est to them; and with them,
when anguish forces its way to the surface and is visible, it is only
after a mighty upheaval. David's nature was one of these. Eve had
thoroughly understood the noble character of the man. But now that the
depths had been stirred, David's father took the wave of anguish that
passed over his son's features for a child's trick, an attempt to "get
round" his father, and his bitter grief for mortification over the
failure of the attempt. Father and son parted in anger.

David and Kolb reached Angouleme on the stroke of midnight. They came
back on foot, and steathily, like burglars. Before one o'clock in the
morning David was installed in the impenetrable hiding-place prepared
by his wife in Basine Clerget's house. No one saw him enter it, and
the pity that henceforth should shelter David was the most resourceful
pity of all--the pity of a work-girl.

Kolb bragged that day that he had saved his master on horseback, and
only left him in a carrier's van well on the way to Limoges. A
sufficient provision of raw material had been laid up in Basine's
cellar, and Kolb, Marion, Mme. Sechard, and her mother had no
communication with the house.

Two days after the scene at Marsac, old Sechard came hurrying to
Angouleme and his daughter-in-law. Covetousness had brought him. There
were three clear weeks ahead before the vintage began, and he thought
he would be on the look-out for squalls, to use his own expression. To
this end he took up his quarters in one of the attics which he had
reserved by the terms of the lease, wilfully shutting his eyes to the
bareness and want that made his son's home desolate. If they owed him
rent, they could well afford to keep him. He ate his food from a
tinned iron plate, and made no marvel at it. "I began in the same
way," he told his daughter-in-law, when she apologized for the absence
of silver spoons.

Marion was obliged to run into debt for necessaries for them all. Kolb
was earning a franc for daily wage as a brick-layer's laborer; and at
last poor Eve, who, for the sake of her husband and child, had
sacrificed her last resources to entertain David's father, saw that
she had only ten francs left. She had hoped to the last to soften the
old miser's heart by her affectionate respect, and patience, and
pretty attentions; but old Sechard was obdurate as ever. When she saw
him turn the same cold eyes on her, the same look that the Cointets
had given her, and Petit-Clau