ieur? I cannot ask
the Cure or the Seigneur--I have reasons. But you have the head of
a lawyer--almost--and you have no local feelings, no personal
interest--eh?"

"I should tell the truth."

"Your reasons, Monsieur?"

"Because the lawyer is a scoundrel. Your betrayal of his secret is not a
thousandth part so bad as one lie told to this woman, whose very life is
her child. Is it a boy or a girl?"

"A boy."

"Good! What harm can be done? A left-handed boy is all right in the
world. Your wife has twins--then think of the woman, the one ewe lamb of
'the poor wanton.' If you do not tell her, you will have her here making
a noise, as you say. I wonder she has not been here on your door-step."

"I had a letter from her to-day. She is coming-ah, mon dieu!"

"When?"

There was a tap at the window. The Notary started. "Ah, Heaven, here she
is!" he gasped, and drew over to the wall.

A voice came from outside. "Shall I play for you, Dauphin? It is as good
as medicine."

The Notary recovered himself at once. His volatile nature sprang back to
its pose. He could forget Paulette Dubois for the moment.

"It is Maximilian Cour in the garden," he said happily. Then he raised
his voice. "Play on, baker; but something for convalescence--the return
of spring, the sweet assonance of memory."

"A September air, and a gush of spring," said the baker, trying to crane
his long neck through the window. "Ah, there you are, Dauphin! I shall
give you a sleep to-night like a balmy eve." He nodded to the tailor.
"M'sieu', you shall judge if sentiment be dead.

"I have racked my heart to play this time. I have called it, 'The
Baffled Quest of Love'. I have taken the music of the song of Alsace,
'Le Jardin d'Amour', and I have made variations on it, keeping the last
verse of the song in my mind. You know the song, M'sieu':

"'Quand je vais au jardin, Jardin d'amour,
Je crois entendu des pas,
Je veux fuir, et n'ose pas.
Voici la fin du jour...
Je crains et j'hesite,
Mon coeur bat plus vite
En ce sejour...
Quand je vais an jardin, jardin d'amour.'"

The baker sat down on a stool he had brought, and began to tune his
fiddle. From inside came the voice of the Notary.

"Play 'The Woods are Green' first," he said. "Then the other."

The Notary possessed the one high-walled garden in the village, and
though folk gathered outside and said that the baker was playing for the