t happened when the family of La Masane started for the shore,
where Jean-Marie, on his way home from the Fanal Mill, had anchored the
boat? As he worked his heart was more than a little sore that he should
no more hear that musical song, the tremulous rush of the sails
overhead, or the blithe pour of the rich meal through the funnel into
the sack. Best of all he loved the Fanal Mill, both because the
sea-water lashed up blue-green beneath, and because from the door he
could see Claire's white dress moving about the garden of La Masane.

This was their plan.

To place Claire in safety was no difficulty. The light land-breezes
would carry them swiftly along the shore towards the Narbonne coast. It
was in Madame Amelie that the brothers found their stumbling-block. Not
that the good old lady, so imperious upon her own ground of La Masane,
meant in the least to be difficult. But she felt uprooted, degraded,
fallen from her high estate, divorced from her own, and she trembled
piteously as she tottered on stout Jean-Marie's arm down towards the
beach.

Two days before Jean-aux-Choux had brought the Abbe John to La Masane.
At first no one, certainly not Claire, appeared to make him particularly
welcome. The Professor retrieved some of his old professorial authority.
Don Jordy was frankly jealous. Old Madame Amelie found him finicking and
fine. Only the burly Miller-Alcalde drew to the lad, and tried in his
gruff, semi-articulate way to make the young Gascon understand that, in
spite of his Bourbon birth and Paris manners, he had a friend in the
house of La Masane. And this the young man understood very well, and
repaid accordingly. He understood many things, the Abbe John--all,
indeed, except Claire Agnew's coldness. But even that he took
philosophically.

"He who stands below the cherry-tree with his mouth open, expecting the
wind to blow the cherries into his mouth, waits a long time hungry," he
meditated sententiously; "I will shake the trees and gather."

All the same, the rough grip and kindly "Come-and-help," or
"Stand-out-of-the-way" manner of the miller went to his heart. Indeed,
he could hardly have kept his ground at La Masane without it, and he was
grateful in proportion.

"They think little of me because I look young and my hair curls," he
muttered, as he tried in vain to smooth it out with abundant water, "but
wait--I will show them!"

And the time for showing them came when Jean-aux-Choux, carefully
sco