will be abundantly sufficient to see me to Paris, and to get knocked
in the head afterward won't cost me a penny. I thank you, though, old
fellow, all the same, and good-by and good-luck to you; thanks, too, for
having always been so good and thoughtful, for, had it not been for you,
I should certainly be lying now at the bottom of some ditch, like a dead
dog."

Jean made a deprecating gesture. "Hush. You owe me nothing; we are
quits. Would not the Prussians have gathered me in out there the other
day had you not picked me up and carried me off on your back? and
yesterday again you saved me from their clutches. Twice have I been
beholden to you for my life, and now I am in your debt. Ah, how unhappy
I shall be when I am no longer with you!" His voice trembled and tears
rose to his eyes. "Kiss me, dear boy!"

They embraced, and, as it had been in the wood the day before, that
kiss set the seal to the brotherhood of dangers braved in each other's
company, those few weeks of soldier's life in common that had served
to bind their hearts together with closer ties than years of ordinary
friendship could have done. Days of famine, sleepless nights, the
fatigue of the weary march, death ever present to their eyes, these
things made the foundation on which their affection rested. When two
hearts have thus by mutual gift bestowed themselves the one upon the
other and become fused and molten into one, is it possible ever to sever
the connection? But the kiss they had exchanged the day before, among
the darkling shadows of the forest, was replete with the joy of their
new-found safety and the hope that their escape awakened in their
bosom, while this was the kiss of parting, full of anguish and doubt
unutterable. Would they meet again some day? and how, under what
circumstances of sorrow or of gladness?

Doctor Dalichamp had clambered into his gig and was calling to Maurice.
The young man threw all his heart and soul into the embrace he gave his
sister Henriette, who, pale as death in her black mourning garments,
looked on his face in silence through her tears.

"He whom I leave to your care is my brother. Watch over him, love him as
I love him!"

IV.

Jean's chamber was a large room, with floor of brick and whitewashed
walls, that had once done duty as a store-room for the fruit grown on
the farm. A faint, pleasant odor of pears and apples lingered there
still, and for furniture there was an iron bedstead, a pine tab