laid his pistol under his coat and walked to his cottage.
Yvonne was not there. Of late she had taken to gadding much among
the neighbours. But a fire was glowing in the kitchen stove. David
opened the door of it and thrust his poems in upon the coals. As
they blazed up they made a singing, harsh sound in the flue.

"The song of the crow!" said the poet.

He went up to his attic room and closed the door. So quiet was the
village that a score of people heard the roar of the great pistol.
They flocked thither, and up the stairs where the smoke, issuing,
drew their notice.

The men laid the body of the poet upon his bed, awkwardly arranging
it to conceal the torn plumage of the poor black crow. The women
chattered in a luxury of zealous pity. Some of them ran to tell
Yvonne.

M. Papineau, whose nose had brought him there among the first,
picked up the weapon and ran his eye over its silver mountings with
a mingled air of connoisseurship and grief.

"The arms," he explained, aside, to the _cure_, "and crest of
Monseigneur, the Marquis de Beaupertuys."

II

THE GUARDIAN OF THE ACCOLADE

Not the least important of the force of the Weymouth Bank was Uncle
Bushrod. Sixty years had Uncle Bushrod given of faithful service
to the house of Weymouth as chattel, servitor, and friend. Of the
colour of the mahogany bank furniture was Uncle Bushrod--thus dark
was he externally; white as the uninked pages of the bank ledgers
was his soul. Eminently pleasing to Uncle Bushrod would the
comparison have been; for to him the only institution in existence
worth considering was the Weymouth Bank, of which he was something
between porter and generalissimo-in-charge.

Weymouth lay, dreamy and umbrageous, among the low foothills
along the brow of a Southern valley. Three banks there were in
Weymouthville. Two were hopeless, misguided enterprises, lacking the
presence and prestige of a Weymouth to give them glory. The third
was The Bank, managed by the Weymouths--and Uncle Bushrod. In the
old Weymouth homestead--the red brick, white-porticoed mansion,
the first to your right as you crossed Elder Creek, coming into
town--lived Mr. Robert Weymouth (the president of the bank), his
widowed daughter, Mrs. Vesey--called "Miss Letty" by every one--and
her two children, Nan and Guy. There, also in a cottage on the
grounds, resided Uncle Bushrod and Aunt Malindy, his wife. Mr.
William Weymouth (the cashier of the bank) lived in a moder