high, and he had a rosette on each
instep. I can see quite clearly now the peculiar dull cold gleam the
razor-edged axe wore as he stood in some shadowed place behind me, and
the brighter gleam it had in daylight in the streets.

When I had borne with him until I felt that I could bear with him no
longer, I took him, being back in town again, to a London physician
of some eminence. The doctor took him somewhat gravely, insisted upon
absolute mental rest, prescribed a tonic, laid down certain rules about
diet, certain restrictions upon wine and tobacco, and ordered immediate
change of scene.

To begin with I went to Antwerp, thence to Brussels, and thence, by the
merest chance in the world, to Janenne, a little village in the Belgian
Ardennes, at no great distance from the French frontier. I had no idea
of staying there, and on the surface of things there was no reason why I
should have prolonged my stay beyond a day or two. People visit Janenne
in the summer time, and suppose themselves to have exhausted its limited
attractions in four-and-twenty hours. There is nothing at first sight
to keep the stranger longer, but if he will only stay for a week he will
inevitably want to stay for a fortnight, and if once he has stayed for a
fortnight, his business is done, and he is in love with Janenne for the
rest of his natural life. Rural quiet has made her home in Janenne, and
contentment dwells with her, sleepy-eyed.

Even in the first week of December, the russet and amber-coloured leaves
still cling to the branches of the huge old lime-trees of Lorette, and
my lonely feet on the thick carpet of dead leaves below made the sole
sound I heard there except the ceaseless musical tinkle of chisel
and stone from the distant granite quarries--a succession of notes
altogether rural in suggestion--like the tinkle of many sheep-bells.
Even in that first week of December I could sit in the open air there,
where the mild winter sunlight flashed the huge crucifix and the
colossal Christ of painted wood, which poise above the toy chapel carved
out of the live rock. The chapel and the crucifix are at one end of a
lime-tree avenue a third of a mile long, and the trees are aged beyond
strict local knowledge, gnarled and warty and bulbous and great
of girth. You climb to Lorette by a gentle ascent, and below the
rock-carved chapel lies a precipice--not an Alpine affair at all, but a
reasonable precipice for Belgium--say, two or even three hu