giving him a hard, stern look, "how did you get the bird you sold to Monique for her two-franc piece?" "I found it in the wood. I did not sell her the bird. The two francs went for the cage." “And I say you stole the bird," cried his master, starting to his feet, and shaking his fist at him. "And I have called in your godfather to tell you in his presence that I will have no thief in my house." "I found the bird; I am no thief," said Sévère, sullenly, "but I am willing to leave you. Maître Mathieu wants plough-boy- he will take me." a There was a pause. Sévère looked at his master, then at his godfather, a thin old man, who only shrugged his shoulders, and raised his eyebrows, as much as to say, "Your own lookout, my lad." The youth's brown cheek turned a little pale, perhaps, but he asked calmly what he was to do. "To enlist, and never let us see your black face again," was the bitter answer. Sévère's dark eyes seemed to flash fire as he replied, "I hope that I shall never see your face again, Maître Louis. I know that I have done wrong; but you know, too, that I am no thief; in your heart you know it. I only wanted to please Monique. As to fighting, I fear it no more than I feared hard work. I shall go to-morrow to Saint Laurent and enlist there." Séverè was true to his word; he went and had his supper, and was silent over the meal as usual. When he walked out into the court, and saw to some work there, his godfather joined him, and, slipping a franc-piece in his hand, hoped this would be a warning to him. But Sévère thrust back the coin. "Thank you, uncle," said he; "if I enlist I shall be provided for." screamed "Bonjour " to him, then laughed shrilly, as if it were such a good joke. "I have not bidden her good-bye," thought Sévère, sadly; "it is better not." Manneville was not awake yet, as he passed through its silent streets. He was soon on the road to Saint Laurent, and near the old oak. A panting breath and a pattering of little feet made him turn round. It was Monique, running through the high grass towards him. Monique with her head bare, and her clothes half on, and her naked feet all wet with dew, and the cage and the magpie in her hand. "Oh! Sévère," she said, all out of breath, "how wicked of you to go and not say good-bye. I know - I know it is all the magpie. I listened at the keyhole yesterday, and I thought to see you this morning; and Pascal told me you were gone, and he laughed because I cried; and I know it is all the magpie, and I have brought him, and give him back, Sévère ; and oh," she added, bursting into tears, "do not go." She cried so bitterly that all Sévère could do at first was to make her sit down on the root of the old tree, and sitting down by her side to try and comfort her. A hard task, for Sévère could not say when he would come back. Never, so had he resolved in his inmost heart, would he live in the same place with the man who had insulted and injured him. "And what shall I do when you are gone?" sobbed the child, "what shall I do, Sévère?" "Yes," he answered, moodily, "they like you now, they make a toy of you; but when you grow up you will be a drudge in your grandfather's house. I used to think, Never mind, when they are too hard upon her, I will carry water for her and help her by stealth; for, Monique, your little hands were not made for rough work, and you ought not to spoil your pretty face over kitchen fires, and get red-eyed like old Germaine. Poor little Monique, if you would only stay little and pretty till I come back some day; but you will grow up, and I daresay they will make you marry Pascal, because he is your uncle's godson. But do not, Monique; let him marry Thémire, or any one else. Never marry him; he is lazy, and will make you work like a slave." With cockcrow, Sévère rose, took his little bundle, and stole down-stairs, hoping to meet no one; but Pascal, a ploughboy, a year older than himself, and with whom he had a feud of long standing, was already up. As Sévère went by him, his head erect, his bearing proud, but his significant bundle slung over his shoulder, Pascal laughed a low, jeering laugh. The lad's heart burned with wrath as he left the house; yet when he had passed beneath the arched gateway, he could not help looking up at little Monique's ivied win- not to go. dow between the two turrets. The cage Monique sobbed that she would never marry Pascal, and again entreated Sévère "I must," he said, rising. "Look, was hanging outside, and the magpie there is the sun taking that grey cloak off, and showing us his red face above the green edge of the cornfield. I must go on, Monique, and you must go back, and take the bird home to your uncle.” Bonjour," said a voice in the tree, and with a laugh the magpie flew away. Whilst they were talking, he had found the door of his cage loose, and slipped out, and now he was free. "Go away, you "I hate you. "Poor little Monique," sighed Sévère; "you too will be scolded for that magpie." And now came the parting, and the last words, and the last tears, and Sévère's farewell kiss on either of Monique's tearstained cheeks; and the lad was gone, and the child stood looking after him, her eyes so dim that she could not see, and the empty cage in her hand. bad bird," said Monique. Eleven years had passed, and Maître Sevère David sat by the parlour window of his house in Fontaine, watching the people of Manneville going by on their way home from the fair of Saint Laurent. "Now who is that," thought he, as a tall, dark peasant, with a grave, handsome face, which he seemed to know, came down the street, stopped at his door, and raising the latch, entered his room. "Good morning, godfather," said he. "Why, Sévère, is it you? and where is your knapsack? "I have not been a soldier these four years," answered Sévère, drily. "I wrote it to you at the time." You "Thank you, uncle. I had a foolish fancy to see the old place again, and to know how you were all getting on. are well, as I see, and I think I met Thémire a while ago. She has grown a pretty girl; and Maître Louis David is dead, they tell me; and how is little Monique?" "Little Monique, indeed!" echoed his uncle. "Don't you know that six months back her two cousins died of the same fever, both childless, and that three months ago Louis died and left her all he had. Mamzelle Monique is a rich woman now, but it will not last. Every one says it will not last. Louis made her promise not to keep her good-for-nothing brother in the house; but he comes and goes, and he will make short work of her money, unless she marries one of the gallants who are always after her: Médéric Chevallier, Vincent Blondel, and the lot of them." "Little Monique with a lot of gallants?" said Sévère, seeming amused. "Well, uncle, you are giving me news; and now that I have seen you, I will go and have a look at Manneville," he added, rising, "so good-bye, for we may not meet for another dozen years. I am staying at the Silver Lion." The fair was nearly over, and the people that came home from it having ceased to pass by Maître Sévère's window, he was leaving his post, when a Norman cariole stopped at his door, and a young woman in black alighted from it. He had scarcely caught a glimpse of her tall, light figure, when she walked in. She gave a quick, disappointed look round the room, then throwing back the hood of her mourn"Uncle, I would not have your franc-ing cloak, she showed him a fair and lovely piece when we last parted, and I do not want your five-franc pieces now." Maître Sévère confessed remembering it, but was so evidently on his guard, that his godson said, impatiently, face, with a rich crown of golden hair, scarcely hid by a little white cap. "You have forgotten your little cousin Monique, Maître Sévère," said she, with a bright smile that lit the dull and dingy room. 66 He spoke with the good-humoured assurance of a man of twenty-eight, whom life has taught, and Maître Sévère David's instinctive mistrust of a poor relative yielded to the evidence of his senses. "Ah! so you are Monique, are you?" The tall, strong, well-clothed man before said Maître Sévère, coolly, shading his him had not come as a supplicant; still eyes with his hand the better to see her. prudence suggested a few questions. Well, well," he added, more graciously, Maître Sévère remembered that his god-"sit down, Mamzelle Monique ;" and son was manager or something on a farm after a pause, Cousin, they tell no lies in lower Normandy. How came he to who say that you are a beautiful young have left so excellent a position? The old woman." man was dead, answered Sévère; but he could go on another farm next his late master's to-morrow, if he pleased. "Then why do you not?" asked his amiable relative. "Never lose such a chance as that." Monique laughed carelessly, glanced at herself in a little tarnished mirror at the other end of the room, and said "Thank you, cousin." "And your pretty little hands with such long white fingers," said Maître Sévère; "where did you get them, Monique? | pale, grave face, signed him to enter the Not milking the cows or scouring the saucepans." 66 Why should I?" answered she, shortly. "I am rich now." "Get married, Mamzelle Monique, or you will not be rich long. Your good-fornothing brother "We will not speak of him," she interrupted, impatiently. "Can you tell me, cousin, if Sévère David be really come back?" Maître Sévère laconically replied that Sévère had come back. Monique's impatient questions soon drew the rest from him. In five minutes she knew all he had to tell. She heard him, leaning back in her chair, with her rosy cheek on her hand, and her dark blue eyes gazing on the floor. "And so he means to stop at the Silver Lion," was the only comment she made. "Thank you, cousin; I must go. I see that Pascal can scarcely hold the mare. Do not forget to look in at me when you come to Manneville." She wrapped her cloak around her, walked out, stepped into the carriole, and was gone in no time. "Take me to the white house," said she to Pascal. The white house is a farm on the road to Saint Laurent, with the owner of which Monique had business. Pascal pointed with his whip to the young green corn on either side of the road, and nodded. Yes, it was hers, and Monique knew it. Hers too was the great old oak, the king of that wide corn-land, that spread its mighty boughs in the summer air, on a background of pale blue summer sky. "Why, surely that is Sévère," said Pascal, as they drove on again. She looked, and saw a tall, dark man walking steadily along the road. He saw a fair woman driving past him, and it was over. It was Sévère. Monique stopped an hour at the white house. It was dark when she reached her own old farm. She asked at once who had come whilst she was away, and reddened when Germaine answered that Maître Jean was in the kitchen, with Maître Vincent Blondel, and Maître Médéric Chevallier, all waiting for the mistress of the house; they were also drinking her cider, and singing uproari ously to beguile the time. With a raised colour Monique bade Germaine send out her brother to her, and when the message had been delivered, and the young man came out with bloodshot eyes and reeling steps, his sister, looking at him with a room where, eleven years before, Sévère* David had heard his doom. "Jean," said she, coldly, "I am wearied of all this. It must cease. You fill this house with noise, you show a bad example to my servants, you waste my substance. It cannot last; you must come no more." She left him and walked out. With a sore and troubled heart she went to the evening prayer in the church of Manneville. Old women whom the burden of life troubled no more, mothers with their young ones clinging to them, little children ever looking round, labourers coming in from work, had met to pray; and Monique, sitting solitary on the great old oaken bench of the Davids, envied them all, and felt very lonely. The Silver Lion is on the place of Manneville, looking at the church, as it were, and, as it well may, being a decent inn, where even hard-drinking Normans are kept in order. Sévère was smoking outside the door, when the little congregation came out of the church in the cool twilight. Monique saw him at once, and went straight up to him. For a moment they were both silent. "Sévère," she said at length, “ have you forgotten Monique ?" "Has Monique remembered Sévère all these years?" he asked briefly. "What would you have had me do?" said she, wondering. "Do? Oh, nothing," was his careless answer. She walked away in offended silence. He watched her going, then followed her, and soon stood by her side on the road that leads straight to the abbey. "Monique," said he, holding out his hand, "I am going away to-morrow; let us be friends." "And why do you go?" she asked, almost indignantly. "Was it only to look at the stones of Manneville you came back?" "Who wants me here?" he retorted. "Not you, Monique : you are rich now: you want no one." "I want a friend," answered Monique, very sadly. "It is no use telling you why; you do not care, and — you are going away." They had gone on walking along the quiet road, which just then was very lonely. The fields stretched away_on either side in the grey evening light. The new-mown hay filled the air with its wild, sweet scent; little moths flitted about and far away before them; a light burned in the old abbey, Monique's home, where | impervious to reproach or blame, simply her brother and his friends were carousing. | said: "I am here to manage MademoiSévère could not see her face well, but selle Monique's farm, and I have nothing from the sound of her voice he thought she to do with you." With his new mistress was crying. He forgot the long oblivion Sévère was as cool and civil as if they had which had stung him, he only remembered always been strangers. And so weeks his old affection and her trouble. and months went by. "You know I cared for you once, Monique," he said; "why should I not care now?" "Yes, you cared for me once," said Monique, still speaking sadly; "I thought of it as I drove past the old tree to-daythat tree by which we parted. I thought of it as I remembered what you had suffered for my sake. You cared for me once, Sévère, but I was a little child then a poor one, too. Now I am rich, and I am a woman of twenty-one, and you care no more!" He was silent; but with every word she spoke the little Monique of long ago rose before him. And the hardness which years and pride had brought round his heart seemed to melt away. "What can I do for you?" he asked. "What you will not do, Sévère," she answered. "I am rich, but I have an enemy in my own flesh and blood, from whom no one will defend me. People bid me marry. I will not; I will be Monique David, and no more." "What can I do for you?" he asked again. "What you are going to do for a stranger," she said, with sudden eagerness. "Take the management of my farm, and save me from the misery that turns my inheritance into a curse. I shall interfere with nothing-nothing. You shall be master on the land-sow, reap, till, buy, and sell as you please, and you will deliver me from a yoke which makes my old hard days of servitude seem a blessed time." Sévère did not answer. There was a long silence, during which Monique's heart beat fast. "And when you marry?" he length. "I tell you I shall not marry. promise?" she added, half in jest, earnest. said at "There is no need, Monique. When you marry, I go. I may have a mistress, but I will have no master." All Manneville conned and wondered when Sévère became Monique's viceregent, and Jean was virtually excluded from his sister's little dominions. In vain he clamoured and upbraided. She pleaded her uncle's behests, and was firm; and Sévère, One November morning, Germaine grumbled so hard at some orders which she had just received from her young mistress, that the overflow of her indignation reached Sévère's ears in the yard. He sharply asked what she was saying about Mademoiselle Monique. "Mamzelle Monique, indeed!" echoed Germaine. "What was she before Maître Louis died?" "She was our master's niece, and now she is our mistress," was the brief reply. "Yes; and you have the high hand now," sneered Germaine; "but wait till young Blondel, or Médéric, or any of them, turns our Mamzelle into Madame !" Sévère looked gloomily at the grey old walls and straggling brown roof of the farm, then he frowned as a flock of geese strutted past him, and without looking at Germaine, he asked what she meant. Germaine half leaned out of the kitchen window, and said, mysteriously: “ Blondel is her cousin, and Médéric's mother is coming, and she has the others for the look of it; and the best turkey is to be killed, and we are to get seven pounds of beef from the butcher's, and we shall all have meat soup to-morrow." "Who cares about meat soup?" asked Sévère, walking away. Germaine, who had never liked him, nodded her white cap at him, and went back to her cooking. Sévère had to go out on business that day, but he came back before supper. He found his young mistress in the kitchen, talking there to Thémire, now the best dressmaker in Manneville, who had come in the afternoon to alter the fashion of a dress. The two girls stood side by side in the lamplight, and set off one another. Themire was short, dark, and very pretty. She had quick black eyes, a little, pert, turned-up nose, dimples, and the prettiest little white teeth in the world; and Monique, when seen near her, looked fairer, taller, and more lovely than ever, a Norman maid, with almost classic features, and the bloom of a rose on her fair young face. Thémire was ardently pleading the cause of gimp trimming for sleeve-cuffs. | "But could it be ready for the morn ing?" asked Monique; and Thémire | lived alone in it, after his own miserly bravely volunteered to sit up all night, if fashion. it were needful. Monique smiled sweetly, and had begun to say this would be a pity, when her eye fell on Sévère, who stood near the door, looking on. "I did not know you had come back, Sévère," she said. "Do you want me?" "I want to give you money," he answered; and he brought out a bagful of five-franc pieces, which he laid on the table before her. "And so he has actually paid you," said Monique, admiringly. "How did you manage, Sévère ?" "I asked for the money, and he gave it," replied Sévère, quietly; and in the same breath, "Is it true, Mademoiselle Monique, that Maître Vincent Blondel is coming to-morrow? "Yes," answered Monique, "he is coming; he is my cousin, you know. Why.do you ask, Sévère?" "I want to know how prices went at the last fair down his way," answered Sévère. Then he turned to leave the kitchen, and without looking round, closed the door after him. Sévère went straight up to his own room, in a remote part of the farm. He changed his clothes, put on his best blouse, his smartest cap, and his new necktie (a present Monique had made him); then, knowing that supper was over, he went back to the kitchen. Thémire was gone, and Monique had retired to a little parlour where she always sat alone in the long winter evenings. "As if she were too good for the kitchen," Germaine often muttered under her breath. 66 Good-night to you, godfather," said Sévère as he entered the house. "Tomorrow is your fête-day, and so I came tonight to give you my best wishes, for we are busy just now, and I must be home before day." "And what have you got there?" asked Maître Sévère, peering in the dim light of the rush candle he held. "Only a turkey for you," replied Sévère, as they entered the kitchen together; and taking Gogo out of his handkerchief, he placed him on the table. Maître Sévère quietly set down his iron candlestick near Gogo, and without giving that luckless bird a look, he laid his thin hand on the young man's shoulder and said, deliberately: "My boy, you want something from me. My fête-day comes round every year, but never before did you give me a turkey." "Of Sévère's bronzed cheek reddened a little, but he tried to reply carelessly: course I want something from you, uncle; but as to the turkey, I got it cheap, though it is a fine one. Look at its breast, white as milk and tender like a chicken." Norman cider plays sad havoc with Norman teeth, and this insidious praise of Gogo's breast was assailing Sévère's godfather in a tender point. He took the turkey, weighed it in his hand, poked it all over, and said, with a chuckle, "I never saw such a fine bird, so white, so plump, and cheap, too." "Not too cheap," answered Sévère. “I suppose I may sit down, uncle." The old man nodded, but did not sit down himself. To all appearance he was taken up with Gogo, on whom he pro|nounced quite a panegyric. Such a tur "Well, and what do you want?" she asked, as Sévère's tall form darkened the doorway. "Supper is over, and the kitch-key; so large, so plump. en is mine." "Uncle," interrupted Sévère, "you said "And so is the poultry, Germaine. II wanted something from you. Suppose want a fat turkey.' Germaine, amazed, asked what he could want a fat turkey for. Sévère replied that he wanted to make a present of it to his godfather, whose saint's-day it was, and added that he was in a hurry. "Have Gogo," said Germaine, producing a magnificent turkey. "Another will do as well for Vincent and Médéric and the lot of them to-morrow. Take Gogo at seven francs, Sévère." After some bargaining, he took Gogo at six francs fifty, tied him up in a clean handkerchief, and walked out. Maître Sévère David's house was the last of the high street in Fontaine. He you hear what it is." Maître Sévère's small grey eyes twinkled; he drew his chair to the hearth, looked at the faint embers burning there, and laying his hands on his knees, he set his head on one side and listened to his godson. "Uncle, I want to marry Mademoiselle Monique." Maître Sévère David whistled softly. "Well, marry her," he said, blandly. "She is rich and I am poor," said Sévère. "I cannot ask her to become my wife, when all I have is the wages I earn with her. But if you, godfather, who have plenty of money and no children, would |
