half-crippled volunteer sat
coughing by the fire. I applied for this place and obtained it. That is
all."

"But it is not all," said the sick man, raising himself on his elbow;
"you have not told half yet, nor anything at all about the French
verse."

"Oh--that? There was a little Frenchman staying at the hotel; he had
formerly been a dancing-master, and was full of dry, withered conceits,
although he looked like a thin and bilious old ape dressed as a man. He
taught me, or tried to teach me, various wise sayings, among them this
one, which pleased my fancy so much that I gave him twenty-five cents to
write it out in large text for me."

"Toujours femme varie," repeated De Rosset; "but you don't really think
so, do you, Rodman?"

"I do. But they can not help it; it is their nature.--I beg your pardon,
Miss Ward. I was speaking as though you were not here."

Miss Ward's eyelids barely acknowledged his existence; that was all. But
some time after she remarked to her cousin that it was only in New
England that one found that pale flaxen hair.

June was waning, when suddenly the summons came. Ward De Rosset died. He
was unconscious toward the last, and death, in the guise of sleep, bore
away his soul. They carried him home to the old house, and from there
the funeral started, a few family carriages, dingy and battered,
following the hearse, for death revived the old neighborhood feeling;
that honor at least they could pay--the sonless mothers and the widows
who lived shut up in the old houses with everything falling into ruin
around them, brooding over the past. The keeper watched the small
procession as it passed his gate on its way to the churchyard in the
village. "There he goes, poor fellow, his sufferings over at last," he
said; and then he set the cottage in order and began the old solitary
life again.

He saw Miss Ward but once.

It was a breathless evening in August, when the moonlight flooded the
level country. He had started out to stroll across the waste; but the
mood changed, and climbing over the eastern wall he had walked back to
the flag-staff, and now lay at its foot gazing up into the infinite sky.
A step sounded on the gravel-walk; he turned his face that way, and
recognized Miss Ward. With confident step she passed the dark cottage,
and brushed his arm with her robe as he lay unseen in the shadow. She
went down toward the parade-ground, and his eyes followed her. Softly
outlined in the moonlig