to
be anxious to speak to me? The mayor? If you wish to see my passport,
sir, my servant will show it to you. No? You wish to welcome me to the
place, and to offer your services? I am infinitely flattered. If you
have any authority to shorten the performances of your town band, you
would be doing me a kindness to exert it. My nerves are irritable, and
I dislike music. Where is the landlord? No; I want to see my rooms. I
don't want your arm; I can get upstairs with the help of my stick. Mr.
Mayor and Mr. Doctor, we need not detain one another any longer. I wish
you good-night."

Both mayor and doctor looked after the Scotchman as he limped upstairs,
and shook their heads together in mute disapproval of him. The ladies,
as usual, went a step further, and expressed their opinions openly in
the plainest words. The case under consideration (so far as _they_ were
concerned) was the scandalous case of a man who had passed them over
entirely without notice. Mrs. Mayor could only attribute such an outrage
to the native ferocity of a savage. Mrs. Doctor took a stronger view
still, and considered it as proceeding from the inbred brutality of a
hog.

The hour of waiting for the traveling-carriage wore on, and the creeping
night stole up the hillsides softly. One by one the stars appeared, and
the first lights twinkled in the windows of the inn. As the darkness
came, the last idlers deserted the square; as the darkness came,
the mighty silence of the forest above flowed in on the valley, and
strangely and suddenly hushed the lonely little town.

The hour of waiting wore out, and the figure of the doctor, walking
backward and forward anxiously, was still the only living figure left in
the square. Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, were counted out
by the doctor's watch, before the first sound came through the night
silence to warn him of the approaching carriage. Slowly it emerged into
the square, at the walking pace of the horses, and drew up, as a hearse
might have drawn up, at the door of the inn.

"Is the doctor here?" asked a woman's voice, speaking, out of the
darkness of the carriage, in the French language.

"I am here, madam," replied the doctor, taking a light from the
landlord's hand and opening the carriage door.

The first face that the light fell on was the face of the lady who had
just spoken--a young, darkly beautiful woman, with the tears standing
thick and bright in her eager black eyes. The second f