for days. The Alcalde was down at his mills, the Notary Ecclesiastical
had ridden over to Elne on his white mule, by the path that zigzagged
along the sea cliff, up among the rock-cystus and the romarin, twining
and twisting like a dust-coloured snake striking from coil.

The Professor, called by a sudden summons to the castle to see a most
learned man who had just arrived from Madrid, and was high in the favour
of Philip of Spain, had betaken himself most unwillingly down to the
town. It was a still day, and the sea without hardly moved on its fringe
of pebbles, sucking a little with languid lip and sighing like an infant
fallen asleep at the mother's breast. Claire Agnew wearied of the
stillness of the house-place. In the base-court she could hear Madame
Amelie calling "_Vienn-ne, vienn-ne!_" to her goats. For there was no
milk like Madame Amelie's of the Mas of La Masane above Collioure, and
no goats so well treated. Why, each day they had a great _pot-au-feu_ of
nettles, and carrots, and wild mustard leaves, just like Christians. So
careless and wasteful are some people. As if goats were not made to find
their own living among rocks and stone walls!

Such, at least, was the collated opinion of Collioure, jealous more than
a little of the good hill-farm in free life-rent, the three well-doing
sons, and smarting, too, after fifty years' experience of the Senora's
tongue, which, when the mood was upon her, could crack like a
wine-waggoner's whip about the ears of the forward or froward.

The house silence, broken only by the solemn pacing of the great
seven-foot Provencal clock, ventrose, aldermanic, profusely gilded as to
its body and floreated as to its face, presently grew too much for
Claire. She was nervous to-day, at any rate.

She regarded the dial of the big clock. Half-past three! In a little
while the goats would be coming home to be milked. That would be
something. They generally kicked her when they did not butt. Still, that
also was interesting. "Patience," said Claire to herself, though it is
hard to be patient with an active goat in an unfriendly mood.

Then, round the corner of the sea-road Notary Don Jorge would be
arriving presently, the westering sun shining on the white mule which
the bishop had given him for his easier transport. They believed greatly
in Don Jordy over at Elne. He it was who had pled their case as against
big, grasping, brand-new Perpignan, which wanted to take away their
bisho