lams, since he is eighty-four and
too old to go to sea.

"_Ah, malheur!_" he sighs wearily, lifting his cap with a trembling hand
as seamed and tough as his tarpaulin. "Ah, the bad luck," he repeats in
a thin, husky voice. "I would not have deranged monsieur, but _bon
Dieu_, I am hungry. I have had no bread since yesterday. It is a little
beast this hunger, monsieur. There are no clams--I have searched from
the great bank to Tocqueville."

It is surprising how quick Suzette can heat the milk.

The old man is now seated in her kitchen before a cold duck of the
cure's killing and hot coffee--real coffee with a stiff drink of
applejack poured into it, and there is bread and cheese besides. Like
hungry men, he eats in silence and when he has eaten he tells me his dog
is dead--that woolly sheep dog of his with a cast in one fishy green
eye.

"_Oui_, monsieur," confided the old man, "he is dead. He was all I had
left. It is not gay, monsieur, at eighty-four to lose one's last
friend--to have him poisoned."

"Who poisoned him?" I inquired hotly--"was it Bonvin the butcher? They
say it was he poisoned both of Madame Vinet's cats."

"_Eh, ben!_" he returned, and I saw the tears well up into his watery
blue eyes--"one should not accuse one's neighbours, but they say it was
he, monsieur--they say it was in his garden that Hector found the bad
stuff--there are some who have no heart, monsieur."

"Bonvin!" I cried, "so it was that pig who poisoned him, eh? and you
saved his little girl the time the _Belle Marie_ foundered."

"_Oui_, monsieur--the time the _Belle Marie_ foundered. It is true I
did--we did the best we could! Had it not been for the fog and the ebb
tide I think we could have saved them all."

He fell to eating again, cutting into the cheese discreetly--this fine
old gentleman of the sea.

It is a pity that some one has not poisoned Bonvin I thought. A short
thick fellow, is Bonvin, with cheeks as red as raw chops and small eyes
that glitter with cruelty. Bonvin, whose youngest child--a male, has the
look and intelligence of a veal and whose mother weighs one hundred and
five kilos--a fact which Bonvin is proud of since his first wife, who
died, was under weight despite the fact that the Bonvins being in the
business, eat meat twice daily. I have always believed the veal
infant's hair is curled in suet. Its face grows purple after meals.

* * * * *

A rough old place is my v