r pardon, gentlemen all," replied the Schoolmaster,
controlling himself with much difficulty, for the pain he was still
enduring was most excruciating. "I am better now. I'll tell you, with
your kind leaves, all about it. You see I am by trade a working
locksmith, and, one day that I was employed in beating out a huge bar of
red hot iron, it fell over on my two legs, and burnt them so dreadfully
that it has never healed; unfortunately, just now, I happened to strike
the leg that is worst against the table, and the sudden agony it
occasioned me drew forth the sudden cry which so much disturbed all this
good company, and for which I humbly beg pardon."

"Poor dear father!" whined out Tortillard, casting a look of fiendish
malice at the shivering Schoolmaster, and wholly recovered from his late
attack of excessive emotion. "Poor father! you have indeed got a bad leg
nobody can cure. Ah, kind gentlemen, I hope you will never have such a
shocking wound, and be obliged to hear all the doctors say it never will
get well. No! never--never. Oh, my dear, dear father! how I wish I could
but suffer the pain instead of you!"

At this tender, moving speech, the females present expressed the utmost
admiration for the dutiful speaker, and began feeling in their vast
pockets for some more substantial mark of their regard.

"It is unlucky, my honest friend," said old Chatelain, addressing the
Schoolmaster, "you had not happened to come to this farm about three
weeks ago, instead of to-night."

"And why so, if you please?"

"Because we had staying for a few days in the house a celebrated Paris
doctor, who has an infallible remedy for all diseases of the legs. A
worthy old woman, belonging to our village, had been confined to her
bed upwards of three years with some affection of the legs. Well, this
doctor, being here, as I said, heard of the case, applied an unguent to
the wounds, and now, bless you, she is as surefooted, ay, and as swift,
too, as any of our young girls; and the first holiday she makes she
intends walking to the house of her benefactor, in the Allee des Veuves,
at Paris, to return her grateful thanks. To be sure it is a good step
from hence, but then, as Mother Anica says--Why, what has come over you
again, my friend? Is your leg still so painful?"

The mention of the Allee des Veuves had recalled such frightful
recollections to the Schoolmaster, that, involuntarily, a cold shudder
shook his frame, while a fearful s