s well if he never did return.

As M. Fille sat with his host at the table in the sunset light, Jean
Jacques seemed quieter and steadier of body and mind than he had been
for a long, long time. He even drank three glasses of the cordial which
Mere Langlois had left for him, with the idea that it might comfort him
when he got the bad news about Sebastian Dolores; and parting with M.
Fille at the door, he waved a hand and said: "Well, good-night, master
of the laws. Safe journey! I'm off to bed, and I'll sleep without
rocking, that's very sure and sweet."

He stood and waved his hand several times to M. Fille--till he was
out of sight indeed; and the Clerk of the Court smiled to himself long
afterwards, recalling Jean Jacques' cheerful face as he had seen it at
their parting in the gathering dusk. As for Jean Jacques, when he locked
up the house at ten o'clock, with Dolores still absent, he had the air
of a man from whose shoulders great weights had fallen.

"Now I've shut the door on him, it'll stay shut," he said firmly. "Let
him go back to work. He's no good here to me, to himself, or to anyone.
And that business of the fur-robe and Virginie Poucette--ah, that!"

He shook his head angrily, then seeing the bottle of cordial still
uncorked on the sideboard, he poured some out and drank it very slowly,
till his eyes were on the ceiling above him and every drop had gone
home. Presently, with the bedroom lamp in his hand, he went upstairs,
humming to himself the chanson the workmen had sung that afternoon as
they raised again the walls of the mill:

"Distaff of flax flowing behind her
Margatton goes to the mill
On the old grey ass she goes,
The flour of love it will blind her
Ah, the grist the devil will grind her,
When Margatton goes to the mill!
On the old grey ass she goes,
And the old grey ass, he knows!"

He liked the sound of his own voice this night of his Reconstruction
Period--or such it seemed to him; and he thought that no one heard
his singing save himself. There, however, he was mistaken. Someone was
hidden in the house--in the big kitchen-bunk which served as a bed or
a seat, as needed. This someone had stolen in while Jean Jacques and M.
Fille were at supper. His name was Dolores, and he had a horse just over
the hill near by, to serve him when his work was done, and he could get
away.

The constables of Vilray had twice