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lage girls laughing with their sweethearts. The girl he nudged he saw did not belong to the village--moreover, she was barefooted, mischievously drunk, and flushed with riding on the wooden horses. She was barely eighteen. She laughed outright as he gripped her strong arm, and opened her wanton mouth wide, showing her even, white teeth. In return for her welcome he slapped her strong waist soundly. "_Allons-y_--what do you say to a glass, _ma belle_?" ventured Garron with a grin. "_Eh ben!_ I don't say no," she laughed again, in reply. He felt her turn instinctively toward him--there was already something in common between these two. He pushed her ahead of him through the group with a certain familiar authority. When they were free of the crowd and away from the lights his arm went about her sturdy neck and he crushed her warm mouth to his own. "_Allons-y_--" he repeated--"Come and have a glass." They had crossed in the mud to a dingy tent lighted by a lantern; here they seated themselves on a rough bench at a board table, his arm still around her. She turned to leer at him now, half closing her clear blue eyes. When he had swallowed his first thimbleful of applejack he spat, and wiped his mouth with the back of his free hand, while the girl grew garrulous under the warmth of the liquor and his rough affection. Again she gave him her lips between two wet oaths. No one paid any attention to them--it was what a _fete_ was made for. For a while they left their glasses and danced with the rest to the strident music of the merry-go-round organ. It was long after midnight when Garron paid his score under the tent. She had told him much in the meantime--there was no one to care whom she followed. She told him, too, she had come to the _fete_ from a hamlet called Les Forets, where she had been washing for a woman. The moon was up when they took the highroad together, following it until it reached the beginning of Pont du Sable, then Garron led the way abruptly to the right up a tangled lane that ran to an old woodroad that he used to gain the Great Marsh. They went lurching along together in comparative silence, the man steadying the girl through the dark places where the trees shut out the moon. Garron knew the road as well as his pocket--it was a favourite with him when he did not wish to be seen. Now and then the girl sang in a maudlin way: "_Entrez, entrez, messieurs, C'est l'amour qui vous attend._"
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