easant and timely coincidence. My blouse blushed, I
suppose, but Mademoiselle Julie was too polite to notice it. Monsieur le
Maire said--

"Well, as I have been officially called upon to find you a lodging, I
may as well walk with you to the Hotel de la Poste, and see that you get
a comfortable one. When you have rested, you must come round and take a
little supper and music with us."

Our arrival, escorted by the gensdarmes, had caused considerable
excitement amongst the natives; our reappearance under the wing of
Monsieur le Maire, with whom we were evidently on terms of easy
familiarity, at once dispelled all doubts as to our character, and not
only were first impressions wiped out, but we took position as the
recognised heroes of the day. Besides thus rehabilitating us, Monsieur
le Maire profusely apologised for the gensdarmes' blunder.

"The fact is," he said, "they have instructions to look out for two
young men who are wanted, and who are supposed to be in the
neighbourhood, so they are all on the alert." To which Dupont added--

"Yes, I quite see; if they just weed out all the wrong ones, they can
then easily lay hands on the real culprits."

"Il y a de cela," said the Maire good-naturedly.

We spent a very pleasant evening with our friend and his family. The
daughter played me the Rondo brillant and the Sonata, both early works
of my father's that I was not quite as familiar with as I felt I must
pretend to be. Dupont did a little pretending too, I think, for he got
on splendidly with the mother by taking a lively interest in the
pedigrees of the leading families in the neighbourhood.

Neither of us fell in love with the daughter, as one of us, if not both,
should have done, to make a good story of it; nor, to the best of my
knowledge, did Mademoiselle Julie lose her heart to either of us.

* * * * *

Just one more little incident of the road, to close the record of our
excursion. It would not be worth mentioning, had not the future given it
significance.

It was towards evening; the sun had gone down behind one set of heavy
clouds, and the wind was whipping up another set to join them. We were
anxious to get on, and if possible to find a short cut to our
destination, so we consulted a man who was mending the road. He had
evidently not been talked to for some time, and wanted to make the most
of his chance, for instead of a simple answer, he gave us a long yarn
about h