sie crouched back from the intrusion.

'This way!' shouted the man. 'Are you all safe?' Aline, still
screaming, ran to the new comer, and was presently hauled head-foremost
through the wall.

'Now, Anastasie, come on; it is your turn,' said the husband.

'I cannot,' she replied.

'Are we all to die of exposure, madame?' thundered Doctor Desprez.

'You can go!' she cried. 'Oh, go, go away! I can stay here; I am quite
warm.'

The Doctor took her by the shoulders with an oath.

'Stop!' she screamed. 'I will put them on.'

She took the detested lendings in her hand once more; but her repulsion
was stronger than shame. 'Never!' she cried, shuddering, and flung them
far away into the night.

Next moment the Doctor had whirled her to the well. The man was there
and the lantern; Anastasie closed her eyes and appeared to herself to be
about to die. How she was transported through the arch she knew not; but
once on the other side she was received by the neighbour's wife, and
enveloped in a friendly blanket.

Beds were made ready for the two women, clothes of very various sizes for
the Doctor and Jean-Marie; and for the remainder of the night, while
madame dozed in and out on the borderland of hysterics, her husband sat
beside the fire and held forth to the admiring neighbours. He showed
them, at length, the causes of the accident; for years, he explained, the
fall had been impending; one sign had followed another, the joints had
opened, the plaster had cracked, the old walls bowed inward; last, not
three weeks ago, the cellar door had begun to work with difficulty in its
grooves. 'The cellar!' he said, gravely shaking his head over a glass of
mulled wine. 'That reminds me of my poor vintages. By a manifest
providence the Hermitage was nearly at an end. One bottle--I lose but
one bottle of that incomparable wine. It had been set apart against Jean-
Marie's wedding. Well, I must lay down some more; it will be an interest
in life. I am, however, a man somewhat advanced in years. My great work
is now buried in the fall of my humble roof; it will never be
completed--my name will have been writ in water. And yet you find me
calm--I would say cheerful. Can your priest do more?'

By the first glimpse of day the party sallied forth from the fireside
into the street. The wind had fallen, but still charioted a world of
troubled clouds; the air bit like frost; and the party, as they stood
about the ruins in t