want but a jerk of the
elbow and here would have been you with the cold steel in your bowels,
and there would have been me, linking in the streets, with an armful
of golden cups! Did you suppose I hadn't wit enough to see that? and
I scorned the action. There are your damned goblets, as safe as in a
church; there are you, with your heart ticking as good as new; and here
am I, ready to go out again as poor as I came in, with my one white
that you threw in my teeth! And you think I have no sense of honour--God
strike me dead!"

The old man stretched out his right arm. "I will tell you what you are,"
he said. "You are a rogue, my man, an impudent and black-hearted rogue
and vagabond. I have passed an hour with you. Oh, believe me, I feel
myself disgraced! And you have eaten and drunk at my table. But now I
am sick at your presence; the day has come, and the night-bird should be
off to his roost. Will you go before, or after?"

"Which you please," returned the poet, rising. "I believe you to be
strictly honourable." He thoughtfully emptied his cup. "I wish I could
add you were intelligent," he went on, knocking on his head with his
knuckles. "Age! age! the brains stiff and rheumatic."

The old man preceded him from a point of self-respect; Villon followed,
whistling, with his thumbs in his girdle.

"God pity you," said the lord of Brisetout at the door.

"Good-bye, papa," returned Villon, with a yawn. "Many thanks for the
cold mutton."

The door closed behind him. The dawn was breaking over the white roofs.
A chill, uncomfortable morning ushered in the day. Villon stood and
heartily stretched himself in the middle of the road.

"A very dull old gentleman," he thought. "I wonder what his goblets may
be worth?"

A LEAF IN THE STORM, By Ouida

The Berceau de Dieu was a little village in the valley of the Seine.
As a lark drops its nest among the grasses, so a few peasant people had
dropped their little farms and cottages amid the great green woods on
the winding river. It was a pretty place, with one steep, stony street,
shady with poplars and with elms; quaint houses, about whose thatch a
cloud of white and gray pigeons fluttered all day long; a little aged
chapel with a conical red roof; and great barns covered with ivy and
thick creepers, red and purple, and lichens that were yellow in the sun.
All around it were the broad, flowering meadows, with the sleek cattle
of Normandy fattening in them, and the swe