critical sigh succeeding to the laugh.

"Crossed?" queried the man. "Ah, well, doan't 'ee go for to get down on
your luck for one maid. There's as gued blackberries hangin' on t'bushes
as ever was plucked from them. And yue'm tue young a chap tue be thinkin' o'
yuerself as a sallybat, and so I tells 'ee."

Antony smothered a spasm of laughter.

"It's not women folk I'm wanting in my life," responded he, still with
hypocritical gloom.

"Tis kittle cattle they be, and that's sartain, sure," replied the other,
shaking his head. "But 'twas a rib out o' the side o' Adam the first
woman was, so t'Scripture do tell we, and I reckon us men folk do feel
the lack o' that rib nowadays, till us gets us a wife."

Antony was spared an answer, a fact for which he sent up devout thanks.
They had made another leftward turn by now, and come upon a cottage set a
little way back from the road,--a cottage with a wicket gate between two
hedges, and a flagged path leading up to a small porch, thatched, as was
the cottage.

"Here us be," said the man.

Antony's heart gave a sudden big throb of pleasure. The little place was
so extraordinarily English, so primitive and quaint. True, the garden was
a bit dilapidated looking, the apple trees in the tiny orchard to the
left of the cottage quite amazingly old and lichen grown; but it spelled
England for him, and that more emphatically than any other thing had done
since his arrival in the Old Country.

Antony dismounted from the trap, then lifted Josephus and his bag to the
ground. This done, he began to feel in his pocket for some coins. The man
saw the movement.

"That bain't for yue," he replied shortly, "t' Doctor will settle wi' I."

And Antony withdrew his hand quickly, feeling he had been on the verge of
a lapse.

"Here's t'key," remarked the man. "And if yue feel like a pipe one o'
these evenin's, yue might coom down tue t'village. My place is over
opposite t'post office. I be t'saddler. Yue'll see t'name Allbut George
over t'shop."

Antony thanked Mr. Albert George, and then watched the patriotically
named gentleman turn his horse, and drive off in the direction of the
coast. When the trap had vanished from sight, he heaved a sigh of
relief.

"Josephus," he remarked, "it will need careful practice and wary walking,
but I fancy I did pretty well." And then he opened the garden gate.

He walked up the little path, and fitted the key with which Allbut George
had provided him