nd promenades.

At last they turned into the _Route de Suresnes_, which soon led them
to the _Lac Superieur_. There Paul dismissed his _cocher_, for he had
a fancy to stroll along the borders of the lake.

The banks were alive with boys and girls running about like young
savages, to the distraction of their nurses. Paul threaded his way
among them contentedly, for he loved children and had all too little
opportunity to be with them. He stood for a time and watched with much
amusement a game of blind-man's-buff--_colin-maillard_ the little
beggars called it, but if the name was different, the play was the
same that Paul had known in his own boyhood at Verdayne Place.

Many fine ships were sailing along the lake's shore, navigated by
brave mariners of eight and ten. Paul had just turned away from
watching one spirited race when a scream arrested his attention. At
first he saw only an excited group gathered at the lake's edge, and
then his eye caught sight of a tell-tale hat, floating on the surface.
With a few bounds he was in the water, to emerge soon with a little
limp body in his arms. He laid his burden down gently on the pebbly
bank and then gave place to a man who pushed his way through the
crowd with the brisk professional air a doctor is wont to assume. In a
few moments the sturdy _enfant_ breathed again.

Paul felt anything but a hero. He had never been wetter--and moreover
he had lost his hat. It would be a wonder, too, if any _cocher_ would
let him get into his carriage with the water running off him in
rivulets.

He was standing by the road-side bargaining with one of that tribe and
had nearly exhausted his stock of dignified French when he happened to
glance over his shoulder as a carriage passed close by him. Beneath a
parasol a lady's face stood out clearly from the moving maze around
him--her face again.

The smile in her eyes made Paul mad.

He thrust a twenty-franc note into the hand of the astonished
_cocher_, and springing into the cab directed the man to hurry on.

And then the impossibility of the situation dawned upon him. A fine
sight he was! to go dashing off the Lord knew where after a lady he
did not know! Such an adventure attempted by as bedraggled a cavalier
as he, might easily land him in a police station. He had no relish for
being dragged off by a _gendarme_, he reflected, and even if that
should not occur, the best he could possibly manage would be to make
an ass of himself. And