ear it, _n'est-ce pas, mon petit Tho-Thom cheri_? There! He smiles."

"She is really convinced that he has heard her call him Thomas. Oh,
woman!" said Paragot.

That evening, after we had feasted on cabbage-soup and the piece of beef
which I had been too stuck-up to dandle on my knees, and clear brown
cider, the three of us sat outside the house, in the warm August
moonlight. Sinking into an infinitely far horizon stretched the fruitful
plain of France, cornland and pasture, and near us the stacked sheaves
of Paragot's corn stood quiet and pregnant symbols of the good earth's
plenty. Here and there dark patches of orchard dreamed in a haze.
Through one distant patch a farmhouse struck a muffled note of grey. On
the left the ribbon of road glistened white between the sentinel poplars
silhouetted against the sky. The hot smell of the earth filled the air
like spice. A thousand elfin sounds, the vibration of leaves, the tiny
crackling of cornstalks, the fairy whirr of ground insects, melted into
a companionable stillness.

Blanquette half dozed, her head against Paragot's shoulder, as she had
done that far-off evening of our return from Chambery. The smoke from
his porcelain pipe curled upwards through the still air. I was near
enough to him on the other side, for him to lay his hand on my arm.

"My son," he whispered in English, "I was right when I said I had come
to the end of my journey. Eventually I am right in everything. I
prophesied that I would make little Augustus Smith a scholar and a
gentleman. _Te voila._ I knew that my long pilgrimage would ultimately
lead me to the Inner Shrine. Isn't all this," he waved his pipe in a
circular gesture, "the Holy of Holies of the Real? Is there any illusion
in the unutterable poetry of the night? Is there anything false in this
promise of the fruitful earth? My God! Asticot, I am happy! When the
soul laughs tears come into the eyes. I have all that the heart of man
can desire--the love of this dear wife of mine--the child asleep within
doors--the printed wisdom of the world in a dozen tongues of men, caught
up hap-hazard in what I once, in a failing hour, thought was my
wildgoose chase after Truth--the pride in you, my little Asticot, the
son of my adoption--and the most overpowering sleepiness that ever sat
upon mortal eyelid."

He yawned. I protested. It was barely nine o'clock.

"It is bedtime," said Paragot. "We have to get up at five."

"Good Heavens, Master," said