ling above him. I doubt that he once thought of
the little fortune he had so impotently squandered. Perhaps it was
compensation enough for him to sit thus at Charleroi for a few
retrieved hours. Idly his mind wandered in and out many fanciful
paths of memory. He smiled to himself as a paraphrased line of
Scripture strayed into his mind: "A certain _poor_ man made a
feast."

He heard the sound of Absalom coughing a note of summons. Grandemont
stirred. This time he had not been asleep--only drowsing.

"Nine o'clock, _M'shi Grande_," said Absalom in the uninflected
voice of a good servant who states a fact unqualified by personal
opinion.

Grandemont rose to his feet. In their time all the Charleses had
been proven, and they were gallant losers.

"Serve dinner," he said calmly. And then he checked Absalom's
movement to obey, for something clicked the gate latch and was
coming down the walk toward the house. Something that shuffled its
feet and muttered to itself as it came. It stopped in the current of
light at the foot of the steps and spake, in the universal whine of
the gadding mendicant.

"Kind sir, could you spare a poor, hungry man, out of luck, a little
to eat? And to sleep in the corner of a shed? For"--the thing
concluded, irrelevantly--"I can sleep now. There are no mountains
to dance reels in the night; and the copper kettles are all scoured
bright. The iron band is still around my ankle, and a link, if it is
your desire I should be chained."

It set a foot upon the step and drew up the rags that hung upon the
limb. Above the distorted shoe, caked with the dust of a hundred
leagues, they saw the link and the iron band. The clothes of the
tramp were wreaked to piebald tatters by sun and rain and wear. A
mat of brown, tangled hair and beard covered his head and face, out
of which his eyes stared distractedly. Grandemont noticed that he
carried in one hand a white, square card.

"What is that?" he asked.

"I picked it up, sir, at the side of the road." The vagabond handed
the card to Grandemont. "Just a little to eat, sir. A little parched
corn, a _tartilla_, or a handful of beans. Goat's meat I cannot eat.
When I cut their throats they cry like children."

Grandemont held up the card. It was one of his own invitations to
dinner. No doubt some one had cast it away from a passing carriage
after comparing it with the tenantless house of Charleroi.

"From the hedges and highways bid them come," he said t