wn powers of persuasion.--Mammy dear,
take good care of mamma: we shall be back directly."

Her _we_ was very sweet to me, and I shared her mistrust of my French
and my diplomacy.

The glare of the burning bridge lighted our steps: the air was full of
falling flakes of fire. The cottage was a quarter of a mile off.
Hermione refused my arm, but, holding her skirts daintily, stepped
bravely at my side. She exhibited no bashfulness, no excitement, no
confusion, no fear: she was simply bent on business. We reached the
peasant's farmyard. He and his family were outside the house. We like to
say a Frenchman has no word for _home_. But the conclusion that the man
of Anglo-Saxon birth deduces from this lack in his vocabulary is false:
no man cares more for the domicile that shelters him. Hermione made her
request with sweet persuasiveness. I saw at once it would have been
refused if I had made it, but to her they made excuses. The old horse,
they said, was very old, the old cart was broken.

"Let me look at it," said Hermione. At this they led us into an
outhouse, where she assisted me to make a careful inspection. I might
have rejected the old trap at once, but she offered a few suggestions,
which she told me in an aside were the fruit of her experiences in
Maryland and Virginia, and the cart was pronounced safe enough to be
driven slowly with a light load.

A half-grown son of the house was put in charge of it. Hermione
suggested he should bring the family clothes-line in case of a
breakdown, and prevailed upon the farmer's wife to put in plenty of
fresh straw, a blanket and a pillow. She made a bargain, less
extravagant than I expected, with the peasant proprietor, promising,
however, a very handsome _pourboire_ to his son in the event of our good
fortune. The farmer stipulated, in his turn, that cart, horse and lad
were not to pass the barrier, that the boy should walk at the horse's
head, and that the cart was to contain only two women and little
Claribel.

It was harnessed up immediately. Hermione and I followed it on foot back
to the little band of travellers waiting beside the railway.

"Can we not get some of your trunks out?" I said to her.

"No," she answered: "leave them to their fate. I dare not overload the
cart, and I doubt whether those men with hungry eyes would let us take
them. Mamma," she whispered, "has her diamonds."

"You will get into the cart, Miss Leare?" I said as I saw her motioning
to the