inger.

"I swear it by my political honour," cried he.

"I spoil you," she said, and gave him her hand.

He covered it with kisses.

Jean-Marie escaped into the night. The moon swung high over Gretz. He
went down to the garden end and sat on the jetty. The river ran by with
eddies of oily silver, and a low monotonous song. Faint veils of mist
moved among the poplars on the farther side. The reeds were quietly
nodding. A hundred times already had the boy sat, on such a night, and
watched the streaming river with untroubled fancy. And this perhaps was
to be the last. He was to leave this familiar hamlet, this green,
rustling country, this bright and quiet stream; he was to pass into the
great city; his dear lady mistress was to move bedizened in saloons; his
good, garrulous, kind-hearted master to become a brawling deputy; and
both be lost for ever to Jean-Marie and their better selves. He knew his
own defects; he knew he must sink into less and less consideration in the
turmoil of a city life, sink more and more from the child into the
servant. And he began dimly to believe the Doctor's prophecies of evil.
He could see a change in both. His generous incredulity failed him for
this once; a child must have perceived that the Hermitage had completed
what the absinthe had begun. If this were the first day, what would be
the last? "If necessary, wreck the train," thought he, remembering the
Doctor's parable. He looked round on the delightful scene; he drank deep
of the charmed night-air, laden with the scent of hay. "If necessary,
wreck the train," he repeated. And he rose and returned to the house.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Let it be so, for my tale!

CHAPTER VI

A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION, IN TWO PARTS

The next morning there was a most unusual outcry in the Doctor's house.
The last thing before going to bed, the Doctor had locked up some
valuables in the dining-room cupboard; and behold, when he rose again, as
he did about four o'clock, the cupboard had been broken open, and the
valuables in question had disappeared. Madame and Jean-Marie were
summoned from their rooms, and appeared in hasty toilets; they found the
Doctor raving, calling the heavens to witness and avenge his injury,
pacing the room barefooted, with the tails of his night-shirt flirting as
he turned.

"Gone!" he said; "the things are gone, the fortune gone! We are paupers
once more. Boy! what do you know of this? Speak up, sir, speak up. Do