ges: since many of my countrymen, as you know, have found it
prudent in recent years to change their names and take up with
callings below their real rank. There, at any rate, he was; and on the
day after his arrival, he and the Rector of the parish--who was also
a magistrate--took a walk and marked out the bounds together: two
miles along the coast to the east, two miles along the coast to the
west, and two miles up the valley behind the town. At the end of these
two miles the valley itself branched into two and climbed inland, the
road branching likewise; and M. Benest's mark was the signpost at the
angle.

"Well, at first he walked little, because of his wooden leg. He had
lodgings with a widow in a white-washed cottage overlooking the
harbour-side, and seemed happy enough there, tending a monster
geranium which grew against the house-wall, or pottering about the
quay and making friends with the children. For the children soon picked
up an affection for him, seeing that he was never too busy to drop his
gardening and come and be umpire at their games of 'tig' or 'prisoners'
bars.' Also he had stories for them, and halfpennies or sweetmeats in
mysterious pockets, and songs which he taught them: _Girofle, girofla_,
and _Compagnons de la Marjolaine_, and _Les Petits Bateaux_--do you
know it?--

"'Papa, les p'tits bateaux
Qui vont sur I'eau,
Ont-ils des jambes?
--Mais oui, petit beta,
S'ils n'en avaient pas, ils n' march'raient pas!'

"In short, M. Benest, with his loose blue coat and three-cornered
naval cap, endeared himself to the children, and through the children
to everyone.

"It was some time before he began to take walks; and I believe he had
been living in the town for six months, when one day, having stumped
up the valley road for a change, and just as he was facing about for
the return journey, he heard a voice in his own language singing to
the air of _Vive Henri Quatre_.

"The voice was shaky and, I dare say, uncertain in its upper notes;
but it fetched M. Benest right-about-face again. He perceived that it
came from the garden of a solitary cottage up the road, a gunshot and
more beyond his signpost. But a tall hedge interrupted his view, and,
though he stared long and earnestly, all he could see that day was a
pea-stick nodding above it.

"He came again, however,--not the next day, but the day after,--and
was rewarded by a glimpse of a white cap with bows which seemed at
that dist