He had not taken ten steps when he stopped, beat the air
with both hands, and fell all at once to the ground. The priest ran to
him; he was dead-killed on the spot by a bullet through the temples. That
evening the village was ours, and the next day they placed in the
cemetery of Villersexel the body of Dr. Reynaud.

Two months later the Abbe Constantin took back to Longueval the coffin of
his friend, and behind the coffin, when it was carried from the church,
walked an orphan. Jean had also lost his mother. At the news of her
husband's death, Madame Reynaud had remained for twenty-four hours
petrified, crushed, without a word or a tear; then fever had seized her,
then delirium, and after a fortnight, death.

Jean was alone in the world; he was fourteen years old. Of that family,
where for more than a century all had been good and honest, there
remained only a child kneeling beside a grave; but he, too, promised to
be what his father and grandfather before him had been--good, and honest,
and true.

There are families like that in France, and many of them, more than one
ventures to say. Our poor country is in many respects calumniated by
certain novelists, who draw exaggerated and distorted pictures of it. It
is true the history of good people is often monotonous or painful. This
story is a proof of it.

The grief of Jean was the grief of a man. He remained long sad and
silent. The evening of his father's funeral the Abbe Constantin took him
home to the vicarage. The day had been rainy and cold. Jean was sitting
by the fireside; the priest was reading his breviary opposite him. Old
Pauline came and went, arranging her affairs.

An hour passed without a word, when Jean, raising his head, said:

"Godfather, did my father leave me any money?"

This question was so extraordinary that the old priest, stupefied, could
scarcely believe that he heard aright.

"You ask if your father--"

"I asked if my father left me some money?"

"Yes; he must have left you some."

"A good deal, don't you think? I have often heard people say that my
father was rich. Tell me about how much he has left me!"

"But I don't know. You ask--"

The poor old man felt his heart rent in twain. Such a question at such a
moment! Yet he thought he knew the boy's heart, and in that heart there
should not be room for such thoughts.

"Pray, dear godfather, tell me," continued Jean, gently. "I will explain
to you afterward why I ask that."

"Wel