to do, and be sure that I
shall obey you in everything.

"Farewell, dear father, I send my love, and I am your affectionate
son,

"ADRIEN GENESTAS."

"Ah! well, I must go over," the soldier exclaimed.

He ordered his horse and started out. It was one of those still December
mornings when the sky is covered with gray clouds. The wind was too
light to disperse the thick fog, through which the bare trees and damp
house fronts seemed strangely unfamiliar. The very silence was gloomy.
There is such a thing as a silence full of light and gladness; on a
bright day there is a certain joyousness about the slightest sound, but
in such dreary weather nature is not silent, she is dumb. All sounds
seemed to die away, stifled by the heavy air.

There was something in the gloom without him that harmonized with
Colonel Genestas' mood; his heart was oppressed with grief, and thoughts
of death filled his mind. Involuntarily he began to think of the
cloudless sky on that lovely spring morning, and remembered how bright
the valley had looked when he passed through it for the first time; and
now, in strong contrast with that day, the heavy sky above him was a
leaden gray, there was no greenness about the hills, which were still
waiting for the cloak of winter snow that invests them with a certain
beauty of its own. There was something painful in all this bleak and
bare desolation for a man who was traveling to find a grave at his
journey's end; the thought of that grave haunted him. The lines of dark
pine-trees here and there along the mountain ridges against the sky
seized on his imagination; they were in keeping with the officer's
mournful musings. Every time that he looked over the valley that lay
before him, he could not help thinking of the trouble that had befallen
the canton, of the man who had died so lately, and of the blank left by
his death.

Before long, Genestas reached the cottage where he had asked for a cup
of milk on his first journey. The sight of the smoke rising above the
hovel where the charity-children were being brought up recalled vivid
memories of Benassis and of his kindness of heart. The officer made up
his mind to call there. He would give some alms to the poor woman for
his dead friend's sake. He tied his horse to a tree, and opened the door
of the hut without knocking.

"Good-day, mother," he said, addressing the old woman, who was sitting
by the fire with the little ones crouching at her sid