odies in my ear."

The elder man smiled. "The dreams of young men," he said, "are wont to
have the sound of women's voices in them."

"This was no dream," retorted Willan. "She was so near me I heard the
panting breath with which she cried out and fled when I made a step
towards her."

"Gentlemen, will it please you to walk in to supper?" said Victor,
appearing in the doorway with a clean white apron on, and no trace, in
his smiling and obsequious countenance, of the rage in which he had been
a few minutes before.

A second talk with Jeanne after Victorine had left the kitchen had
produced a deep impression on Victor's mind. He was now as eager as
Jeanne herself for the meeting between Victorine and Willan Blaycke.

The pigeons were not burned, after all. Most savory did they smell, and
Willan Blaycke and his friend fell to with a will.

"Saidst thou not thou hadst some of thy famous pear cider left,
landlord?" asked Willan.

"Ay, sir, my granddaughter has gone to draw it; she will be here in a
trice."

As he spoke the door opened, and Victorine entered, bearing in her left
hand a tray with two curious old blue tankards on it; in her right hand
a gray stone jug with blue bands at its neck. Both the jug and the
tankards had come over from Normandy years ago. Victorine raised her
eyes, and looking first at Willan, then at his friend, went immediately
to the older man, and courtesying gracefully, set her tray down on the
table by his side, and filled the two tankards. The cider was like
champagne; it foamed and sparkled. The old man eyed it keenly.

"This looks like the cidre mousseux I drank at Littry," he said, and
taking up his tankard tossed it off at a draught. "Tastes like it, too,
by Jove!" he said. "Old man, out of what fruits in this bleak country
dost thou conjure such a drink?"

Victor smiled. Praise of the cider of the Golden Pear went to his heart
of hearts. "Monsieur has been in Calvados," he said. "It is kind of him
then to praise this poor drink of mine, which would be but scorned
there. There is not a warm enough sunshine to ripen our pears here to
their best, and the variety is not the same; but such as they are, I
have an orchard of twenty trees, and it is by reason of them that the
inn has its name."

Willan was not listening to this conversation. He held his fork, with a
bit of untasted pigeon on it, uplifted in one hand; with the other he
drummed nervously on the table. His eyes were riv