re you going far?"

"Not farther than Asnieres."

"Is Asnieres your place of abode?"

"Yes, monsieur, I am a peddler by occupation, and I live at Asnieres."

He had quitted the sidewalk, where pedestrians move along in the
daytime under the shadows of the trees, and he was soon in the middle
of the road. I followed his example. We kept staring at each other
suspiciously, each of us holding his stick in his hand. When I was
sufficiently close to him, I felt less distrustful. He evidently was
disposed to assume the same attitude towards me, for he asked:

"Would you mind going a little more slowly?"

"Why do you say this?"

"Because I don't care for this road by night. I have goods on my back,
and two are always better than one. When two men are together, people
don't attack them."

I felt that he was speaking truly, and that he was afraid. So I
yielded to his wishes, and the pair of us walked on, side by side,
this stranger and I, at one o'clock in the morning, along the road
leading from Argenteuil to Asnieres.

"Why are you going home so late when it is so dangerous?" I asked my
companion.

He told me his history. He had not intended to return home this
evening, as he had brought with him that very morning a stock of goods
to last him three or four days. But he had been so fortunate in
disposing of them that he found it necessary to get back to his abode
without delay in order to deliver next day a number of things which
had been bought on credit.

He explained to me with genuine satisfaction that he had managed the
business very well, having a tendency to talk confidentially, and
that the knick-knacks he displayed were useful to him in getting rid,
while gossiping, of other things which he could not easily sell.

He added:

"I have a shop in Asnieres. 'Tis my wife keeps it."

"Ah! So you're married?"

"Yes, m'sieur, for the last fifteen months. I have got a very nice
wife. She'll get a surprise when she sees me coming home to-night."

He then gave me an account of his marriage. He had been after this
young girl for two years, but she had taken time to make up her mind.

She had, since her childhood, kept a little shop at the corner of a
street, where she sold all sorts of things--ribbons, flowers in
summer, and principally pretty little shoe-buckles, and many other
gewgaws, in which, owing to the favor of a manufacturer, she enjoyed a
speciality. She was well-known in Asnieres as "La Bluette." Th