nderness. "I am doing my best to hear you, but the more I
try the less I can get it into my head that we ought to be husband and
wife."

Germain did not answer. His head dropped into his hands, and little
Marie could not tell whether he wept or sulked or was fast asleep. She
felt uneasy when she saw him so cast down, and could not guess what was
passing in his mind. But she dared not speak to him more, and as she
was too astonished at what had passed to have any desire to sleep, she
waited impatiently for dawn, tending the fire with care and watching
over the child, whose existence Germain appeared to forget. Yet Germain
was not asleep. He did not mope over his lot. He made no plans to
encourage himself, nor schemes to entrap the girl. He suffered; he felt
a great weight of grief at his heart. He wished that he were dead. The
world seemed to turn against him, and if he could have wept at all, his
tears would have come in floods. But mingled with his sorrow there was a
feeling of anger against himself, and he felt choked, without the power
or the wish to complain.

When morning came, and the sounds of the country brought it to Germain's
senses, he lifted his head from his hands and rose. He saw that little
Marie had slept no more than he, but he knew no words in which to tell
her of his anxiety. He was very discouraged. Hiding the gray's saddle
once more in the thicket, he slung his sack over his shoulder and took
his son by the hand.

"Now, Marie," said he, "we are going to try to end our journey. Do you
wish me to take you to Ormeaux?"

"Let us leave the woods together," answered she, "and when we know where
we are, we shall separate, and go our different ways."

Germain did not answer. He felt hurt that the girl did not ask him to
take her as far as Ormeaux, and he did not notice that he had asked her
in a tone well fitted to provoke a refusal.

After a few hundred steps, they met a wood-cutter, who pointed out the
highroad, and told them that when they had crossed the plain, one
must turn to the right, the other to the left, to gain their different
destinations, which were so near together that the houses of Fourche
were in plain sight from the farm of Ormeaux, and _vice versa_.

When they had thanked him and passed on, the wood-cutter called them
back to ask whether they had not lost a horse.

"Yes," he said, "I found a pretty gray mare in my yard, where perhaps a
wolf had driven her to seek refuge; my dogs