and nothing else. He was wondering if he had really meant what he had
said.

"Come," interrupted Colville's smooth voice. "We must get into the
saddle and begone. I was just telling Monsieur and Mademoiselle
Juliette, that any man might be tempted to linger at Gemosac until the
active years of a lifetime rolled by."

The Marquis made the needful reply; hoping that he might yet live to
see Gemosac--and not only Gemosac, but a hundred chateaux like
it--reawakened to their ancient glory, and thrown open to welcome the
restorer of their fallen fortunes.

Colville looked from one to the other, and then, with his foot in the
stirrup, turned to look at Juliette, who had followed them to the gate.

"And mademoiselle," he said; "will she wish us good luck, also? Alas!
those times are gone when we could have asked for her ribbon to wear,
and to fight for between ourselves when we are tired and cross at the
end of a journey. Come, Barebone--into the saddle."

They waited, both looking at Juliette; for she had not spoken.

"I wish you good luck," she said, at length, patting the neck of
Colville's horse, her face wearing a little mystic smile.

Thus they departed, at sunset, on a journey of which old men will still
talk in certain parts of France. Here and there, in the Angoumois,
in Guienne, in the Vendee, and in the western parts of Brittany, the
student of forgotten history may find an old priest who will still
persist in dividing France into the ancient provinces, and will tell how
Hope rode through the Royalist country when he himself was busy at his
first cure.

The journey lasted nearly two months, and before they passed north of
the Loire at Nantes and quitted the wine country, the vintage was over.

"We must say that we are cider merchants, that is all," observed Dormer
Colville, when they crossed the river, which has always been the great
divider of France.

"He is sobering down. I believe he will become serious," wrote he to the
Marquis de Gemosac. But he took care to leave Loo Barebone as free as
possible.

"I am, in a way, a compulsory pilot," he explained, airily, to his
companion. "The ship is yours, and you probably know more about the
shoals than I do. You must have felt that a hundred times when you were
at sea with that solemn old sailor, Captain Clubbe. And yet, before you
could get into port, you found yourself forced to take the compulsory
pilot on board and make him welcome with such grace as you