gn tell his
story of the battle. His mind kept growing weaker and about the end of
December he took to his bed.

He passed away early in January, and, in the ravings of death agony, he
protested his innocence, repeating:

"A little bit of string--a little bit of string. See, here it is,
M'sieu le Maire."

ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES, Vol. 9.

GUY DE MAUPASSANT
ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES
Translated by
ALBERT M. C. McMASTER, B.A.
A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.
MME. QUESADA and Others

VOLUME IX.

TOINE

He was known for thirty miles round was father Toine--fat Toine,
Toine-my-extra, Antoine Macheble, nicknamed Burnt-Brandy--the
innkeeper of Tournevent.

It was he who had made famous this hamlet buried in a niche in the valley
that led down to the sea, a poor little peasants' hamlet consisting of
ten Norman cottages surrounded by ditches and trees.

The houses were hidden behind a curve which had given the place the name
of Tournevent. It seemed to have sought shelter in this ravine overgrown
with grass and rushes, from the keen, salt sea wind--the ocean wind
that devours and burns like fire, that drys up and withers like the
sharpest frost of winter, just as birds seek shelter in the furrows of
the fields in time of storm.

But the whole hamlet seemed to be the property of Antoine
Macheble, nicknamed Burnt-Brandy, who was called also Toine,
or Toine-My-Extra-Special, the latter in consequence of a phrase current
in his mouth:

"My Extra-Special is the best in France:"

His "Extra-Special" was, of course, his cognac.

For the last twenty years he had served the whole countryside with his
Extra-Special and his "Burnt-Brandy," for whenever he was asked: "What
shall I drink, Toine?" he invariably answered: "A burnt-brandy, my
son-in-law; that warms the inside and clears the head--there's
nothing better for your body."

He called everyone his son-in-law, though he had no daughter, either
married or to be married.

Well known indeed was Toine Burnt-Brandy, the stoutest man in all
Normandy. His little house seemed ridiculously small, far too small and
too low to hold him; and when people saw him standing at his door, as he
did all day long, they asked one another how he could possibly get
through the door. But he went in whenever a customer appeared, for it was
only right that Toine should be invited to take his thimblef