the approach to Dreux. He
studied the country and the people eagerly; he forbore to conduct great
military operations. Mr. Durance had spoken of big battles round about
the town of Dreux; also of a wonderful Mausoleum there, not equally
interesting. The little man was in deeper gloom than a day sobering on
crimson dusk when the train stopped and his quick ear caught the sound
of the station, as pronounced by his friend at Rouen.

He handed his card to the station-master. A glance, and the latter
signalled to a porter, saying: 'Paradis'; and the porter laid hold of
Skepsey's bag. Skepsey's grasp was firm; he pulled, the porter pulled.
Skepsey heard explanatory speech accompanying a wrench. He wrenched back
with vigour, and in his own tongue exclaimed, that he held to the bag
because his master's letters were in the bag, all the way from England.
For a minute, there was a downright trial of muscle and will: the porter
appeared furiously excited, Skepsey had a look of cooled steel. Then the
Frenchman, requiring to shrug, gave way to the Englishman's eccentric
obstinacy, and signified that he was his guide. Quite so, and Skepsey
showed alacrity and confidence in following; he carried his bag. But
with the remembrance of the kindly serviceable man at Rouen, he sought
to convey to the porter, that the terms of their association were
cordial. A waving of the right hand to the heavens ratified the
treaty on the French side. Nods and smiles and gesticulations, with
across-Channel vocables, as it were Dover cliffs to Calais sands and
back, pleasantly beguiled the way down to the Hotel du Paradis, under
the Mausoleum heights, where Skepsey fumbled at his pocket for coin
current; but the Frenchman, all shaken by a tornado of negation, clapped
him on the shoulder, and sang him a quatrain. Skepsey had in politeness
to stand listening, and blinking, plunged in the contrition of
ignorance, eclipsed. He took it to signify something to the effect,
that money should not pass between friends. It was the amatory farewell
address of Henri IV. to his Charmante Gabrielle; and with

'Perce de mille lords,
L'honneur m'appelle
Au champ de Mars,'

the Frenchman, in a backing of measured steps, apologized for his
enforced withdrawal from the stranger who had captured his heart.

Skepsey's card was taken in the passage of the hotel. A clean-capped
maid, brave on the legs, like all he had seen of these people