five sons
and leaves me there but takes them all away."

"Hush, hush, master; Martin will come back," his wife said.

Nearly a month ago she had said the same. Angelot, standing again in the
low dark kitchen with her slender old glass in his hand, remembered the
day vividly, for it had indeed been a marked day in his life. The
breakfast at Les Chouettes, the hidden Chouans, General Ratoneau and his
adventure in the lane, and then the wonderful moonlight evening, the
coming of Helene, the dreams which all that night waited upon her and
had filled all the following days. Yes; it was on that glorious morning
that Maitresse Joubard, poor soul, had talked with so much faith and
courage of her Martin's return. And Angelot, for his part, though he
would not for worlds have said so, saw no hope of it at all. The last
letter from Martin had come many months ago. The poor conscript, the
young Angevin peasant, tall like his father, with his mother's quiet,
dark face, was probably lying heaped and hidden among other dead
conscripts at the foot of some Spanish fortress wall.

Angelot set down his glass, took up his gun, looked vaguely out of the
door into the misty evening, bright with the spiritual brilliance of the
young moon.

"If Martin comes back, anything is possible," he was thinking. "I should
believe then that all would go well with me."

From the white, ruinous archway that opened on the lane, a figure
hobbled slowly forward across the gleams and shadows of the yard. The
great dog chained there began to yelp and cry; it was not the voice with
which he received a stranger; Nego growled at his master's feet.

Angelot's gaze became fixed and intent. The figure looked like one of
those wandering beggars, those _chemineaux_, who tramped the roads of
France with a bag to collect bones and crusts of bread, the scraps of
food which no good Christian refused them, who haunted the lonely farms
at night and to whom a stray lamb or kid or chicken never came amiss.
This figure was ragged like them; it stooped, and limped upon a wooden
leg and a stick; an empty sleeve was pinned across its breast. And the
rags were those of a soldier's uniform, and the dark, bent face was
tanned by hotter suns than the sun of Anjou.

Angelot turned to the old Joubards and tried to speak, but his voice
shook and was choked, and the tears blinded his eyes.

"My poor dear friends--" he was beginning, but Joubard started forward
suddenly.

"What