ight of the yellow cat, "Et bien le bonjour, Ange Pitou!"

She swathed herself in a blanket and sat up, looking at me sleepily.

"You came to see me swim," she said.

"And I've brought you a fish's silver skin to swim in," I replied,
pointing at the satchel.

She cast a swift glance at her father, who, with the gun on his
knees, sat as though hypnotized by the beauty of its workmanship. Her
bright eyes fell on the gun; she understood in a flash.

"Then you'll take me?"

"If you swim as well as I hope you can."

"Turn your back!" she cried.

I wheeled about and sat down on the settle beside the poacher. There
came a light thud of small, bare feet on the stone floor, then
silence. The poacher looked up.

"She's gone to the ocean," he said; "she has the mania for
baths--like you English." And he fell to rubbing the gunstock with
dirty thumb.

The saffron light in the room was turning pink when Jacqueline
reappeared on the threshold in her ragged skirt and stained velvet
bodice half laced, with the broken points hanging, carrying an armful
of driftwood.

Without a word she went to work; the driftwood caught fire from the
ashes, flaming up in exquisite colors, now rosy, now delicate green,
now violet; the copper pot, swinging from the crane, began to steam,
then to simmer.

"Papa!"

"De quoi!" growled the poacher.

"Were you out last night?"

"Dame, I've just come in."

"Is there anything?"

The poacher gave me an oblique and evil glance, then coolly answered:
"Three pheasant, two partridges, and a sea-trout in the net-shed. All
are drawn."

So swiftly she worked that the pink light had scarcely deepened to
crimson when the poacher, laying the gun tenderly in the blankets of
Jacqueline's tumbled bed, came striding back to the table where a
sea-trout smoked on a cracked platter, and a bowl of bread and milk
stood before each place.

We ate silently. Ange Pitou, the yellow cat, came around with tail
inflated. There were fishbones enough to gratify any cat, and Ange
Pitou made short work of them.

The poacher bolted his food, sombre eyes brooding or stealing across
the room to the bed where his gun lay. Jacqueline, to my amazement,
ate as daintily as a linnet, yet with a fresh, hearty unconsciousness
that left nothing in her bowl or wooden spoon.

"Schist?" inquired the poacher, lifting his tired eyes to me. I
nodded. So he brought a jug of cold, sweet cider, and we all drank
long and deeply, each