rmed for me: they were no longer ugly and
uninteresting: how could they be so, brightened by the halo with which
sympathy crowned them?

"Have you far to go, sir?" suddenly asked the old man, breaking in
abruptly upon the course of my reflections.

"About a league," I answered.

He made no reply, and we walked on again in silence, the rain
continuing meanwhile to pour down in torrents, and the wind lashing
itself by degrees into the fury of a hurricane.

After a few minutes we reached a spot where the road branched off in
two directions: my path lay to the right. The wayfarers paused as
though to take the left: both looked at me.

"This is no weather for such as you, sir, to be out in," said the
elder considerately, but in the shy, hesitating tone usual to the poor
when addressing those whom they fancy their betters. "If you go a
league more in the plight in which you are, you will be in a sad state
before reaching home;" and he pointed significantly to my clothes,
every stitch of which was dripping with mud and water.

"Yes, indeed," I replied, "but what is to be done?"

"Why, sir," he answered, "two hundred yards or so from this I've a
cottage, and if nothing else, I can at least offer you a fire to dry
yourself at."

Certainly I was in good need of a shelter, for I was tired as well as
cold and wet, but still I am sure that I should have refused this
invitation from the fear that it had been made out of mere courtesy,
and that my acceptance of it might, in fact, be unwelcome. A few words
spoken by the younger man convinced me, however, of the contrary.

"Yes, sir," said he, "come;" and he added in a low voice to the
other, "it will do mother good to have a visitor to divert her this
evening. She will fret less."

"Thank you, then," I assented, moved now by a feeling of painful
curiosity; and we all three marched on.

A few minutes' walk brought us in sight of a small one-storied
cottage, built with flintstones, and standing isolated near a tilled
field of about two acres: before it stood a small kitchen-garden, and
at one end of it an open shed half filled with firewood. A thin wreath
of blue smoke curling through its single chimney gave to the house,
thanks to the desolate appearance of all the country around, an
attractive look which on a finer day it might not have possessed.

"That's my home," exclaimed the old man, but as we approached it I
noticed that both he and Henri slackened their pace and s