nquils were
opening their golden petals; the birds were singing in the trees and on
the hedges. Yes, and Mother Barberin was hanging out the clothes that
she had just washed in the brook, which rippled over the pebbles. Then I
left Chavanon, and joined Arthur and Mrs. Milligan on the _Swan_. Then
my eyes closed again, my heart seemed to grow heavy, and I remembered no
more.

CHAPTER XVIII

NEW FRIENDS

When I awoke I was in a bed, and the flames from a big fire lit up the
room in which I was lying. I had never seen this room before, nor the
people who stood near the bed. There was a man in a gray smock and
clogs, and three or four children. One, which I noticed particularly,
was a little girl about six years old, with great big eyes that were so
expressive they seemed as though they could speak.

I raised myself on my elbow. They all came closer.

"Vitalis?" I asked.

"He is asking for his father," said a girl, who seemed to be the eldest
of the children.

"He is not my father; he is my master," I said; "where is he? where's
Capi?"

If Vitalis had been my father they perhaps would have broken the news to
me gently, but as he was only my master, they thought that they could
tell me the truth at once.

They told me that my poor master was dead. The gardener, who lived on
the grounds outside of which we had fallen exhausted, had found us early
the next morning, when he and his son were starting off with their
vegetables and flowers to the markets. They found us lying, huddled
together in the snow, with a little covering of their straw over us.
Vitalis was already dead, and I should have died but Capi had crept up
to my chest and kept my heart warm. They had carried us into the house
and I had been placed in one of the children's warm beds.

"And Capi?" I asked, when the gardener stopped talking.

"Capi?"

"Yes, the dog."

"I don't know, he's disappeared."

"He followed the body," said one of the children. "Didn't you see him,
Benjamin?"

"Should say I did," answered another boy; "he walked behind the men who
carried the stretcher. He kept his head down, and now and again he
jumped up on the body, and when they made him get down he moaned and
howled something terrible."

Poor Capi! how many times, as an actor, had he not followed Zerbino's
funeral. Even the most serious children had been obliged to laugh at his
display of grief. The more he moaned, the more they had laughed.

The gardener an