manner, there was a secrecy in his smiling face,
and he conveyed an air of mystery to those
words, which struck the eyes and ears of his
nephew forcibly. At the same time, the thin
straight lines of the setting of the eyes, and the
thin straight lips, and the markings in the
nose, curved with a sarcasm that looked
handsomely diabolic.

"Yes," repeated the Marquis. "A Doctor
with a daughter. Yes. So commences the new
philosophy! You are fatigued. Good night!"

It would have been of as much avail to
interrogate any stone face outside the château, as
to interrogate that face of his. The nephew
looked at him, in vain, in passing on to the door.

"Good night!" said the uncle.  I look to
the pleasure of seeing you again in the morning.
Good repose! Light Monsieur my nephew to
his chamber there!—And burn Monsieur my
nephew in his bed, if you will," he added to
himself, before he rang his little bell again, and
summoned his valet to his own bedroom.

The valet come and gone, Monsieur the
Marquis walked to and fro in his loose chamber-
robe, to prepare himself gently for sleep, that hot
still night. Rustling about the room, his softly-
slippered feet making no noise on the floor, he
moved like a refined tiger:—looked like some
enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked
sort, in story, whose periodical change into tiger
form was either just going off, or just coming
on.

He moved from end to end of his voluptuous
bedroom, looking again at the scraps of the
day's journey that came unbidden into his mind;
the slow toil up the hill at sunset, the setting
sun, the descent, the mill, the prison on the crag,
the little village in the hollow, the peasants at
the fountain, and the mender of roads with his
blue cap pointing out the chain under the
carriage. That fountain suggested the Paris
fountain, the little bundle lying on the step, the
women bending over it, and the tall man with
his arms up, crying, "Dead!"

"I am cool now," said Monsieur the
Marquis, "and may go to bed."

So, leaving only one light burning on the
large hearth, he let his thin gauze curtains fall
around him, and heard the night break its silence
with a long sigh as he composed himself to
sleep.

The stone faces on the outer walls stared
blindly at the black night for three heavy hours;
for three heavy hours, the horses in the stables
rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the
owl made a noise with very little resemblance
in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the
owl by men-poets. But, it is the obstinate
custom of such creatures hardly ever to say
what is set down for them.

For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the
château, lion and human, stared blindly at the
night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape,
dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing
dust on all the roads. The burial-place had got
to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass
were undistinguishable from one another; the
figure on the Cross might have come down, for
anything that could be seen of it. In the village,
taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming,
perhaps, of banquets, as the starved usually do,
and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the
yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly,
and were fed and freed.

The fountain in the village flowed unseen and
unheard, and the fountain at the château dropped
unseen and unheard—both melting away, like
the minutes that were falling from the spring of
Time—through three dark hours. Then, the grey
water of both began to be ghostly in the light,
and the eyes of the stone faces of the château
were opened.

It grew lighter and lighter, until at last the sun
touched the tops of the still trees, and poured
its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the water
of the château fountain seemed to turn to blood,
and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of the
birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-
beaten sill of the great window of the bed-
chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little
bird sang its sweetest song with all its might.
At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare
amazed, and, with open mouth and dropped
under-jaw, looked awe-stricken.

Now, the sun was full up, and movement
began in the village. Casement windows opened,
crazy doors were unbarred, and people came
forth shivering—chilled, as yet, by the new
sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil
of the day among the village population. Some,
to the fountain; some, to the fields; men and
women here, to dig and delve; men and women
there, to see to the poor livestock, and lead the
bony cows out, to such pasture as could be found
by the roadside. In the church and at the
Cross, a kneeling figure or two; attendant on
the latter prayers, the led cow, trying for a
breakfast among the weeds at the Cross-foot.

The château awoke later, as became its
quality, but awoke gradually and surely. First, the
lonely boar-spears and knives of the chase had
been reddened as of old; then, had gleamed
trenchant in the morning sunshine; now, doors
and windows were thrown open, horses in the
stables looked round over their shoulders at the
light and freshness pouring in at doorways,
leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated
windows, dogs pulled hard at their chains, and
reared impatient to be loosed.

All these trivial incidents belonged to the
routine of life, and the return of morning.
Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of
the château, nor the running up and down the
stairs, nor the hurried figures on the terrace, nor
the booting and tramping here and there and
everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and
riding away?

What winds conveyed this hurry to the
grizzled mender of roads, already at work on
the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's
dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle
that it was worth no crow's while to peck at, on
a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some
grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him