should be shaken off by the jolting of the
carriage--and so he slept.

He awoke with the sun shining into his eyes, and the sound of voices in
his ears. The carriage had come to a standstill. Looking about him, he
knew that he was at Mansle, the little town where he had waited for Mme.
de Bargeton eighteen months before, when his heart was full of hope and
love and joy. A group of post-boys eyed him curiously and suspiciously,
covered with dust as he was, wedged in among the luggage. Lucien
jumped down, but before he could speak two travelers stepped out of the
caleche, and the words died away on his lips; for there stood the new
Prefect of the Charente, Sixte du Chatelet, and his wife, Louise de
Negrepelisse.

"Chance gave us a traveling-companion, if we had but known!" said the
Countess. "Come in with us, monsieur."

Lucien gave the couple a distant bow and a half-humbled half-defiant
glance; then he turned away into a cross-country road in search of some
farmhouse, where he might make a breakfast on milk and bread, and rest
awhile, and think quietly over the future. He still had three francs
left. On and on he walked with the hurrying pace of fever, noticing
as he went, down by the riverside, that the country grew more and more
picturesque. It was near mid-day when he came upon a sheet of water with
willows growing about the margin, and stopped for awhile to rest his
eyes on the cool, thick-growing leaves; and something of the grace of
the fields entered into his soul.

In among the crests of the willows, he caught a glimpse of a mill
near-by on a branch stream, and of the thatched roof of the mill-house
where the house-leeks were growing. For all ornament, the quaint cottage
was covered with jessamine and honeysuckle and climbing hops, and the
garden about it was gay with phloxes and tall, juicy-leaved plants. Nets
lay drying in the sun along a paved causeway raised above the highest
flood level, and secured by massive piles. Ducks were swimming in the
clear mill-pond below the currents of water roaring over the wheel.
As the poet came nearer he heard the clack of the mill, and saw the
good-natured, homely woman of the house knitting on a garden bench, and
keeping an eye upon a little one who was chasing the hens about.

Lucien came forward. "My good woman," he said, "I am tired out; I have a
fever on me, and I have only three francs; will you undertake to give me
brown bread and milk, and let me sleep in the