ay at cafes in large towns. Life is
hard, Monsieur, is it not?"

She closed her umbrella and laid it on the valise. The old man sat by
the table, his head resting on his hands, saying nothing.

"When I think of my good louis that is gone!" she added tragically.

The only feature making for charm in a coarse homely face was a set of
white even teeth. I found her singularly unattractive. A tear rolled
down her cheek and its course was that of a rill in a dusty plain.

"Suppose I lend you the money for the railway tickets?" said my master
kindly.

"O Monsieur," she cried, "I should thank you from the depths of my
heart. _Grandpere_," she turned to the old man who, ashen faced, was
staring in front of him, "Monsieur will lend us enough money to get to
Chambery."

"I can go no further," he murmured.

Then his eyelids quivered, his body moved spasmodically, and he swayed
sideways off the chair on to the ground.

We rushed to aid him. The girl put his head on her lap. My master bade
me run into the cafe for brandy. When I returned the old man was dead.

Narcisse sat placidly by, with his tongue out, eyeing his master
ironically.

"You are the man," his glance implied, "who said that nothing happens
here."

I have known many dogs in my life, but never so mocking and cynical a
dog as Narcisse.

* * * * *

It was nearly midnight before my master and I sat down again outside the
cafe. The intervening hours had been spent in journeying to and from the
nearest village, and obtaining the necessary services of doctor and
cure. My master was smoking his porcelain pipe, as usual, but strangely
silent. A faint circle of light came from the open ground-floor window
of the cafe. The white road gleamed dimly, and beyond the hushed valley
the hills loomed vague against a black, starlit sky. In the lighted room
a few peasants from neighbouring farms drank their sour white wine and
discussed the death in low voices. In other circumstances my master
would have joined them under pretext of getting nearer the Heart of
Life, and would have told them amazing tales of Ekaterinoslav or
Valladolid till they reeled home drunk with wine and wonder. And I
should have been abed. But to-night Paragot seemed to prefer the silent
company of Narcisse and myself.

"What do you think of it all, Asticot?" he asked at length.

"Of what, master?"

"Death."

"It frightens me," was all I could answer.

"What I