er--yes, as well as if it had been yesterday--going out
with him to fish for barbel, and joining him over-night to go in search
of bait. I found him crouched by his fire, eating potatoes out of the
same plate with his dog. This frugal meal over, he took up a small
lantern, a large box, and a long spade, and beckoned me to follow him.

The moon was rising as we left the hut, but red as blood, lightning
streaked the sky at short intervals, and the wind howled as if a storm
was approaching. Pere Seguin rubbed his hands, and an expression of
satisfaction passed across his extraordinary countenance; for, living as
he did a lonely wandering life, he had become superstitious, and firmly
believed that worms caught at certain hours of the night, and in a
breeze that foretold an approaching tempest, were more likely to attract
the fish than those taken in the daylight. To this article of his creed
I offered no objection, but I own my heart shrunk within me when I
observed that he took the direct road to the burial-ground. "Pere
Seguin," said I, "we need go no further; the turf in this lane is
capital; we shall find all we want here without a longer walk." "Since
when," he inquired in a voice that seemed to come from between his
shoulders, "since when have young fawns taught the old roebuck the way
to the forest-glades?" And he strode on without a word more, still in
the direction I so much abhorred.

Arriving at the cemetery, Pere Seguin walked leisurely round it, paying
as much attention to me as if I had not been with him, and I followed
like a criminal going to the scaffold. After having made a careful
examination of the wall, he stopped suddenly, gave me the lantern and
the spade, and leaped upon the top, desiring me to do the same. I
hesitated, and fell back, for I felt more inclined to throw them down
and run away, and Pere Seguin saw it.

"Ha! ha!" he exclaimed, fixing his yellow eye upon me. "I thought you
were heart of oak, young Sir; are you only a man of straw?"

I gave no answer, but I leaped on to the wall like a rope-dancer.

"Hum!" he muttered; "good legs, but a faint heart." And he begun rapidly
to turn up the rank grass, and pick the large red worms from amongst the
roots, when, looking up in my face, he said, with infinite coolness,
"Why, you are as pale as my mother was on the day of her death! What
ails you?"

"Ails me!" I replied, repressing my fears, "why to tell you the truth,
I'd just as soon be anyw