w, to find that none of the crowd understood
the foreign language any better than the children did.

"What's that he's saying?" asked the farmer, heavily.

"Sounds like French to me," said the Station Master, who had once been
to Boulogne for the day.

"It isn't French!" cried Peter.

"What is it, then?" asked more than one voice. The crowd fell back a
little to see who had spoken, and Peter pressed forward, so that when
the crowd closed up again he was in the front rank.

"I don't know what it is," said Peter, "but it isn't French. I know
that." Then he saw what it was that the crowd had for its centre. It
was a man--the man, Peter did not doubt, who had spoken in that strange
tongue. A man with long hair and wild eyes, with shabby clothes of a cut
Peter had not seen before--a man whose hands and lips trembled, and who
spoke again as his eyes fell on Peter.

"No, it's not French," said Peter.

"Try him with French if you know so much about it," said the farmer-man.

"Parlay voo Frongsay?" began Peter, boldly, and the next moment the
crowd recoiled again, for the man with the wild eyes had left leaning
against the wall, and had sprung forward and caught Peter's hands,
and begun to pour forth a flood of words which, though he could not
understand a word of them, Peter knew the sound of.

"There!" said he, and turned, his hands still clasped in the hands of
the strange shabby figure, to throw a glance of triumph at the crowd;
"there; THAT'S French."

"What does he say?"

"I don't know." Peter was obliged to own it.

"Here," said the Station Master again; "you move on if you please. I'LL
deal with this case."

A few of the more timid or less inquisitive travellers moved slowly and
reluctantly away. And Phyllis and Bobbie got near to Peter. All three
had been TAUGHT French at school. How deeply they now wished that they
had LEARNED it! Peter shook his head at the stranger, but he also shook
his hands as warmly and looked at him as kindly as he could. A person
in the crowd, after some hesitation, said suddenly, "No comprenny!" and
then, blushing deeply, backed out of the press and went away.

"Take him into your room," whispered Bobbie to the Station Master.
"Mother can talk French. She'll be here by the next train from
Maidbridge."

The Station Master took the arm of the stranger, suddenly but not
unkindly. But the man wrenched his arm away, and cowered back coughing
and trembling and trying to push the S