ut jammed
with carts. Monsieur Torin, the butcher, opposite me, leaned back
heavily from his glass of applejack and roared.

Monsieur Pompanet, the blacksmith, at my elbow, put down his cup of
black coffee delicately in its clean saucer and opened his honest gray
eyes wide in amazement. Simultaneously Monsieur Jaclin, the mayor, in
his freshly ironed blouse, who for want of room was squeezed next to
Torin, choked out a wheezy "_Bon Dieu!_" and blew his nose in derision.

"Pont du Sable--_Bon Dieu!_" exclaimed all three. "Pont du Sable--_Bon
Dieu!_"

"_Cristi!_" thundered Torin. "You say you are going to _live_ in Pont du
Sable? _Helas!_ It is not possible, my friend, you are in earnest!"

"That lost hole of a village of _sacre_ vagabonds," echoed Pompanet.
"Why, the mud when the tide is out smells like the devil. It is
unhealthy."

"Pere Bordier and I went there for ducks twenty years ago," added the
mayor. "We were glad enough to get away before dark. B-r-r! It was
lonely enough, that marsh, and that dirty little fishing-village no
longer than your arm. Bah! It's a hole, just as Pompanet says."

Torin leaned across the table and laid a heavy hand humanely on my
shoulder.

"Take my advice," said he, "don't give up that snug farm of yours here
for a lost hole like Pont du Sable."

"But the sea-shooting is open there three hundred and sixty-five days in
the year," I protested, with enthusiasm. "I'm tired of tramping my legs
off here for a few partridges a season. Besides, what I've been looking
for I've found--a fine old abandoned house with a splendid old courtyard
and a wild garden. I had the good luck to climb over a wall and discover
it."

"I know the place you mean," interrupted the mayor. "It was a
post-tavern in the old days before the railroad ran there."

"And later belonged to the estate of the Marquis de Lys," I added
proudly. "Now it belongs to me."

"What! You've bought it!" exclaimed Torin, half closing his veal-like
eyes.

"Yes," I confessed, "signed, sealed, and paid for."

"And what the devil do you intend to do with that old stone pile now
that you've got it?" sneered Jaclin. "Ah! You artists are queer
fellows!"

"Live in it, messieurs," I returned as happily as I could, as I dropped
six sous for my glass into Madame Fontaine's open palm, and took my
leave, for under the torrent of their protest I was beginning to feel I
had been a fool to be carried away by my love of a gun and the
p