e cork, and filled my glass.

While we sipped and chatted, his talk grew merry with chuckles and
laughter, for he spoke of the friends of his youth, who played for him
and sang to him--the thing which he loved most of all, he told me.
"Once," he confessed to me, "I slipped away and travelled to Hungary.
Ah! how those good gipsies played for me there! I was drunk with their
music for two weeks. It is stronger than wine, that music of the
gipsies," he said knowingly.

Again our talk drifted to hunting, of the good old times when hares and
partridges were plentiful, and so he ran on, warmed by the rare Musigny,
reminiscing upon the old days and his old friends who were serious
sportsmen, he declared, and knew the habits of the game they were after,
for they seldom returned with an empty game-bag.

"And you are just as keen about shooting as ever?" I ventured.

"I shoot no more," he exclaimed with a shrug. "One must be a philosopher
when one is past sixty--when one has no longer the solid legs to tramp
with, nor the youth and the digestion to _live_. Ah! Besides, the life
has changed--Paris was gay enough in my day. I _lived_ then, but at
sixty--I stopped--with my memories. No! no! beyond sixty it is quite
impossible. One must be philosophic, eh?"

Before I could reply, Madame de Savignac entered the room. I felt the
charm of her personality, as I looked into her eyes, and as she welcomed
me I forgot that her faded silk gown was once in fashion before I was
born, or that madame was short and no longer graceful. As the talk went
on, I began to study her more at my ease, when some one rapped at the
outer door of the vestibule. She started nervously, then, rising,
whispered to Francois, who had come to open it, then a moment later rose
again and, going out into the hall, closed the door behind her.

"Thursday then," I heard a man's gruff voice reply brusquely.

I saw de Savignac straighten in his chair, and lean to one side as if
trying to catch a word of the muffled conversation in the vestibule. The
next instant he had recovered his genial manner to me, but I saw that
again he laboured for some moments painfully for his breath.

The door of the vestibule closed with a vicious snap. Then I heard the
crunch of sabots on the gravelled court, and the next instant caught a
glimpse of the stout, brutal figure of the peasant Le Gros, the big
dealer in cattle, as he passed the narrow window of the vestibule.

It was _he_, t