o draw something from him--'adieu!'

He approached me nearer, and with a voice of tremulous eagerness, he
muttered--

'Not a word yonder, not a syllable! Pledge me your faith in that!'

Thinking now that it was merely the recurrence of his paroxysm, I
answered carelessly, 'Never fear, I'll say nothing.'

'Yes, but swear it,' said he, with a fixed look of his dark eye; 'swear
it to me now, that so long as you are below there'--he pointed to the
valley--'you will never speak of me.'

I made him the promise he required, though with great unwillingness, as
my curiosity to learn something about him was becoming intense.

'Not a word!' said he, with a finger on his lip, 'that's the _consigne_.

'Not a word!' repeated I, and we parted.

CHAPTER XVII. THE BORE--A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE.

Two hours after, I was enjoying the pleasant fire of the Hotel de
Flandre, where I arrived in time for table d'hote, not a little to
the surprise of the host and six waiters, who were totally lost in
conjectures to account for my route, and sorely puzzled to ascertain the
name of my last hotel in the mountains.

A watering-place at the close of a season is always a sad-looking thing.
The barricades of the coming winter already begin to show; the little
statues in public gardens are assuming their greatcoats of straw against
the rigours of frost; the _jets d' eau_ cease to play, or perform with
the unwilling air of actors to empty benches; the tables d'hote present
their long dinner-rooms unoccupied, save by a little table at one end,
where some half-dozen shivering inmates still remain, the debris of
the mighty army who flourished their knives there but six weeks
before--these half-dozen usually consisting of a stray invalid or two,
completing his course of the waters, having a fortnight of sulphuretted
hydrogen before him yet, and not daring to budge till he has finished
his 'heeltap' of abomination. Then there's the old half-pay major, that
has lived in Spa, for aught I know, since the siege of Namur, and
who passes his nine months of winter in shooting quails and playing
dominoes; and there's an elderly lady, with spectacles, always working
at a little embroidery frame, who speaks no French, and seems not to be
aware of anything going on around her--no one being able to guess why
she is there, she probably not knowing why herself. Lastly, there is
a very distracted-looking young gentleman, with a shooting-jacket and
young mou