e
loaded, well-lighted table. Then the Seigneur came in, leaning his
arm very lightly on that of Medallion with a kind of kingly air; and,
greeting his son before them all, as if they had parted yesterday, sat
down. For an hour they sat there, and the Seigneur talked gaily with a
colour to his face, and his great eyes glowing. At last he rose, lifted
his glass, and said: "The Angel of Patience is wise. I drink to my son!"

He was about to say something more, but a sudden whiteness passed over
his face. He drank off the wine, and as he put the glass down, shivered,
and fell back in his chair.

"Two hours short, Chemist!" he said, and smiled, and was Still.

PARPON THE DWARF

Parpon perched in a room at the top of the mill. He could see every
house in the village, and he knew people a long distance off. He was a
droll dwarf, and, in his way, had good times in the world. He turned the
misery of the world into a game, and grinned at it from his high little
eyrie with the dormer window. He had lived with Farette the miller for
some years, serving him with a kind of humble insolence.

It was not a joyful day for Farette when he married Julie. She led him a
pretty travel. He had started as her master; he ended by being her slave
and victim.

She was a wilful wife. She had made the Seigneur de la Riviere, of
the House with the Tall Porch, to quarrel with his son Armand, so that
Armand disappeared from Pontiac for years.

When that happened she had already stopped confessing to the good Cure;
so it may be guessed there were things she did not care to tell, and
for which she had no repentance. But Parpon knew, and Medallion the
auctioneer guessed; and the Little Chemist's wife hoped that it was not
so. When Julie looked at Parpon, as he perched on a chest of drawers,
with his head cocked and his eyes blinking, she knew that he read the
truth. But she did not know all that was in his head; so she said sharp
things to him, as she did to everybody, for she had a very poor opinion
of the world, and thought all as flippant as herself. She took nothing
seriously; she was too vain. Except that she was sorry Armand was gone,
she rather plumed herself on having separated the Seigneur and his
son--it was something to have been the pivot in a tragedy. There came
others to the village, as, for instance, a series of clerks to the
Avocat; but she would not decline from Armand upon them. She merely made
them miserable.

But she