down the
drumstick and plunge among the dancers, for Joliet was a well-hinged
lad, and the blood of nineteen years was tingling in his heels. After
fluttering thus from branch to branch, like the poor birdling that
cannot take its flight, discouraged by his wretched attempts at life,
he plunged straight before him, hoping for nothing but a turn of luck,
driving over the roads and fields, lending a hand to the farmers,
sleeping in stables and garrets, or oftener in the open air;
sometimes charitably sheltered in a kind man's barn, and perhaps--oh
bliss!--honestly employed with him for a week or two; at others rudely
repulsed as a good-for-nothing and vagabond. Vagabond! That truly was
his profession now. He forgot the charms of a fixed abode. He came
to like his gypsy freedom, the open air and complete independence. He
laughed at his misery, provided it shifted its place occasionally.

[Illustration: SHARE MY CUP.]

[Illustration: BREAKING STONES.]

One day, when Hazard, his ungenerous guardian, seemed to have
quite forgotten him, he walked--on an empty stomach, as the doctors
say--past the lofty walls of a chateau. A card was placed at the gate
calling for additional hands at a job of digging. Each workman, it
was promised, had a right to a plate of soup before beginning. This
article tempted him. At the gate a lackey, laughing in his face,
told him the notice had been posted there six months: workmen were no
longer wanted. "Wait, though," said the servant, and in another minute
gave the applicant a horse!--a real, live horse in blood and bones,
but in bones especially. "There," said the domestic, "set a beggar
on horseback and see him ride to the devil!" And, laughing with that
unalloyed enjoyment which one's own wit alone produces, he retired
behind his wicket.

[Illustration: SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP.]

The horse thus vicariously fulfilling the functions of a plate of soup
was a wretched glandered beast--not old, but shunned on account of the
contagious nature of his disease. Having received the order to take
him to be killed at the abattoir, monsieur the valet, having better
things to do, gave the commission to Joliet, with all its perquisites.

Joliet did not kill the steed: he cured it. He tended it, he drenched
it, he saved it. By what remedy? I cannot tell. I have never been a
farrier, though Joliet himself made me perforce a poulterer. Many a
bit of knowledge is picked up by those who travel the great road