"No, sir."

"It is I who will not have him go," broke in Toussaint Lumineau, "I want him at La Fromentière."

"But he is of age, farmer!"

"He is my son, M. Meffray. It is his part to work for me. Put yourself in my place, I who am an old man. I had counted on leaving my farm to him, as my father left it to me. He goes away, and takes my daughter with him. So I lose two children, and through your fault."

"Excuse me; I did not seek him; he came to me."

"But without you he would not be going, nor Eléonore either! They had to have recommendations. You call that doing a service, M. Meffray? Did you even know what would be best for François—had you ever seen him in his home to know if he was unhappy there? Monsieur Meffray, you must give him back to me."

"Settle it with your son. It does not concern me."

"You will not speak to those who have entrapped my son, and annul the agreement?" Advancing a step, and pointing at him with extended arm, Toussaint Lumineau said in a loud voice: "Then you have done my son more harm in one single day than I in all my life."

M. Meffray's heavy face crimsoned.

"Be off, old hound!" he shouted. "Be off, take your son! Manage your own affairs. Ah! these peasants! Such are the thanks one gets for troubling about them!"

The farmer seemed not to have heard; he remained motionless. But there was a strange fire in his eyes; from the depths of his tortured heart, from the depths of the faith taught to his race for generations past, the words came to his lips:

"You shall answer for them," he said.

"How so?"

"There where they are going they will both be lost, M. Meffray. You shall answer for their eternal perdition."

As though stupefied by a speech so unlike any he had ever heard, the town councillor made no reply; it needed time for him to take in an idea so different from those usually filling his mind; then throwing a contemptuous glance at the huge peasant standing erect before him, he turned on his heel, and moved to the garden door, with a muttered:

"Boor—go!"

Toussaint Lumineau and his son went out into the street, walking silently side by side until they reached the Place. There the father, unfastening the mare, said as he was about to put his foot on the step of the cart:

"Get up, François. We will go home."

But the young man drew back.

"No," he said, "the thing is done; you will not make me alter it. Besides, I arranged with Eléonore, who must have left La Fromentière by now. You will not find her there when you go back." He had taken off his hat in farewell, and was looking uneasily at his old father, who, leaning against the shaft with half-closed eyes, seemed about to swoon. Under the colonnade of the Halles there was not a soul; a few women in their shops round the Place were carelessly looking at the two men. After a moment, François drew a little nearer and held out his hand, doubtless to clasp that of his father for the last time; but seeing him approach the old man revived, motioned his son away, sprang into the cart, and lashing up La Rousse, drove off at a gallop.

CHAPTER VI.

THE APPEAL TO THE MASTER.

The separation was accomplished. At the moment that the farmer drove away, intent upon the hope of still recovering his children, Eléonore had hurriedly left the shelter of the barn where she had been hiding, and, despite the entreaties of Marie-Rose and even of Mathurin, going from room to room she had hurriedly collected the little store of personal clothing and trinkets belonging to her. To all Rousille's pleading, as to the calmer adjurations of Mathurin, she had replied:

"It is François' wish, my dears! I cannot tell if I shall be happy; but it is too late now. My promise is given."

She was so greatly in fear of seeing her father come back that she was almost frenzied with haste. Quickly she made up her bundle, went out from La Fromentière, and reached the hollow road, where, crouching beneath the hedge, she waited for the steam tram that runs between Fromentière and Chalons. There some hours later François was to rejoin her.

Meanwhile the farmer, driving La Rousse at her greatest speed, had returned home.

"Eléonore!" he had cried.

"Gone," Mathurin had answered.

Then, half-mad with grief, the old man had flung the reins across the steaming beast, and without a word of explanation had stridden away in the direction of Sallertaine. Had he been actuated by a last hope and idea? Or did his deserted house inspire him with dread?

Night was falling. He had not yet returned. A damp, encircling mist, silent as death, enveloped all around. In the living-room of La Fromentière, beside the fire that no one tended, beside the simmering pot that murmured as if in low plaint, the two remaining inmates of the farm sat watching, but how differently! Rousille, nervous, burning with fever, could not keep still; she was for ever rising from her chair, clasping her hands, and murmuring: "My God, my God!" then going to the open door to look out, shivering, into the dark, thick night.

"Listen!" she said.

The cripple listened, then said:

"It is the goatherd of Malabrit taking home his flock."

"Listen again!"

A distant sound of barking, borne on the silent air, died away in the stillness.

"That is not Bas-Rouge's bark," returned Mathurin.

So from hour to hour, and minute to minute, a step, a cry, the rolling of a vehicle, would keep their senses on the alert.

What were they expecting? Their father, who came not. But Rousille, younger, more credulous, was expecting the others too, or if not both, at least one, either François or Eléonore, who, repentant—was it too much to hope—had come back. Oh, what joy it would be, what rapture to see one of them! It seemed as if the other would have the right to go if one came back to take his place in the home. The young girl felt raised out of herself as a vague sense of duty came over her; she, the only woman, the only one to act in her deserted home.

Mathurin sat in a stooping posture by the hearth, his feet wrapped in a rug, the glow of the fire reddening the beard crushed beneath his chin. For hours he had sat so, never moving, speaking as little as possible; from time to time tears rolled down his cheeks; at other times Rousille, looking at him, was astonished to see the shadow of a smile cross his face—a smile she could in nowise understand.

Nine o'clock struck.

"Mathurin," exclaimed the girl, "I am afraid that some misfortune has befallen father."

"He may be talking over his trouble with the Curé, or the Mayor."

"So I tell myself; yet, all the same, I am frightened."

"That's because you are not accustomed to wait as I am. What do you want to do?"

"To go towards Sallertaine to meet him."

"Go, if you like."

Rousille ran to her room to get her black cloak. When she came back, looking like a little nun, she found that Mathurin had thrown off the rug, and was standing up. His crutches were lying on the ground, and by an effort of will he stood nearly upright, resting one hand on the table, the other on the back of his chair. He looked at his sister with an air of pride and of suppressed pain, perspiration standing on his forehead.

"Rousille," he said, "what should you do if father did not come back?"

"Oh, don't say such things," she exclaimed, covering her eyes with her hand. "And do not exert yourself to stand like that; you make me feel quite ill!"

"Well, I," continued Mathurin gravely, "should take the management here. I feel strong enough. I feel that I am recovering."

"Sit down; sit down, I beg of you. You will fall."

But he remained standing until she reached the door. Scarce had she crossed the threshold before she heard the human mass sink together with a groan. She turned back, saw that he was in a sitting posture on the chair, pressing both hands to his side, doubtless to still his fast-beating heart; then noiselessly, timid as a fawn rising out of the bracken, she ran into the courtyard, and out on to the road.

The rising moon had lessened the mist, already one could see a considerable distance; in another hour it would be clear moonlight. Avoiding the shade of the hedges, Marie-Rose followed the middle of the path that, leading past the dwarf orchard, skirted the meadows; she was frightened, almost running, nor did she slacken speed until she reached the edge of the Marais, where the road suddenly widening like a river that falls into the sea, mingled its grasses with those of the marshland. Then, reassured by the moonlight, she stood still and listened. Where could her father be?

She hoped to hear footsteps on the road, or even Bas-Rouge's bark. But no; in the dream-like mist that incessantly formed and dispersed about her, amid the dim moving lights and shadows around, there was but one sound, that of the distant roll of the sea against the shores of La Vendée. She was about to turn, follow the dyke to reach the bridge of Sallertaine and its familiar houses, when a well-known whistle, like that of a plover, met her ear. Could it be possible?

The young girl's blood rushed to her heart; she stopped short in rapture and astonishment, without strength to look behind her. Motionless she stood, listening to the coming of one her heart had recognised. He came by the road she had come, from the thickets of La Fromentière. Erect, trembling, she stood on the grass-grown road, felt two hands placed on her shoulders, then a rush of air that moved the right side of her cloak, and a man had lightly sprung in front of her, with the words:

"It is I, Rousille. I have not frightened you?"

There he was in his brown coat, stick in hand, looking well pleased at his piece of audacity.

Notwithstanding her distress, Rousille could not repress a cry of joy. A smile rose to her face like an air bubble on troubled waters that none can hinder, and that widens as it goes.

"Oh how happy I am!" she said. But then quickly resumed: "No, I am wrong to speak like that. You do not know of our trouble at home. François has gone, Eléonore has gone; I am all alone there, and I have come out to find father, who has not come home. I have no time to spare for you, Jean Nesmy. It would be wrong!"

He watched the smile fade from her face in the moonlight; and as she drew her cloak about her to resume her way, he said hurriedly:

"I know all, Rousille. For the last three days I have been at Chalons trying to find a situation as near here as possible. I have not found one. But this evening I heard of François' going; it is the talk of the town in one way and another. I ran at once to La Fromentière, keeping out of sight. I watched you in the garden, in the barn. Since sundown I have heard you crying; but the farmer was the only one I saw go out."

"Where is he—at Sallertaine?"

"No; he went, but came back. I was in hiding about here. He passed just where we are now standing, and he was gesticulating and talking to himself as if he were demented."

Terrified, she asked:

"Was that long ago?"

"A quarter of an hour."

"Which way did he go?"

Jean Nesmy pointed in the direction of the mainland, and to the wooden heights further away.

"To the grounds of the Château, I believe. He jumped the fence some hundred yards from here."

"Thanks and good-bye, Jean. I must go."

But he, taking her hand, grew very grave in his turn.

"Yes," he replied, "I know quite well—but myself—soon you will have me no longer. To-morrow I am going home to the Bocage; and I came back to ask you one thing, Rousille. What shall I say to my mother to-morrow when she asks me, 'Is it really true that she loves you? What word of plighted troth did she give you when you parted? My poor Jean, when true-hearted girls see their sweethearts going away from them they say some word that is as binding as a betrothal ring, something to comfort him in absence. What did she of La Fromentière say to you?' If you have said no word, she will not believe me!"

The dim solitude enveloping them threw their shadows faintly on the grey grass. Rousille, her sweetheart's glowing eyes fixed upon her, answered sadly:

"Do not come back until Driot is well settled at home. Some months hence, in mid-winter, if our neighbours who frequent your markets tell you that he is working like a true farmer, that he is to be seen at fairs and gatherings, above all, that he is courting a girl at Sallertaine, then come back and speak to father. My father will not hear of a Boquin for son-in-law; but if I will have no other husband than you—if André speaks for me, who can tell? Father spoke well of you after you went."

"Really, Rousille? What did he say?"

"No, not now. I must be going. Good-bye."

He raised his hat with a natural courtesy that sat well upon him; nor did he seek to detain her longer.

Already Rousille, turning her back upon Sallertaine, was running across the meadow; she had reached the last bushes that border the Marais, her cloak fluttering in the mist. For more than a minute after she had disappeared beyond the fence Jean Nesmy remained motionless, on the same spot, where the words she had spoken were still ringing in his ears. Then slowly, as one learning by heart who looks not about him, he took his way towards Sallertaine and on from thence to Chalons. His heart sang with joy as he repeated to himself: "In mid-winter, if our neighbours who frequent your markets tell you that he is working like a true farmer, come back...."

The one thing he saw on the road to Chalons was that the topmost leaves of the willows were already turning yellow, and that the branches were growing leafless.

Rousille, through a gap in the fence, had made her way into a stubble field, thence through a narrow belt of wood. Then finding that she was in the gravel walk of an avenue, she paused, terrified by the solitude, and seized by the instinctive respect for the seigniorial domain, where even then her people ventured but rarely, from fear of displeasing the Marquis. She was in the outskirts of the park. On all sides, lit by the peaceful light of the moon, were sloping lawns, broken now by groups of forest-trees forming islands of black shade, now disappearing in the blue mist of distance. Sometimes in light, sometimes in shadow, Rousille followed the path, her eyes on the watch, her heart beating wildly. She was seeking marks of footsteps on the gravel; straining to see objects amid the dense thickets. Was that her father over there, that dark form through the wood? No, it was but the pile of a fence overgrown with brambles. Everywhere thorn-bushes, roots, dead branches impeded the moss-grown paths. How neglect had grown with years! The master absent, all was deserted, gone to waste. As she pursued her way, Rousille began to realise more keenly her sorrow at her brother's and sister's flight. They too, perhaps, would never come back to their home; fear in her gave place to grief.

Suddenly, the path winding round a clump of cedars, she found herself in front of the Château, with its huge main building flanked by towers and pointed roofs, on which the weather-cocks that once told the direction of the wind were now motionless with rust. Night owls were silently chasing each other round the gables; the windows were shut, the ground-floor secured with shutters strongly battened.

Anxious as she was, the young girl could not but stop for a moment to look at the melancholy pile, stained by winter rains, already as grey as any ruin; and as she stood there on the broad carriage-drive, her ear detected a distant murmur of words.

"It is father," she thought without a moment's hesitation.

He was sitting some hundred yards away from the Château, on a bench that Rousille knew well, placed in the half-bend of a group of birches, and called by the country people the bench of the Marquise. Bent double, his head resting on his hands, the old man was looking at the Château and down the avenues that sloped towards the Marais. Under the shadow of the birches Rousille drew nearer to him, and as she came closer, she began to distinguish the words he was saying, like a refrain: "Monsieur le Marquis! Monsieur le Marquis!" And as she hastened over the soft turf which deadened her footsteps, Rousille had the horrible dread that her father was mad. No, it was not that, but grief, fatigue, and hunger, of which he was unconscious, had excited his brain. Finding neither help nor support anywhere, in his despair instinct and habit had brought him to the door of the Château, where so often before he had come in sure hope of relief. He had lost all knowledge of time, and only continued to address his lament, "Monsieur le Marquis! Monsieur le Marquis!" to the ears of the master too distant to pay heed. The girl, throwing back the hood of her cloak, said softly so as not to startle him:

"Father, it is Rousille. I have been looking for you for an hour. Father, it is late—come!"

The old farmer shuddered, looking at her with absent eyes that saw not present objects.

"Only think," he said, "the Marquis is not here, Rousille. My house is going to ruin, and he is not here to defend me. He should come back when I am in trouble, should he not?"

"Of course, father, but he does not know of it; he is far away, in Paris."

"The others, the people of Sallertaine, they can do nothing for us because they are humble folks like ourselves, who have no authority beyond their farms. I have been to the Mayor, to Guerineau, to de la Pinçonnière, le Glorieux, de la Terre-Aymont. They sent me away with empty words. But the Marquis, Rousille, when he comes back—when he knows all! Perhaps to-morrow?"

"Perhaps."

"Then he will not leave me alone in my grief. He will help me; he will give me back François—eh, child? will he not give me back François?"

His voice was raised; the shrill words struck against the walls of the Château, that sent them echoing back in softened accents to the avenues, the lawns, until they were lost in the forest. The still, pure night listened as they died away, as it listened to the rustle of insects in the thickets.

Rousille, seeing her father in so great distress, sat down beside him, and talked to him for a while, trying to inspire a hope which she did not feel. And, possibly, a calming influence, a consoling power emanated from her, for when she said: "There is Mathurin at home, father, waiting for you," of his own accord he rose, and took his daughter's arm. For a long while he looked into the face of his pretty little Rousille, so pale with emotion and fatigue.

"True," he replied, "there is Mathurin. We must go."

And together they passed in front of the Château, turned into the avenue leading towards the servants' offices, and thence into the fields belonging to the farm. As they neared La Fromentière, Rousille felt that the farmer was gradually recovering his self-control, and when they were in the courtyard, with a rush of pity for the cripple, Rousille said:

"Father, Mathurin is very unhappy too. Do not talk much to him of your distress."

Hereupon the farmer, whose courage and clear reasoning had revived, passed his hand over his eyes, and preceding Rousille, pushed open the door of the house-place, where his crippled son lay stretched deep in thought, beside the nearly burnt-out candle.

"Mathurin, my son," he said, "do not worry overmuch ... they have gone, but our Driot will soon be home again!"

CHAPTER VII.

DRIOT'S RETURN.

Mathurin had of himself offered to look after the "birds," that is to say, the stock of half-wild turkeys and geese bred at La Fromentière. Carrying a sack fastened across his shoulders, he would drag himself down every morning to the edge of the first canal of the Marais, where, at a part that widened out, were fastened the two boats belonging to La Fromentière. In the shallow water he would scatter his supply of corn or buck-wheat, and from across the meadows drakes with blue-tinted wings, ducks, grey, with a double notch cut on the right side of their beaks to mark them as belonging to Lumineau, would hurry and dive for their food. For hours Mathurin would find amusement in watching them, then, lowering himself gently into one of the boats, seated or kneeling, would try to recover the sure and rapid stroke which at one time had made him famous among the puntsmen of the Marais.

Toussaint Lumineau delighted to see him managing his boat near the farm, thus distracting his mind, as he thought, from the ever present regret. He would say: "The lad is regaining his old pleasure in punting. It can but be good for him and for us all." But to Mathurin, to Rousille, to his man, to the passers-by, sometimes even to his oxen, often when alone to himself, he would talk of the son so soon to be home again among them. Help was coming; youth and joy were returning to sorrow-stricken La Fromentière. At table nothing else was talked about:

"Only twelve days; only ten; only seven. I will drive to Chalons to meet him," said Lumineau.

"And I will make him some porridge," said Rousille, "he used to be so fond of it before he joined his regiment."

"And I" said Mathurin, "will go in the punt with him the first time he looks up his friends."

"How much there will be to hear!" exclaimed Rousille. "When he was home on furlough he had an endless store of tales to tell. As for me, I shall have no time to listen to them. I shall have to send him to you, Mathurin. And what a change it will make in the house to have a chatterbox among us." Then she added, with the grave air of one entrusted with the household purse: "One change we must make, father, and that will be to buy a paper on Sunday. He will not like to go without one; our André is sure to want to know the news."

"He is young," said the father, as if to excuse him.

And all André's predilections, every recollection connected with him, all the hopes that centred in his return were incessantly recapitulated by one and the other in the living-room of La Fromentière, where the caress of such discourses must have ascended more than once to the smoke-stained rafters.

Meanwhile the son thus occupying all their thoughts had not been told by any of them of the going of François and Eléonore. Partly from dislike to letter-writing, but principally to spare him pain, and to avoid giving him bad news on the eve of his homecoming, the blow which had so diminished the number of those he was to rejoin had been withheld from him. For they could not tell how he would take the absence of his favourite brother, his childhood's companion; it would be better to break the news to him gently, when he should have come back to France, back to his home. Soon a letter came, bearing the Algiers postmark, giving from day to day the itinerary of the journey; and under the elms of La Fromentière would be heard, every successive four-and-twenty hours, announced by one of the family lovingly, meditated over by the others, "Now Driot must be leaving Algiers." "Now Driot is on the sea." "Now Driot is in the train for Marseilles." "Children, he has reached the soil of France."

So one morning, which chanced to be the last Saturday in September, Toussaint Lumineau gave La Rousse a double feed of oats, and drew out from the coach-house a tilbury, the body and wheels of which were painted red. This tilbury was a relic of former prosperity, and as well known in all the country side as were the round head, white hair, and clear eyes of Toussaint Lumineau himself. He, harnessing the mare, looked so joyous and happy, that Rousille, who had not heard him laugh for many a day, as she watched him from the doorway, felt her eyes fill with tears, she knew not wherefore, as though it were the return of spring. The last strap buckled, the old farmer put on his best coat with upright collar, fastened the broad blue Sunday belt round his waist, and slipped two cigars at a halfpenny each into his coat pocket, a luxury he never indulged in nowadays. Then swinging himself up into the tilbury with a cheery, "Ohé, La Rousse!" he was off.

The mare started at such a pace that an instant later her headstall, ornamented with a rosette, looked like a poppy swept along the hedges by the wind. Bas-Rouge tore along after them. His master had called out on starting, "Driot is coming, Bas-Rouge! Come to meet him!" and the dog, all excitement, had dashed after La Rousse in ungainly gallop. Soon they had reached Chalons. Without slackening speed, the farmer drove through the streets, responding to the greeting of the landlord of the Hotel des Voyageurs, and nicely marking by the angle at which he raised his hat his sense of a tenant farmer's superiority over shopkeepers as he returned their salutations, then proudly erect upon the box-seat, tightening the reins, he turned in the direction of the railway station, some two miles beyond the town.

People looking after him, said:

"He has gone to meet his lad, that's certain. Well, poor fellow, he has had plenty of trouble, now he is having his share of good luck!"

La Rousse being restive, Lumineau alighted in the railway yard, and stood at the head of the mare. Thence could be seen the perspective of lines going towards La Roche—the lines by which one son had left, and the other was so soon to return to La Fromentière. He had not long to wait. The train dashed into the station with a whistle; the farmer was still quieting the mare, terrified by the noise, when the passengers came thronging out: townspeople, men-of-war's men on leave, fishmongers from Saint Gilles or Sables, and lastly a smart Chasseur d'Afrique, slight and tall, his képi well balanced, fair moustaches waxed to a point, his knapsack full to bursting, who, after looking eagerly round the yard, smiled and ran out with widespread arms:

"Father! Ah! what luck, it's father!"

The bystanders, indifferently looking on, saw the two men embrace each other with a strong, almost suffocating pressure.

"My Driot!" exclaimed the old man. "How happy I am!"

"And I too, father!"

"No, not so happy as I am! If you only knew!"

"What, then?"

"I will tell you. Oh, my Driot, the joy of seeing you again!"

They disengaged themselves from each other's arms. The young soldier adjusted his collar, and restored the equilibrium of his képi on the point of falling.

"Ah, I expect you will have no end of things to tell me, after all this long time? Important, perhaps? You will tell me by degrees at La Fromentière, while we are at work. Ever so much better than letters, eh?" And he threw back his fair head with a merry laugh.

His father could only respond with a faint smile; then, going towards the tilbury, one on either side, they swung themselves up with the elasticity of two men of the same age.

"Shall I drive?" asked André, and taking up the reins he gave a click with his tongue. La Rousse pricked up her ears, reared playfully to show that she recognised her young master, and with arched neck and eyes aflame, she soon left far behind the two empty hotel omnibuses, which were in the habit of racing each other on their way back from the station. Those who had exchanged greetings with the farmer on his way to the train, and many others, watched to see the two men pass by; clear-starchers looking out as they ironed; the little dressmaker from Nantes who came at the beginning of each season to take orders from her ladies at Chalons; shopkeepers standing at their doors; peasants at their dinners in inn parlours; all attracted by the sight of a soldier, or gratified to have a sign of recognition from the two Lumineaus. La Rousse trotted at such speed that the old man had not time to resume his hat between his salutations. Remarks followed the tilbury in the vacuum of air made by its rapid course.

"That's the son from Africa. A handsome lad! How well his blue tunic suits him. And the old man, how happy he looks!"

The farmer sat close to his recovered son. Halfway down the last street, bordered by an elm hedge shedding its leaves on the road, the old man plunged his big hand into his pocket and nudged Driot's elbow to call attention to the two choice cigars he held between finger and thumb.

"With pleasure," responded the young man, and taking one he lit it, somewhat slackening the mare's pace as he did so, then, after a few puffs, as the gorse-covered slopes, golden with blossom, the stony fields, the crown-topped elms, came in sight, bringing with them the sweetness of old familiar scenes, Driot, hitherto somewhat silent and abashed by the attention they had excited, began:

"And all the home-folks, father, how are they?"

A deep furrow lined the farmer's brow. Toussaint Lumineau turned a little in his seat and looked away towards the landscape, distressed at having to tell the trouble, and still more by the fear of what his handsome Driot would think about it.

"My poor boy," he said, "we have only Mathurin and Rousille at home now."

"And François, where is he?"

"Only fancy! Ah! you little think what I am going to tell you. A fortnight ago yesterday he left La Fromentière to work on the railway at La Roche. Eléonore went with him. It seems that she was to keep a coffee shop. Can you believe it?"

"You sent them away from home?" asked the young man, removing the cigar from his mouth and looking straight at his father. "They are not such fools as to have left you for any other reason!"

The words gave the old father a thrill of joy. His Driot understood him; his Driot was at one with him. Returning the frank gaze, he answered:

"No; they are a couple of idlers, who want to make money without doing anything for it ... ungrateful, both of them, leaving their old father ... and then you know that François loves pleasure. Since he served his time he has always had a hankering after town life."

"I know; and I know that town has its attractions," returned André, touching up La Rousse with the point of the whip; "but to grease the wheels of a railway carriage, or serve out drink! Well, everyone goes his own way in this world. All the better for them if they succeed. But I cannot tell you what the fact of François' going is to me. I was so looking forward to our farm-life together."

He remained bending forward awhile as if only intent on the twitching of the mare's delicate ears, then asked in his caressing voice:

"Things are going badly with us then, father?"

"They have been somewhat, my boy. But they won't now that you are home."

André made no direct reply, nor did he say anything at all just then. He was scanning the horizon for a slate-covered clock tower and certain tree-tops not yet distinguishable in the distance; his heart was already in the old home.

"At any rate," said he, "Rousille is left to us. She had grown a pretty girl when I was last home on leave, very taking, and with a will of her own! You cannot imagine how often I used to think of her when I was out in Africa, and try to sketch her portrait from memory. Is she as jolly as ever?"

"She is not bad," replied the farmer.

"And a good girl, I hope? She is not the sort to turn herself into a barmaid."

"No, certainly not."

The good-looking young soldier slackened the mare's pace, partly because they had reached a turn in the road where there was a steep descent, partly that he might the better see, at the foot of the sloping ground, the Marais of La Vendée opening out like a gulf. He had only been home once before in his three years of service; with growing emotion he gazed upon the groups of poplars and tiny red roofs standing out from the waste of marshland; his eyes roved from one to the other; his lips trembled as he named the farms one by one; all other emotion was silenced in that of coming home again.

"Parée-du-Mont!" he exclaimed. "What has become of the eldest Ertus?"

"Nothing much; he is in the Customs."

"And Guerineau of la Pinçonnière, who was in the 32nd line regiment?"

"Oh, he went off like François; is conductor on the tramway to Nantes."

"And Dominique Perrocheau of Levrelles?"

The farmer shrugged his shoulders with annoyance, for, in truth, it was aggravating to be obliged constantly to answer "Gone—left—deserted the Marais." However he had to say:

"You heard, doubtless, that he gained his gold stripes at the end of his first leave; then he obtained further promotion, and was given some post, I don't know where, as Government clerk. A set of stupid fellows, all of them—not worth much, my Driot!"

"Ah, now I see Terre d'Aymont," cried Driot. "It seems nearer than it used to be; I can distinguish their wind-mill. Tell me, father, there were two of my playfellows there, sons of Massonneau le Glorieux, one older, the other younger than me. What are they doing?"

Radiant, Toussaint Lumineau made reply:

"Both on the farm. The eldest exempted his brother. They are fine fellows who do not mind hard work; you will see them to-morrow at mass in Sallertaine."

With a light, happy laugh the young soldier said:

"Ah, by-the-bye, one must get into the way of attending mass again, I suppose. In the army devotion did not trouble us much. Sundays were rather a favourite day for our chiefs to hold reviews ... they don't look at things as you do. But you see, father, I will soon accustom myself to going to mass again—even to high mass—it is not that that will be the difficulty."

"What then, my lad?"

They were both silent for a moment. Another turn in the road had revealed La Fromentière on their left. With a simultaneous movement father and son had risen and were standing almost upright, one hand on the front of the carriage, contemplating the property, La Rousse trotting along, unheeded by the driver.

A great, tender rush of feeling, cruel withal, paled André's face. The land was welcoming a son of its soil; all the scattered recollections of his childhood awoke and called aloud to him; there was not a hillock that did not greet him, not a furze-bush, not a lopped elm but had a friendly look for him. But one and all, too, recalled the brother and sister he would find there no more.

Without turning his eyes from La Fromentière Driot replied, after a silence, and without naming those of whom he was thinking:

"I will go and see them at La Roche ... of course I will ... but brotherhood is not altogether the same when one has broken from the old place...."

An instant later he was holding Rousille, who had run out into the courtyard to meet him, high in his arms, looking her full in the face, into the very depth of her eyes, with the gaze of a brother whose military experience has made him somewhat suspicious of maidenly virtue; but seeing that her eyes met his in all frankness, but with something of a sad expression, he kissed her, and set her down on terra firma again.

"Always the same, little sister! That's good; but a little sorry at having lost Lionore, eh?"

"You can see that?"

"Ah well! But I have come now. We will try to get on without them, won't we?"

"And I?" put in a thick voice.

The soldier left Rousille, and hastened to Mathurin who was coming towards them; dragging his limbs after him.

"Do not hurry, old man! I must do the running for both; I have sound legs."

Stooping over his crutches, and stroking his elder brother's tawny head, André could find no words of comfort. Coming fresh from a military centre where all was young, active, alert, he could not hide the distress and a certain feeling of horror with which Mathurin's infirmity inspired him. However, compelled by the other's anxious look, which seemed to ask, "What do you think of me?—you who come back, judge—can I live?" he hastened to say:

"My poor old man, I am so glad to find you like this. So you have not got any worse?"

With a shrug of the shoulders, the cripple angrily pushed him away.

"I am much better," he returned. "You will see. I walk more easily. I can stand as firmly as I did three years ago, when I thought I was getting well ... and, for a beginning, I am going with you to mass at Sallertaine to-morrow."

To avoid answering, the young soldier turned to meet his father, who, having unharnessed La Rousse, was coming towards them, with happy, smiling face, having eyes only for his Driot come home to him again. The men, one following the other, turned towards the house, and went in; but on this happy day it was the farmer who held back, and the returned son who went first. Alert, interested as on a first visit, rejoiced to be made the object of the eyes and ears of the others, he did not sit down but wandered from room to room, the blue and red uniform an unfamiliar sight in this home of the toilers of the field.

To amuse his auditors he made the old walls ring again with words of command; knocked up against corners to feel the strength of the massive stones; opened the cupboard, cut himself a slice of bread, and tasted it, with a, "Better than the bread of Algiers, my friends. This is Rousille's baking, eh? It is excellent; we shall have a good farmer's wife in her."

Followed everywhere by his father, Mathurin, and Marie-Rose, he went from the house into the stables and barns.

"I do not know these oxen," said he.

"No, my boy, I bought them last winter at Beauvoir fair."

"Well, I'll bet that I can tell their names from their faces. This dun-coloured one, that does not look great shakes, is Noblet, and his companion, the little tawny one, is Matelot?"

"Right," answered his father.

"As for the others, our old ones, they have not changed much, save to put on more horn and muscle. The plough ought to work well drawn by them. Good day, Paladin; good day, Cavalier!"

The good creatures lying in the straw, hearing the young voice that called to them, thrust out their heads, and with their thoughtful eyes followed the young master.

A little further, stooping down, he took up a handful of green forage.

"Fine maize for the time of year," he said. "This must have come from our high land; from La Cailleterie?"

"No."

"From Jobinière then, where not a grain is lost. Here's a good specimen!"

The father was ready to join in praise of his oxen, his fields, everything, so happy was he that the last of his sons, after three years' absence, still loved the ground.

But the handsome young soldier laughed more than he felt inclined to do, to hide the sad thoughts that would come during his round, and when in the shed affected not to see the traps for blackbirds, made by François the preceding winter. In the threshing floor, seeing a bundle of faded grass lying on the neatly made hayrick, he bent towards Rousille, and murmured:

"Did François gather that? Ah, it pains me more than I could have believed, Rousille, not to find François here. It quite changes La Fromentière for me."

But the father heard nothing of this. He only saw that his son was home again, and the future of La Fromentière assured. When they had re-entered the general sitting-room, Lumineau passed his hand over the blue tunic of the Chasseur d'Afrique, saying:

"I like you in this, but I bet anything that you will not be sorry to lay aside your soldier's toggery."

"All right, father," returned André, laughing at the unwitting affront to his uniform, and his father's indirect mode of inviting him to change to civilian dress. "I am not got up in Sallertaine guise; I'll go and change."

From the bottom of the chest in the end room, beside the bed where he was to sleep, André took the carefully folded work-day suit, laid there by him the day he left. He took great pains with the waxing of his moustache, and adjusting the brim of his hat, adorned his button-hole with a sprig of jasmine; then going the length of the house, opened the kitchen door, and there, framed against the old walls, his slim figure clad in cloth suit, was seen the handsomest young Vendéen of the Marais. Bronzed and fair-haired, his joyous face reflected the happiness of the others.

"Ah, Driot," exclaimed the farmer merrily, "now you are quite yourself again! You were my son before, but not so completely my very own as now," then added: "Now come, and we will drink to your health, and that you may stay at La Fromentière; for I am ageing fast, and you shall take my place."

Mathurin, sitting at table beside his father, became very gloomy. When the glasses were filled, he raised his with the others, but did not clink it against that of André.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE PLACE DE L'EGLISE.

The first to be seen were the farm-labourers and farmers' sons, who came out by the east door from the transept where they had heard mass, and who, passing round the choir, grouped themselves on the other side, where the young girls would presently emerge. Two by two they appeared between the pillars of the west porch with eyes lowered to the tips of their sabots. They were well aware that their rosy cheeks, smoothly braided hair beneath the pyramid of muslin, the embroidered stockings peeping under the short petticoat, the manner in which they walked with hands demurely crossed over the moiré aprons, made them the cynosure of all eyes. This retired bearing only lasted for some twenty paces; soon the girls had formed themselves into a group close by the Michelonnes' house, at a short distance from that of the younger men. And now in their turn they waited. Eyes grey, blue, brown, very much on the alert; eyes sparkling with life; eyes in which lived a remembrance. Laughing lips, telling of the mere joy of living; the chirping as of a flock of birds greeting one another. Following them came the farmers and their wives; widows, distinguishable by the band of velvet in front of their coifs; older men, men of position; these all issuing from the nave, among them many a grave face still under the influence of devotion, in which like walking saints they seemed wholly absorbed. Many tall, finely set up men there were, with calm, fresh complexioned faces closely shaven, save for a thin line of whisker. All wore the same costume of black cloth coat with straight collar, trousers with flaps, raised on the ankle by a fold in the cloth, blue or green belt extending half way up the waistcoat, round felt hat bound with velvet. They joined the younger men, swelling the groups that shouldered each other, forming by this time a dark swaying mass reaching to the last buttress of the choir.

The matrons, on the contrary, making a passage for themselves through the crowd, went their way, looking in their plaited skirts like ornamental round towers. From their calm eyes, and the brief smile with which they exchanged greetings with a town acquaintance, it was plain to see that, having outgrown the follies and illusions of youth, each had settled down to her store of domestic happiness, joy, or sorrow that a green patch in the Marais had reserved for her. They talked with other farmers' wives, were joined by one or other for the homeward way, and thus accompanied, dignified and worthy, they directed their steps towards the plain, or to the various boating stages.

Despite their departure, the gathering in the Place grew denser and denser. It was the place of Sunday meeting where for centuries past the dwellers of the marshes, prisoners of the canal-bound land, had been wont to assemble. To them attendance at mass was alike a religious duty and an occasion of social gathering. Before wending their way back to their farms, not a man, even the gravest and most considered among them, would have failed to pass an hour in a wine shop chatting with his friends over a bottle of muscadet and a game of cards, luette particularly, a game imported from Spain in ancient times. Already innkeepers were standing at their doors at the foot of the Place, sounds of merriment and laughter were to be heard from within, and the stock-phrases of luette players, "Your turn." "My turn." "I play a horse." "I take merienne."

Meanwhile there was more than ordinary animation among the girls stationed behind the groups of men. They were scanning all the church doors, whence were now issuing good women, tellers of rosaries, who had lingered long over their devotions.

"He is coming out," exclaimed tall Aimée Massonneau, the daughter of farmer Glorieux, of Terre-Aymont. "Did you see him, that poor Mathurin Lumineau? He insisted upon coming to mass. I am sure he might have got dispensation!"

"Yes," returned the little auburn-haired daughter of Malabrit, "it is six years since he came to Sallertaine."

"Six years—really?"

"Yes, I remember. It was the year my sister was married."

"And why do you think he came?" asked Victoire Guerineau, of La Pinçonnière, a sharp-tongued pretty girl, with a complexion like a wild rose. "For he must have shown some spirit to manage it."

"To stand by his father," said a voice; "the old man had been so saddened by the going of Eléonore and François."

"To show himself with his brother André," put in another. "He's a good-looking fellow is André Lumineau! I should not mind——"

Victoire Guerineau and the others broke into a peal of laughter.

"You are quite out of it. It's for Félicité Gauvrit he came!"

"Oh, oh!" exclaimed those in front.

"How ill-natured you are! If she were to hear you."

And several turned towards the Michelonnes' doorstep, near to which, amid a little throng, stood Mathurin's former fiancée.

Suddenly a murmur ran through the crowd.

"There he is. Poor fellow! How difficult it is for him to walk."

And under the pointed arch of a low doorway, one half of which only was open, a deformed figure was seen struggling to force a passage through the narrow aperture, one hand holding a crutch clutched hold of a pillar outside, by which the poor man strove to drag himself through, but he had only succeeded in freeing one shoulder. With head thrown back, there was an expression of agony upon the face which attested the violence of the effort, and the strength of will that would not give in. Mathurin Lumineau seemed on the point of suffocation; he looked at no one in the throng of people whose gaze was riveted upon him; his eyes on a higher level than those of the spectators were fixed upon the blue vault of heaven with an expression of anguish that re-acted upon them.

Conversation was interrupted; voices began to murmur:

"Oh, help him! He is suffocating!"

Some of the men made a movement to go to his assistance; at that moment, from the gloom of the interior, his father asked:

"Shall I help you out, Mathurin? You cannot squeeze through there. Let me help you."

In a low voice, inaudible to those without, but with terrible energy, Mathurin answered:

"Don't touch me. Confound it! Don't touch me. I will get out by myself."

At length the man forced his huge bust through the door, and with a tremendous effort steadied himself, stroked his tawny beard and settled his hat on his head. Then with the aid of his crutches, standing as upright as he could, Mathurin looked straight before him, and advanced towards the group of men, which opened out silently at his approach. No one ventured to address him, it was so long since he had been among them, the old habit of familiarity seemed lost; but the attention of all was concentrated upon their former comrade, and no one noticed that his old father with André and Marie-Rose were following close behind him.

The cripple had soon reached the spot where the girls were standing. They fell apart even more quickly than the men had done, for they guessed his intention; a lane opened between them reaching up to the houses. At the far end of this living avenue, clad in black dresses and white coifs, standing erect, quite alone, was seen Félicité Gauvrit. She was the one he sought. She knew it; she had foreseen her triumph. No sooner had she observed Mathurin Lumineau sitting on the family bench in church, then she had said to herself: "He has come for me. I will hide away by the Michelonnes' house, and he will follow me." For she was gratified to have it seen that he still loved her, the girl to whom, handsome though she was, no suitors came. The women with whom she had been talking had prudently moved away; she stood alone, under the Michelonnes' window, looking like a lay figure from some museum in her costume of heavy stiff material, the braids of her lustrous brown hair shining under the small coif, her dazzlingly white complexion and uncovered throat. Erect, with arms pendant on either side of the moiré apron, she watched her former lover coming towards her between the double row of inquisitive lookers-on. The many faces bent upon the girl in nowise intimidated her. Perhaps in the suit and cravat Mathurin was wearing she recognised the very ones he had worn at the time of the accident; any way, she remained calm and unabashed, her face even wore a slight smile. He drew nearer, leaning on his crutches, his eyes fixed, not on the path, but on Félicité Gauvrit. What the poor fellow wanted was to see her once again; to make her understand that health was returning, that hope was awakening out of his misery, that the heart of Mathurin Lumineau had never wavered. All this his sad eyes told her as he drew near, offering in piteous pleading the bodily and mental suffering he had endured to her who had been their cause. But his strength was unequal to the effort, he grew deadly white; and when the insolent beauty, the first to speak, said calmly before all the throng:

"Good day, Mathurin," he could not answer. To have seen the smile on those rosy lips, to be so near to her, and to hear her address him in the same easy tones as if they had but parted the day before, was more than he could bear.

He grew faint, leant heavily on his crutches, and slightly turned his tawny head to Driot, who was behind him, as if to say: "Take me away," and the younger brother understanding the appeal, passed the suffering man's arm under his and led him away, saying as he did so, to divert the attention of the crowd:

"Good day to yourself, Félicité. It is an age since I have seen you. You are not a bit altered."

"Nor are you," she retorted.

A few laughed; but among those assembled there were many who were deeply touched, even disposed to tears. Some of the girls of Sallertaine pitied the poor fellow so exhausted and confused, led away on his brother's arm; they sorrowed that he could never enjoy that love which each, in the recesses of her heart, hoped some day to share with the yet unknown swain. One of them murmured:

"It is not only in body that he is afflicted, his mind, too, seems gone, poor fellow!"

Many women, mothers going home with their children, walked more sedately as they saw the group on the way to Chalons: old farmer Toussaint, André and Mathurin, with Marie-Rose bringing up the rear. They recalled with a shudder what a magnificent youth the poor cripple once had been, and thought: Heaven send that no such calamity befall our boys when they grow up!

Félicité Gauvrit began to be affected in her turn, but in a different manner. The departure of the Lumineaus had turned attention away from her. Some of the men surrounded the district crier, who was calling out the list of lost articles and farms to be let; others repaired to the inns. The girls collected in little companies to seek the homeward way. Every minute five or six white coifs were to be seen bowing and bending in farewell salute, separating from the others, and going off to the right hand or the left. Félicité, left alone for some minutes, joined one of the groups going west of Sallertaine, towards the high Marais; she was received with some embarrassment, as one whom they did not want to fall out with, yet who was somewhat compromising, and whose company their mothers did not desire for them.

Young men drinking together in the inns called after her the slighting remarks men make on girls for whom they have little respect. She did not answer them back, but with her companions descended the hilly road bordered with houses, and thence on to the open Marais in the direction of Perrier.

At that time of the year, before autumn rains had set in, many of the farms could be reached on foot without the aid of boats. A raised path, rough and ill-kept, flanked by dykes on either side, led across the meadows; grey-green grass covered the level plain until the uniform tint dissolved in brownish hue in the distant horizon. Horses grazing, stretched out their necks, and looked at the little group clad in black and white, breaking the continuity of grey-green plain. Ducks, at the sound of their footsteps, ran in among the rushes that trembled on the edge. From time to time a shelving embankment branched off the path, and one of the girls, separating from the group, would make her way by it to some distant house, only marked by the customary cluster of poplar-trees; and Félicité Gauvrit, roused for a moment from her abstraction, would say "Good-bye," and then walk on silently as before.

Soon she was left alone on the path that stretches to the sea. Then slackening her pace, she gave herself up without restraint to her thoughts. She was not happy at home. At sixty-five her father had married again a woman of thirty of loose character, whom he had met at Barre-de-Mont, and to whom in virtue of her youth he had made over the most realisable part of his property. The young stepmother was not kind to Félicité. One reproached the other with extravagance and ruining the home. The eldest brother, in the Customs at Sables d'Olonne, a gambler and hard drinker, was perpetually threatening the old man with a summons for falsified accounts, and by thus intimidating him drained still further the diminished capital of the Gauvrits. The old family, once so respected in the Marais, was rapidly declining, and this Félicité knew too well. The young men of Sallertaine and the neighbouring parishes came readily enough to dances at La Seulière; they danced, drank, joked with her, but not one of them offered to marry her. The impending ruin, the family divisions, kept suitors away.

Yet another reason, more real, and one that appealed more strongly to sentiment than any other, held back the sons of farmers, and even farm-labourers from asking the hand of Félicité Gauvrit in marriage; and this was the tie, binding only in honour, the debt of fidelity, rendered even more sacred by misfortune, which public opinion obstinately maintained as still existing between La Seulière and La Fromentière. In everybody's opinion Félicité Gauvrit remained one of the Lumineau household; a girl who had not the right to withdraw her betrothal promise, and who was not to be sought in marriage by any other while Mathurin was living. Some men even had a superstitious dread of her; they would have been afraid to set up housekeeping with a girl whose first love had met so unhappy a fate. All the advances she had made had come to nought. Soured and embittered, in her rage she had gone so far as to regret that the cripple had not been killed on the spot. Had the poor wretch, who was scarcely to be called living, died then and there, she would have recovered her liberty, the past would have been quickly forgotten; while now, it was kept in everyone's memory by the sight of the maimed man on crutches, hanging about the farmstead of which he should have been master. She had found that Death is sometimes long in claiming its victims. Then courage had returned; in her astuteness Félicité had recognised that public opinion holding her as belonging to the Lumineau family, by them only could she realise her ambition: to go away from La Seulière, escape the domination of her stepmother, and become the mistress of a large farm, with more means and freedom than ever she had possessed at home. Never having loved her former betrothed, actuated only by vanity, as is sometimes the case in country surroundings, she had said to herself:

"I will bide my time. I will make them long the more for me by not going to La Fromentière. One day Mathurin will come to me, or will call me to him. I am positive that he has not forgotten me. Stupid of him; but it will help my ends. Thanks to him, I shall see them all again; the old man who mistrusts me, the young men who will admire me for my beauty. And I shall marry either François or André, and shall be the mistress of a farm as I ought to be, and of the richest farm in the whole parish."

Now François, whom she had tried to captivate, had gone away. But, on the other hand, Mathurin had come to her; at the cost of terrible fatigue and suffering he had dragged himself to Sallertaine to greet her publicly; while André, before all the girls, had said: "It is an age since I saw you. You are not a bit altered."

Félicité had gathered one of the yellow irises that grew so profusely on the Marais. Half laughing she thought over her recent triumph, the iris lightly held between her lips; her arms swinging as she walked caused the full sleeves to rustle against the moiré of her apron; her smiling gaze was directed to the distant meadows. She was thinking that André would make a handsome husband, better looking than ever Mathurin had been; that, after all, he was one year younger than herself, that he had engaging manners, and had not been wanting in audacity either to have said: "You have not altered." And she went on to think: "The first opportunity that offers, I will invite them to a dance at home. I am sure that André will come."

Slowly she walked along the raised path in the burning rays of the mid-day sun. Grasshoppers were chirping; every now and again the acrid scent of fading rushes was in the air. Wholly absorbed in her daydream, Félicité Gauvrit did not perceive that she had nearly reached home. The white buildings of La Seulière, standing out in the meadow, came as an unwelcome surprise. At the same moment a doubt crossed her mind, disturbing, unbidden ending to her dream. Suppose André too were to go away? Or that Mathurin, elated as he was sure to be by the least sign of remembrance, and made thereby more eager, more jealous, were to guess what was in the wind?

Félicité had stopped in the middle of the bridge that led from the path to the farm. The tall, supple young woman raised her arms above her head, scowled impatiently, and snapped the stem of the yellow iris, which fell prone into the dyke, then following it with her eyes for a second, she looked at her own reflection in the water, and smiled again. "I shall succeed," she said. And descending the slope of the bridge she reached La Seulière by the cross road.