are the nature of the universe. The planets are chained. The immortal soul is chained to the mortal body. The body itself is chained to its lusts and frailties."

"I'm a smith," said Gaspard, "and I want to work."

"We're not happy when we are chained," the duke continued to reflect aloud. "But I doubt that we'd be happier were our chains to disappear. No matter." He regarded Gaspard the smith with real benignancy. "At least you've proven the fatal quality of one particular chain—the thing I wanted to prove. And—you've saved the princess."

"Dieu de bon Dieu!" quoth the duke. "Never content!" He recovered himself. He felt kindly toward the smith. "Haven't you heard?" he demanded. "The princess has forged a chain of her own. She eloped with that young Sieur de Mâcon the same day you declined to chain her to yourself."