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._"