75

V. "CAFARD" 105

VI. RECORDED 117

VII. THE RECRUIT 125

VIII. THE PEACE MEETING 137

IX. "THE DOG IT WAS THAT DIED" 147

X. IN HEAVEN AND EARTH 169

XI. THE MOTHER STONE 173

XII. POIROT AND BIDAN 179

XIII. THE MUFFLED SHIP 187

XIV. HERITAGE 191

XV. 'A GREEN HILL FAR AWAY' 199

PART II.--OF PEACE-TIME

I. SPINDLEBERRIES 209

II. EXPECTATIONS 227

III. MANNA 239

IV. A STRANGE THING 255

V. TWO LOOKS 271

VI. FAIRYLAND 279

VII. THE NIGHTMARE CHILD 283

VIII. BUTTERCUP-NIGHT 295

TATTERDEMALION

_PART I_

OF WAR-TIME

I

THE GREY ANGEL

Her predilection for things French came from childish recollections of
school-days in Paris, and a hasty removal thence by her father during
the revolution of '48, of later travels as a little maiden, by
diligence, to Pau and the then undiscovered Pyrenees, to a Montpellier
and a Nice as yet unspoiled. Unto her seventy-eighth year, her French
accent had remained unruffled, her soul in love with French gloves and
dresses; and her face had the pale, unwrinkled, slightly aquiline
perfection of the 'French marquise' type--it may, perhaps, be doubted
whether any French marquise ever looked the part so perfectly.

How it came about that she had settled down in a southern French town,
in the summer of 1914, only her roving spirit knew. She had been a widow
ten years, which she had passed in the quest of perfection; all her life
she had been haunted by that instinct, half-smothered in ministering to
her husband, children, and establishments in London and the country.
Now, in loneliness, the intrinsic independence of her soul was able to
assert itself, and from hotel to hotel she had wandered in England,
Wales, Switzerland, France, till now she had found what seemingly
arrested her. Was it the age of that oldest of Western cit