across the pool (that was nowhere more than three feet deep) and landed on its farther side.

One day I happened upon Carinne!

That is the high note of this droning chant of retrospection.

I was walking aimlessly, the hot thirst upon me once more, when I came out from amongst trees into a sort of forest amphitheatre of considerable extent, whose base, like the kick in a bottle, was a round hill, pretty high, and scattered sparsely with chestnut-trees. I climbed the slopes toilfully, and getting a view of things from near the summit, saw that to the north the circumference of green was broken by the gates of a hazy valley. It was as beautiful a place as I had ever chanced on; but its most gladdening corner to me was that whence a little brook looped out of the forest skirt, like a timid child coaxed from its mother's apron, and pattering a few yards, fled back again to shelter.

I

Now I would take it all in before I descended, postponing the cool ecstasy like an epicure. mounted to the top, and, peering between the chestnut trunks down the farther slopes, uttered an exclamation of surprise. A herd of swine was peacefully feeding against the fringe of the wood, and, even as I looked, one of them, a mottled porkling, crashed through a little rug of branches spread upon the ground and vanished into Tartarus. Immediately his dismal screeches rebuked the skies, and, at the sound, a girl came running out of the

wood, and, kneeling above the fatal breach, clasped her hands over her eyes and turned away her face -a very Niobe of pigs. Seeing her thus, I descended to her assistance; but, lost in her grief, it seemed, she did not hear me until I was close upon her. Then suddenly she glanced up startled,—and her eyes were the cold eyes of Carinne.

118

CHAPTER VII.

THE CHEVALIER DU GUET.

THE eyes of Mademoiselle de Lâge were a merciless grey; her face was gold-white, like a dying mapleleaf. She wore no cap on her tumbled hair, and a coarse bistre-coloured jupon was her prominent article of attire. I knew her at once, nevertheless, though her cheeks were a little fallen and her underlids dashed with violet. She stared at me as she knelt; but she made no sign that she was afraid. "Mademoiselle is in tribulation?"

"You need not speak a swineherd so fair," she said.

"But I honour pork with all my heart."

She rose to her feet. She seemed to hesitate. But she never took her eyes off me.

"Whence do you come?" she said, in her soft, deliberate voice.

"From the woods-from the wastes-from anywhere. I am proscribed and in hiding. I am hungry, also, and mademoiselle will give me to eat?"

"Why do you call me 'mademoiselle'? Do you not see I am a swineherd?”

The little pig still screeched fitfully underground. "Oh!" she cried, in sudden anguish. "Kill it, monsieur, if you know the way, and let us dine!"

I was pleased with that "us."

"I have no technical knowledge," I said. "But, let us see. It is injured?"

"Mon Dieu! I hope not. I had so longed to taste meat once more, and I had heard of pitfalls. There was a hole in the ground. I covered it over with branches, that one of these might step thereon and tumble in and be killed. But when I heard his cries I was sorry."

"That was a bold thought for a swineherd. And how would you tell your tale, with one devoured? or get the little pig out of the pit? or skin and dismember and cook it when hauled to the surface?"

"All that I had not considered."

"But you desired to eat pork? And what would you say now to a pig's foot à la St Menehould?” The jest bubbled out of me; I could not withhold it. Her mind was as quick as her speech was measured.

"Ah!" she cried, "but I remember.

were in Février's, monsieur?"

"At the table next to yours."

"That is strange, is it not!"

And you

She gave a little scornful shift to her shoulders. "It is all nothing in these mad days. The ques

tion is, monsieur, if you can put the little beast out of his pain?"

I looked into the pit. Two beady eyes, withdrawn into a fat neck, peered up at me.

"The hole is not six feet deep, mademoiselle. His pain is all upon his nerves."

She gave a whimper of relief. Then her face fell cold again.

"It follows that we must forego our dinner. Will monsieur release the victim of my gluttony?"

I jumped into the hole-hoisted out the small squeaker-returned to the surface.

"Bon jour, monsieur!" said Carinne.

"You will dismiss me hungry, mademoiselle?" "What claim have you upon me?"

"The claim of fraternity, citoyenne."

She uttered a little laugh of high disdain. "Well, rob me," she said, "and prove yourself a true Republican."

"I would steal nothing from you but your favour." "It is all bestowed on these animals. Take him you have rescued and make yourself my debtor and go."

"Mademoiselle, is this to be, when I have spent days-nay, I know not how many-of hunger and thirst and weariness in the desperate pursuit of one to whom I had vowed to offer those services of protection she lacked elsewhere?"

Her pale eyes wondered at me.

"Do you speak of the swineherd, monsieur ?" she said.