mas Stocking
XX. The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss
XXI. Two Renegades
XXII. The Lonesome Road

I

ROADS OF DESTINY

I go to seek on many roads
What is to be.
True heart and strong, with love to light--
Will they not bear me in the fight
To order, shun or wield or mould
My Destiny?

Unpublished Poems of David Mignot.

The song was over. The words were David's; the air, one of the
countryside. The company about the inn table applauded heartily,
for the young poet paid for the wine. Only the notary, M. Papineau,
shook his head a little at the lines, for he was a man of books, and
he had not drunk with the rest.

David went out into the village street, where the night air drove
the wine vapour from his head. And then he remembered that he and
Yvonne had quarrelled that day, and that he had resolved to leave
his home that night to seek fame and honour in the great world
outside.

"When my poems are on every man's tongue," he told himself, in a
fine exhilaration, "she will, perhaps, think of the hard words she
spoke this day."

Except the roisterers in the tavern, the village folk were abed.
David crept softly into his room in the shed of his father's cottage
and made a bundle of his small store of clothing. With this upon a
staff, he set his face outward upon the road that ran from Vernoy.

He passed his father's herd of sheep, huddled in their nightly
pen--the sheep he herded daily, leaving them to scatter while he
wrote verses on scraps of paper. He saw a light yet shining in
Yvonne's window, and a weakness shook his purpose of a sudden.
Perhaps that light meant that she rued, sleepless, her anger, and
that morning might--But, no! His decision was made. Vernoy was no
place for him. Not one soul there could share his thoughts. Out
along that road lay his fate and his future.

Three leagues across the dim, moonlit champaign ran the road,
straight as a ploughman's furrow. It was believed in the village
that the road ran to Paris, at least; and this name the poet
whispered often to himself as he walked. Never so far from Vernoy
had David travelled before.

THE LEFT BRANCH

_Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puzzle.
It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David
stood, uncertain, for a while, and then took the road to the
left._

Upon this more important highway were, imprinted in the d