ll, as though not knowing whether to turn about and run,
or to advance and take the consequences. Realizing his embarrassment, I
hastily proffered a few words of greeting, and then he chose the latter
prerogative.

"-Vous?_" he said, when at length he found his tongue. "_Vous?_"

"Yes--why not?"

"Who's with you?"

"Nobody. Why?"

He seemed more embarrassed than ever. Evidently he hadn't yet "caught
on."

"What can I do for you?" I continued.

He still hesitated, looking first at me and then at a bottle he carried
in his hand. Finally he resolved to make a clean breast of it.

"Why," he said, "I didn't expect to find a woman here, least of all _une
chatelaine_. It rather startled me! You see, I've got into the habit
of coming round towards dawn. The boys begin to get chilly about that
time, and are glad enough to have a go at my fruit brandy. They say I'm
too old to mount guard, so I must serve my country as best I can. Will
you have some--my own brew?"

I declined, but he was not offended; yet he seemed reluctant to go.

"Sit down," I said. "It won't belong before some of the men will be
passing by on their way to the fields, and then you won't have made your
journey for nothing."

Pere Potipard gladly accepted, and after a generous swig at his brandy,
began telling me about what happened at Villiers during the German
invasion in 1870. As he talked on, night gradually disappeared, and when
the clock in the belfry tolled three A. M. my successors came to relieve
me. I blew out the lantern and walked home in broad daylight.

The boys looked very sheepish when they learned what had happened, but
as I did not boast of my exploit, merely taking it as a matter of
course, they had no way of approaching the subject, and like many other
things of the kind, it was soon forgotten in the pursuing of our
onerous daily tasks, and the moral anxiety we were experiencing.

There seemed to be no end to the fruit season that summer. The lengthy
table in the servants' hall was literally covered with glasses
containing jam and jelly of every description, awaiting their paper
lids. Nini said there were over five hundred--to me it seemed
thousands, and I was heartily glad of a lull before the hospital should
open. And I remember distinctly that the last thing I prepared was some
thirty quarts of black currant brandy; that is to say, I had poured the
raw alcohol on to the fruit and set the jars aside to await com