rvice or afford a pleasure being
looked upon as a piece of enviable fortune.

Johnston was a connoisseur in bric-a-brac and mediaeval art, his studio
being head-quarters for the students interested in such matters. He and
his coterie had persuaded themselves that a certain lost Velasquez could
be traced to the possession of the Courance family, and he was most
anxious to visit the chateau in search of the picture. This and the
natural curiosity common to both artists made up motives of appeal too
strong to be resisted, and they accordingly allowed their wishes to become
known in certain influential quarters. How the affair was managed they
never knew, and indeed never inquired, but in due time they received an
invitation to join a party coursing for hares in the wastes of La
Pontoise, and this they understood as an intimation that their desire to
visit Courance was about to be gratified.

The old royal post-road from Paris to Lyons, passing through
Fontainebleau, runs nearly due south until it strikes the high banks of a
small tributary of the Seine, when it turns south-west and climbs the
hills toward Nemours, the next post-town. These hills slope off westward
to the desert or waste of La Pontoise, one of those blister-scars, still
to be seen in France, left by the feudal system, which stripped the soil
of the last grain of fertility and gave nothing in return. La Pontoise was
aforetime a grand estate, possessed by a branch of the Foix family, the
great ducal house of Nemours. Its farms wasted by the improvidence of the
_ancien regime_, its park and chateau destroyed by desperate peasantry
during the frenzy of '93, there remains nothing now but pine-barrens and
furze-patches, with a pile of blackened ruins as a monument of former
glory and folly.

Between this sterile, uninhabitable solitude and the precipitous, broken
ridge forming the north-eastern boundary of the Loiret lies Courance. No
road leads thitherward, no path approaches its forgotten gate. The stream
which formerly flowed past the entrance-lodge is dammed up by the fallen
bridge and spreads out in a broad morass.

To this uninviting neighborhood came the coursing-party at the time
appointed. After a sufficiently successful day's sport the American guests
accepted an invitation to pass the night with the mayor of Mont Plesis,
the other gentlemen returning to Fontainebleau. Monsieur le Maire loitered
by the way until the last of the hunters had disappeare