the great pig. He had rolled from his victim and stood a little apart, evilly humouring with his chaps a certain recollection. He eyed me with wickedness as I advanced, and his obsequious following, something subsided from their hysteria, seemed awaiting their cue. I would not allow myself a second's indecision. I walked straight up to him "Monsieur," I said, "avec l'égard le plus profond" -and flung the string over his ear.

Alas! the ingrate! As I retreated he threw down his head, dislodged the trinket, smelt at and swallowed it.

The eyes in Carinne's yet shocked face looked a pale inquiry when I returned to her.

"Mademoiselle," I said, "the honour would appear entirely to his taste."

She nodded seriously.

"It is well," she whispered; "and I hope none will rob him."

"He shall be turned inside out first," I said stoutly; and at that she nodded again, and bade me to a hurried retreat.

We may have walked a mile, or even two, in a solemn silence, before my comrade was fain to stop, in the heart of a woodland glen, and throw herself exhausted on a bank. Then she looked up at me, her fatigued eyes struggling yet with defiance.

"Why do you not upbraid me?" she said. "Why do you not say 'I told you so'?" "Because it does not occur to me."

"Ah! you would make a fine virtue of forbear

ance; you would be the patient ass to my vanity, would you not, monsieur ?"

"I would let mademoiselle ride me rough-shod till I fell dead."

"And so leave me the living monument to your nobility. But it is not generous, monsieur, thus to rebuke me with silence."

"And, after all, it was the hog that struck most effectively."

"And that is conceded, mademoiselle; and the hog is generously decorated."

She mused up at me rebelliously.

"I do not even know your name." "It is Citizen Thibaut."

"Citizen- "(she made a wry mouth of it). "Then, if I can find the wherewithal to reward your gallantry, citizen, will you leave me to myself?"

"Mademoiselle, if only I could believe none other would impose himself on that sweet duet!"

She shrugged her shoulders fretfully.

"Monsieur, monsieur, you assume a father's privilege. Has my misfortune placed me beyond the pale of courtesy ? or has a swineherd no title to the considerations of decency?"

"Nay, mademoiselle; it is that your beauty and your proud innocence make so many appeals to both."

My obstinacy seemed a goad to her anger.

"You exaggerate the importance of your service,"

she cried.

"Either of those great strong men

could have crushed you like an old nut

She seemed to struggle a moment with herself— without avail.

"For you are very little," she added.

I felt myself turn pale. I made her a most profound bow.

"I will leave mademoiselle," I said gravely, "to the only company she can do justice to.”

"My own?" she asked. I did not answer, and I turned from her quivering all through. I had gone but a few paces when her voice came after

me.

"Monsieur, I am dying of hunger!"

Mon Dieu! What a speech to grapple at the soul! I hurried hither and thither, plucking her a meal from the earth, from the bushes. My heart bled with a double wound.

Presently I stood before her, stern and silent. Her face, hidden in her hands, was averted from me. Suddenly she looked up.

"The little pod holds the fattest pea," she said, and burst into tears.

Petite pluie abat grand vent.

She was very sweet and humble to me by-andby. She made me the amende honorable by calling my heart too great for my body. And at last said she

“I take you for my knight, monsieur-to honour and protect, to bear with and respect meand I kissed her brown hand in allegiance.

134

CHAPTER VIII.

QUATREMAINS-QUATREPATtes.

"MADEMOISELLE, what do you weave?"

She sat at the entrance to her sleeping-place-a hole under the radiated roots of an ancient oaktree. We had happened upon the shelter in our league-long flight. It was one of those burrowsthose logettes into which past generations of the hunted and proscribed had sunk like moles. Many of our forests are honeycombed with them. Over the opening to this, once concealed by a cunning mat of weeds and branches, the roots had contrived a more enduring cover. Within, to walls and floor, yet clung the remnants of brushwood with which long ago the den had been lined.

Carinne was deftly busy over a queer contrivance -a sort of fencing mask that she plaited from thin tendrils of a binding-weed.

"Monsieur on his high perch at night will suffer from the mosquitoes?"

"Has mademoiselle reason to think so?"

"As I think I can tell when a little ape carries a nut in his pouch."

"Alas! but how cynical of romance are the tiny blood-suckers! They fly on a chromatic scale, mademoiselle. Often I try to comfort myself with the fancy that I am listening to the very distant humming of church bells; and then comes a tiny prick, and something seems to rise from my heart to my face, and to blossom thereon. No doubt it is the flowers of fancy budding. And is the weedbonnet for me?"

"I shall not want it in my burrow."

This gave me exquisite gratification, which survived the many inconveniences to which I was put by the bonnet falling off at night, and my having to descend to recover it. But it soon appeared that the least whim of this fascinating child was to be my law.

And yet what a dear lawless existence! I do not know what termination to it we foresaw. Sooner or later the cold must drive me from my nightly cradle; sooner or later the good fruits of the earth must wither. In the meantime we were grillon and cigale, we stored not, neither did we labour; but we chatted, and we wandered, and we drew the marrow of every tender berry, and gnawed the rind of every tough, without making faces.

And we quarrelled mon Dieu! but how we quarrelled! Scarce a day passed without dispute, and this in the end it was that resolved the situation for us. For truly my comrade was as full of moods and whimsies as the wind-one moment a curious sweet woman; the next, and on the prick