xious to make the most of the northeast wind.

* * * * *

There being no street in the lost village save the main thoroughfare,
one finds only alleys flanked by rambling walls. One of these runs up to
Tanrade's house; another finds its zigzag way to the back gate of the
marquis, who, being a royalist, insists upon telling you so, for the
keystone of his gate is emblazoned with a bas-relief of two carved
eagles guarding the family crest. Still another leads unexpectedly to
the silent garden of Monsieur le Cure. It is a protecting little by-way
whose walls tell no tales. How many a suffering heart seeking human
sympathy and advice has the strong figure in the soutane sent home with
fresh courage by way of this back lane. Indeed it would be a lost
village without him. He is barely over forty years old, and yet no cure
was ever given a poorer parish, for Pont du Sable has been bankrupt for
generations. Since a fortnight--so I am told--Monsieur le Cure has had
no _bonne_. The reason is that no good Suzette can be found to replace
the one whom he married to a young farmer from Bonville. The result is
the good cure dines many times a week with the marquis, where he is so
entertaining and so altogether delightful and welcome a guest that the
marquise tells me she feels ten years younger after he has gone.

"Poor man," she confided to me the other day, "what will you have? He
has no _bonne_, and he detests cooking. Yesterday he lunched at the
chateau with Alice de Breville; to-morrow he will be cheering up two old
maiden aunts who live a league from Bar la Rose. Is it not sad?" And she
laughed merrily.

"Monsieur le Cure has no _bonne_!" _Parbleu!_ It has become a household
phrase in Pont du Sable. It is so difficult to get a servant here; the
girls are all fishing. As for Tanrade's maid-of-all-work, like the
noiseless butler of the marquis and the _femme de chambre_ of Alice de
Breville, they are all from Paris; and yet I'll wager that no larder in
the village is better stocked than Monsieur le Cure's, for every
housewife vies with her neighbour in ready-cooked donations since the
young man from Bonville was accepted.

But these good people do not forget. They remember the day when the farm
of Pere Marin burned; they recall the figure in the black soutane
stumbling on through flame and smoke carrying an unconscious little girl
in his strong arms to safety. Four times he went back where no man