r an explanation, and spying
me (as indeed I was parting the branches to make it the more easy), half
uttered and half swallowed down again a cry of surprise.

The infernal gardener was erect upon the instant. "What's your wull,
miss?" said he.

Her readiness amazed me. She had already turned and was gazing in the
opposite direction. "There's a child among the artichokes," she said.

"The Plagues of Egyp'! _I'll_ see to them!" cried the gardener
truculently, and with a hurried waddle disappeared among the evergreens.

That moment she turned, she came running towards me, her arms stretched
out, her face incarnadined for the one moment with heavenly blushes, the
next pale as death. "Monsieur de Saint-Yves!" she said.

"My dear young lady," I said, "this is the damnedest liberty--I know it!
But what else was I to do?"

"You have escaped?" said she.

"If you call this escape," I replied.

"But you cannot possibly stop there!" she cried.

"I know it," said I. "And where am I to go?"

She struck her hands together. "I have it!" she exclaimed. "Come down by
the beech trunk--you must leave no footprint in the border--quickly,
before Robie can get back! I am the hen-wife here: I keep the key; you
must go into the hen-house--for the moment."

I was by her side at once. Both cast a hasty glance at the blank windows
of the cottage and so much as was visible of the garden alleys; it
seemed there was none to observe us. She caught me by the sleeve and
ran. It was no time for compliments; hurry breathed upon our necks; and
I ran along with her to the next corner of the garden, where a wired
court and a board hovel standing in a grove of trees advertised my place
of refuge. She thrust me in without a word; the bulk of the fowls were
at the same time emitted; and I found myself the next moment locked in
alone with half-a-dozen sitting hens. In the twilight of the place all
fixed their eyes on me severely, and seemed to upbraid me with some
crying impropriety. Doubtless the hen has always a puritanic appearance,
although (in its own behaviour) I could never observe it to be more
particular than its neighbours. But conceive a British hen!

CHAPTER VIII

THE HEN-HOUSE

I was half-an-hour at least in the society of these distressing bipeds,
and alone with my own reflections and necessities. I was in great pain
of my flayed hands, and had nothing to treat them with; I was hungry and
thirsty, and had nothing to eat or