beyond them, and struck across country. The
exercise soon sent the blood dancing through his hands again, and
by the morning he was thirty-five miles from Loches.

He had stopped once, a mile or two after starting, when he came to
a stream. Into this he had waded, and had washed the muck stains
from his clothes, hair, and face.

With the morning dawn his clothes were dry, and he presented to the
eye an aspect similar to that which he wore when captured at Blois
nearly a year before, of a dilapidated and broken-down soldier, for
he had retained in prison the clothes he wore when captured; but
they had become infinitely more dingy from the wear and tear of
prison, and the soaking had destroyed all vestige of colour.

Presently he came to a mill by a stream.

"Hallo!" the miller said cheerily, from his door. "You seem to have
been in the wars, friend."

"I have in my way," Rupert said. "I was wounded in Flanders. I have
been home to Bordeaux, and got cured again. I started for the army
again, and some tramps who slept in the same room with me robbed me
of my last shilling. To complete my disaster, last night, not
having money to pay for a bed, I tramped on, fell into a stream,
and was nearly drowned."

"Come in," said the miller. "Wife, here is a poor fellow out of
luck. Give him a bowl of hot milk, and some bread."

Chapter 21: Back in Harness.

"You must have had a bad time of it." the miller said, as he
watched Rupert eating his breakfast. "I don't know that I ever saw
anyone so white as you are, and yet you look strong, too."

"I am strong," Rupert said, "but I had an attack, and all my colour
went. It will come back again soon, but I am only just out. You
don't want a man, do you? I am strong and willing. I don't want to
beg my way to the army, and I am ashamed of my clothes. There will
be no fighting till the spring. I don't want high pay, just my food
and enough to get me a suit of rough clothes, and to keep me in
bread and cheese as I go back."

"From what part of France do you come?" the miller asked. "You
don't speak French as people do hereabouts."

"I come from Brittany," Rupert said; "but I learnt to speak the
Paris dialect there, and have almost forgotten my own, I have been
so long away."

"Well, I will speak to my wife," the miller said. "Our last hand
went away three months since, and all the able-bodied men have been
sent to the army. So I can do with you if my wife likes you."

The