Mr. Sterne was at my elbow. He had once
had such a dance on the road between
Nismes and Lunel, where is the best
Muscatto wine in all France.) So we went one
merry round, offered her a short compliment,
and brought her back to the side of Corydon.
That youth looked grateful. What did
Rosalie think of the stranger? Si bête! I
daresay she told Corydon.

What was the significance of this sudden
lull; this sudden dropping away of dancers?
Tambourine thrumming grows halting, and
nearly dies off altogether. The dancers are
looking uneasily to the gate.

There are three horsemen in cloaks and
slouched hats drawn up, looking in. Three
mysterious, ugly-looking fellows, on tall
strong horses. They are at the gate, looking
in silently and scornfully. The taum-
taum had now stopped altogether; the fiddle
had found rest; Corydons, with Phyllises,
are looking suspiciously and with awe at
the silent horsemen. Bontiquet walks down
slowly to accost them. We hear them laughing
loudly and discordantly—- shaking in their
very saddles.

"Pretty inn-keeping!" says one, a low-
browed, villainous fellow, with a scar on his
cheek, the shortest of the three besides.
"Pretty inn-keeping this! you must be
laying by money at this rate?"

"Sacré!" says a second; " but here are
pretty wenches—my soul! what if we rode
in among them, and each picked for himself ?"

Bontiquet was not to be put out that
festive night. He was clearly inviting the
horsemen to dismount and refresh themselves,
which only set them laughing the louder.

"Come! let us go forward," said the third,
who had not spoken as yet. "Mordieu!
what do we stand prating here for? Are
we children ? Come! en avant!" And he
clapped spurs to his horse and set forward,
the other two following close behind, swearing
and contending with their horses.

"Lord deliver us!" said Bontiquet,
returning; "what strange persons! What can
bring them along our peaceful roads ? But
let us forget them, my children! Come! to
the dance once more! Lead out your partners
again, my brave Messieurs!"

Thrum, thrum, went tambourine again,
with jingle jangle most musical. Ply your
fiddle, village musician; here is fellow with
pipe come to aid you. And so they took it
up again until it began to darken. Then
little pink and blue lamps began to twinkle
among the trees—Bontiquet was improvising
an illumination of his gardens. Up in the
branches, along the borders of the walks,
they were shining out.

III. THE CLOCK.

IT was past ten o'clock, and time to have
done with festivity. So the light cars and
wagons were being got ready and horses put
to. Time, surely, to be gone. The bride was
to go, too; to be seen home with an escort;
to be waited on to her own door with torchlight
and a handsome following; much noise and
obstreperous laughter; much confusion in
finding garments. But they are gone at last,
out by the white gate! May they all be
happier for that night's happiness furnished to
the stranger.

It seemed lonely now, after all that
hum of voices. "They are gone," said good
Bontiquet, with a sigh, "and I have a
daughter the less. She was a good girl!
Marie! Monsieur would like to see his room,
doubtless; and no wonder, for he must be
heartily tired! This way, Monsieur,
please!"

He went on before, up a broad state staircase
—to his Seigneurie, in the old days—with
a balustrade up which one might have
walked conveniently. It went to the right
and to the left with grandest sweep, and
landed us in a grand picture corridor, where
there were no pictures now. The corridor
was a grand room in itself, and off it were
other stately apartments.

''O mon Dieu!" said Bontiquet, stopping,
as his foot touched the top step. "I had
quite forgot the poor canon. Where is he?
Our fiddling and dancing swept him clean
away from my head! He ought to have
returned long since."

"'Tis rather late," I said, "for the good
man to be abroad."

"He has some little ways of his own," said
Bontiquet, thoughtfully, "like all poor folk
affected as he is. He is most likely gone up
to the town, and will stay there the night."

"It is likely enough," I said. "What a
pity so gentle a soul should be so visited!"

"Ay!" said Bontiquet; " and yet but
for that one little crookedness, he is as the
rest of us. O, so good, so noble, so full of
sweetness and charity: giving to the poor
almost every sou of that large fortune
Providence has given him. But if you touch on
that one subject! Mordieu! I wish there
were no clocks in the world!"

All this was spoken when Monsieur
Bontiquet's foot was on the last step of his oaken
stair. He was shading his candle all the
time with his hand, scattering about him a
cloud of black dancing shadows. We passed
on down the broad gallery.

"This," Bontiquet said, touching a door
with his hand, "is his room when he stays
with us—when he comes this road—
sometimes for a fortnight, for a month even at a
time. For you must know, Monsieur, he
roams in this way about the country the
whole year round. This is his room," he
said, opening the door softly; "and here he
keeps that famous clock, the making of
which, 'tis said, turned his poor brain. A
wonderful work!"

We entered; a fine spacious apartment,
lofty, and glistening all round with oak
panelling. It was divided by a broad archway