Puslapio vaizdai
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yours as ours. You've even bagged our Joan of Arc! I understand that you've been putting up a statue to her!"

"And yet she did beat you!" observed his sister gently.

I felt that she was gathering herself together to receive my return blow, and I could not help laughing. Joan of Arc seemed so remote.

"Well, she preserved our independence by it," I said. "Our kings would have reigned in Paris, just as the Kings of Scotland came to London when they succeeded to the English throne. We should have become a province of France. I wonder how it would have worked?"

"You would have been our Ireland," said the lady. "I think Joan of Arc did well."

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turned to us, and upstairs to a wide landing where there were seats. My hostess turned to me with excuses. "It's monsieur le maire," she said. "My brother has told you about that money? They bother him so that he's afraid of them."

"He's gone," announced the Colonel presently, from his post at the crack of the shutters. "They're at me now to revive our old university," he continued, "or else to endow a department of medical research in connection with the hospital. But that I'll never do!" he said, his eyes blazing. "There'll be vivisection there whatever they may say. I know them! I don't trust 'em, and I'll have nothing to do with it!"

I was not there to plead the cause of medical research, so I changed the subject.

"But the university?" said I. "Surely that would be a grand piece of work!

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"Yes," he said; but it's a great chemical laboratory that they've set their hearts on, with a professor's chair. There's a fellow here who, they say, ought to be one of the first chemists in the world, if I gave him all the fitments he wants and leisure to use them. Nice fellow enough-a bookseller's son."

"Well, there you are then," said I cheerfully.

"But I detest science," said the Colonel.

"My brother is behind the times," remarked mademoiselle;

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'but behind the times to a degree that is perfectly appalling! He's antediluvian!"

"And we got on very well then," said he. "If any one bored me, I ate him."

"Luckily you can't do that now," said his sister.

I took my leave then, wondering if the Colonel would ever get rid of his tainted money, and whether, if his next heir had the opportunity, it would occur to him that he might combine his own glorification with that of his province.

By this time the hot weather had begun in the plain of Roussillon, and I went off into the mountains with my hammock and a knapsack. The chestnuts were in full leaf, and the shade was thick. There were many little villages where I could eat and sleep when I liked, and many little old fortified towns, clinging like limpets to the side of a gorge or squeezed into the smallest possible compass within their ramparts on a hill-top. Between them and their protecting cliffs stretched mile after mile of rocky forest-land, interspersed with wide clearings covered with grass and flowers; and through it all there passed, at regular hours, great flocks and herds, each with its attendant man and dog, filling the air with the sound of their innumerable bells. I was very happy, and the time passed quickly.

On one of my rambles I fell in with a mining engineer, tramping like myself He was half-Spanish and half-French. I judged him to be something of a scamp, but he was a student of men and of beasts,

II.

and one of the wittiest men, in a dry untranslatable way, that I have ever come across; and he knew that country, its weather and its amenities, as a man knows his pockets. I never could remember his name, but in my mind I always called him Long-and-Narrow, for long and narrow he was, from the top of his head to the toes of his sandal-shod feet. Yet he was marvellously strong. He could lift stones that I could hardly move, when he was building a shelter or clearing a space for his bed, which he usually made himself, of branches and an armful of broom. We kept together for a time. My tobacco was certainly better than his, and his local knowledge was useful to me.

He had a funny little airgun that he always carried about with him. It had a good deal of force, and made absolutely no noise. He used to shoot all kinds of little wild things with it, but I forgave him, because he never would shoot the skylarks. He used to empty his pockets in the evening, and toast them all for

his supper.
I was surprised
when one day he produced half
a dozen field-mice, and pro-
ceeded to skin them and eat
them. He said they were de-
licious, and certainly they smelt
good.

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"Silly

respect of his uncle.
old crank," he said. There
are dozens of ways in which
he could spend that money if
he had a little common-sense.
The country wants developing.
To take one example out of
many, I know of a mine not
a dozen miles from here that
he could have for an old song.
It simply wants capital, modern
machinery, and skilled work-
men, and in a few years he
would have a most colossal
fortune-big as anything in the
States. But he won't. Won't
even listen to me about it.
I suppose he'll fritter it away
on something or other, un-
less he happened to die and
leave it for somebody more
sensible."

We usually slept in the woods, I in my hammock, and he on his brushwood bed. He used to tell me that I ought never to sleep out like that, alone by myself, because I was such a heavy sleeper. Indeed, he could take what he liked from me in the course of the night, however carefully and secretly I stowed it away about my person. He always produced it in the morning; but at last I got really angry, thinking the joke had gone far enough, and then he never did it again. But the morning after, I found a dead field-mouse in my shirtsleeve. I thought it had crept in there for warmth, and I had crushed the poor little thing; but the next morning there were six of them! Then he tried me with a live one, but that did wake me up.

"My uncle is like you," he said one day; "he sleeps like a dormouse." I found out then that he was a nephew on his mother's side of my friend Monsieur le Colonel.

"But your uncle walks in his sleep," I said; "his sister told me so."

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That only shows how sound he sleeps," answered Longand-Narrow, 'since he can even walk about without waking."

I found myself wondering if the Colonel had any other nephews.

As the summer wore on we moved up into the region of the pine-forests, where the air was cool. One evening we came to a hermitage, where there was a little old chapel much visited by pilgrims from the whole district for many miles round. There was a rough stone building to lodge them, and an old abbé in charge. We had had one heavy thunderstorm, and another seemed to be brewing, so we agreed to have a supper off the abbé, and sleep for once in a proper bed. There was no one else there that evening. After supper I drew the old abbé on to talk of his chapel and its legends. He was very

He did not speak with much sad, because everything about

it was so small and mean com- have done it in French. Howpared to Lourdes.

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“And I have had such hopes!" he said. "There was a great fortune-never could it have been spent in a better way." Long and Narrow winked at me. "Even I had the very plans drawn out and an estimate made. But it was no good. He who had the spending of that money said he thought one Lourdes was enough, and he would hear no more. But what beats me is the thing he has chosen to do with it," went on the old abbé. Long and Narrow almost jumped. I felt quite excited. "What?" I asked.

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Just then a knock came at the door, and in walked the Colonel himself, wet through, for the storm was raging, but ruddy and cheerful, looking years younger than when I had seen him last. He greeted us and turned to his host, who was evidently an old friend. "I know you said you would never speak to me again," he observed, "but I claim the pilgrim's right to a crust of bread and a shake-down," and, remarking that he was very hungry, he set to at the food we had left without any more ado.

Presently he said something in Catalan, very quietly, apparently addressed to his plate. Long- and - Narrow leant forward, and the abbé thundered a furious reply. I knew well enough that they were only starting a bout of verbal swordplay; but I wished they would

ever, they seemed to have forgotten me. I waited with what patience I could, and at last the abbé turned to me

"What do you think he's done with all that money ? he said. "You English are so practical. Tell him what you think of him!"

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What has he done?

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"He's gone and given it all, every penny, to provide a hundred francs for every baby after the first two born in Roussillon to married parents! And a hundred more the day it is a year old!"

"And the same, doubled, for the next baby," put in the Colonel.

"They say the whole of that money will be gone in ten years or so, and absolutely nothing to show for it at all!" concluded the old man bitterly.

"And what does that matter?" said the Colonel. "Life's the only thing that matters! Life and morals. We're a fine old race. Fill our province with sound men and women, and they'll make good. Drat you all, you and your schemes!" he concluded with immense vigour. "I'm going to enjoy all the rest of my days in peace, and God bless the babies!"

"But how have you arranged it?" asked Long-and-Narrow. "Have you been to a lawyer? "

"Of course," said his uncle. "Got the whole thing put down in black and white, and the deed's to be ready for

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Perhaps," said the Colonel. "And won't I be a happy man when the job's done."

Thereupon we went to bed. We were shown into a long room, very bare, and with several beds in it. We were told that they were often all full, but that to-night we might be sure of having it to ourselves. Long-and-Narrow began to protest, rather unnecessarily I thought, against my being expected to share a room with them. Said he knew the English were never accustomed to such ways. The abbé seemed rather embarrassed, and, to settle the matter, I flung my knapsack on one of the beds, and announced it was to be mine.

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What a noise the torrent is making," said the Colonel suddenly, as we were bidding the abbé good-night.

"It is indeed," said he; "there must have been a waterspout on the mountain."

We all went to the window at the other end of the room, and I saw that though by the door we came in at we were on the first floor, the ground sloped away so rapidly underneath the house that at this end we were full thirty feet from it, and below that was a precipitous rock. Round its foot swept, in a narrow channel, a flood of dark water.

"How little foam there is," remarked the abbé.

"It's because it is so deep to-night," said Long-and-Narrow.

The abbé went away, and I think it was my doing that we left that end window open so as to get the cool air from the torrent. The Colonel took the bed nearest, I came next, and Long-and-Narrow went to the one beyond me. An idea for a picture had come to me, and I could not sleep. I lay awake elaborating it in every detail. I had not had such an inspiration since the war, and I was eager to get it into shape. I was just thinking at last that I would turn over and go to sleep, when Longand-Narrow slipped out of bed and came and stood beside me. In my abstraction I did not move, and I thought I heard him go on down the room. A clock struck two, and I opened my eyes to see what he could be doing. I realised that the Colonel was snoring magnificently- the sonorous rhythm almost drowned the roaring of the torrent. The room was flooded with moonlight, and beside his uncle's bed stood Long-and-Narrow, his air-gun in his hand. He might have been aiming at the man's eye. Like a flash I was on him, wrenched the gun from his hand, and flung it out of the window. His first look at me was one of hate, changing to abject fear.

"I think we're dreaming," I said. "Let's get back to bed."

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