s dry and could dress. Then, hat in hand, he walked away, feeling
the wholesome languor of the practised swimmer and gaily singing a song
of home:

"Quand tout renait a l'esperance,
Et que l'hiver fuit loin de nous,
Sous le beau ciel de notre France,
Quand le soleil revient plus doux;
Quand la nature est reverdie,
Quand l'hirondelle est de retour,
J'aime a revoir ma Normandie,
C'est le pays qui m'a donne le jour!"

The cares and doubts and worries of yesterday were gone--washed out of
him, as it were, in nature's baptismal regeneration of mind and body.
All that he himself recognized was a glad sense of the return of
competence and of some self-assurance of capacity to face the new world
of men and things.

He wandered into the wood and said good morning to two men who, as they
told him, were "falling a tree." He gathered flowers, white violets, the
star flower, offered tobacco for their pipes, which they accepted, and
asked them what flower was this. "We call them Quaker ladies." He went
away wondering what poet had so named them. In the town he bought two
rolls and ate them as he walked, like the great Benjamin. About nine
o'clock, returning to the hotel, he threw the flowers in his mother's
lap as he kissed her. He saw to her breakfast, chatted hopefully, and
when, about noon, she insisted on going with him to seek for lodgings,
he was pleased at her revived strength. The landlord regretted that they
must leave, and gave addresses near by. Unluckily, none suited their
wants or their sense of need for rigid economy; and, moreover, the
vicomtesse was more difficult to please than the young man thought quite
reasonable. They were pausing, perplexed, near the southwest corner of
Chestnut and Fifth streets when, having passed two gentlemen standing at
the door of a brick building known as the Philosophical Society, De
Courval said, "I will go back and ask where to apply for information."
He had been struck with the unusual height of one of the speakers, and
with the animation of his face as he spoke, and had caught as he went by
a phrase or two; for the stouter man spoke in a loud, strident voice,
as if at a town meeting. "I hope, Citizen, you liked the last 'Gazette.'
It is time to give men their true labels. Adams is a monarchist and
Hamilton is an aristocrat."

The taller man, a long, lean figure, returned in a more refined voice:
"Yes, yes; it is, I fear, only too true. I