oice, "it was
not my fault, indeed it was not. The goats were so stubborn to-night.
They broke through the hedge, and I had to chase them over
three fields."

"Have done with thy lying excuses," was the rough answer. "Thou shalt
have no supper to-night. Maybe an empty stomach will teach thee when my
commands fail. Hasten and drive the goats into the pen."

There was a scowl on Brossard's burly red face that made Jules's heart
bump up in his throat. Brossard was only the caretaker of the Ciseaux
place, but he had been there for twenty years,--so long that he felt
himself the master. The real master was in Algiers nearly all the time.
During his absence the great house was closed, excepting the kitchen and
two rooms above it. Of these Brossard had one and Henri the other.
Henri was the cook; a slow, stupid old man, not to be jogged out of
either his good-nature or his slow gait by anything that Brossard
might say.

Henri cooked and washed and mended, and hoed in the garden. Brossard
worked in the fields and shaved down the expenses of their living closer
and closer. All that was thus saved fell to his share, or he might not
have watched the expenses so carefully.

Much saving had made him miserly. Old Therese, the woman with the
fish-cart, used to say that he was the stingiest man in all Tourraine.
She ought to know, for she had sold him a fish every Friday during all
those twenty years, and he had never once failed to quarrel about the
price. Five years had gone by since the master's last visit. Brossard
and Henri were not likely to forget that time, for they had been
awakened in the dead of night by a loud knocking at the side gate. When
they opened it the sight that greeted them made them rub their sleepy
eyes to be sure that they saw aright.

There stood the master, old Martin Ciseaux. His hair and fiercely
bristling mustache had turned entirely white since they had last seen
him. In his arms he carried a child.

Brossard almost dropped his candle in his first surprise, and his wonder
grew until he could hardly contain it, when the curly head raised itself
from monsieur's shoulder, and the sleepy baby voice lisped something in
a foreign tongue.

"By all the saints!" muttered Brossard, as he stood aside for his master
to pass.

"It's my brother Jules's grandson," was the curt explanation that
monsieur offered. "Jules is dead, and so is his son and all the
family,--died in America. This is his son's son, Jule