we all die of curiosity;" and, as she spoke, she caught some water in the palm of her hand and sprinkled it over the drooping herbs in her basket, while the others pressed round more eagerly than ever.

But Veuve Angelin's temper had been roused by Nannon's reminiscences.

"No, indeed, I am going," she said crossly. "No one shall ever accuse me of gossiping. Monsieur's breakfast has to be prepared by the time he returns from the Cygne, and with this monster of a pitcher which I have to carry up the hill, just because the fille who fetches the water is ill

"Let me carry your pitcher, Madame Angelin!"

"I will take it to the very door. Peste, it is hard if one can't do so much for one's friends."

"Yes, yes, Fanchon will carry it like a bird. And so monsieur is absolutely at the hotel?"

"Bon jour, mesdames," said old Nannon, laughing shrilly. "No one cares to help me with my basket, I suppose? It is heavy, too; since it contains the clean clothes of my sister's girl, Toinette, a good, hardworking, respectable girl she is, and fille at the Cygne, as you know,-what, Fanchon, my child, do you mean that you would carry it! How admirable you are with your attentions to a poor old woman like me! I was wrong, Madame Angelin, I acknowledge it, in my estimate of your generation."

There was a hesitating movement among the women; they had forgotten Toinette, and with such a link it was possible that Nannon might be the best newsmonger after all. Veuve Angelin noticed the movement, and it filled her with dismay.

"But I saw it myself, I tell you, and there are not many in Charville can say that," she cried loudly, plunging at once into the very heart of her subject. "I saw them come out of the Cygne, the old monsieur and the young lady, and walk up and down, up and down, under the trees before the door, and then just, just as they came towards me

She stopped. The women pressed closer. Fanchon was drawn back, and listened enthralled; while old Nannon, whose temper was not so sharp as her words, chuckled under her breath, and said, "She has started at last." Veuve Angelin looked round. and went on in triumph, nodding her little head, and throwing out her hands as she talked.

"It is altogether as I have told you. They were close by me, those two, and turning round to enter the hotel again, when, in one second his foot slipped, and he came down on the pavement with his head against the steps. Imagine my feelings!"

A buzz of sympathy responded at once to this

appeal.

In the character of an eye-witness, Madame almost became a heroine. Fanchon timidly

inquired,

"He is old?"

"He looked half dead before."

"And he is hurt?"

"Hurt! Of what then do you conceive our skulls to be composed of granite-iron-indiarubber? Tenez, I heard it crack, I tell you, and after that there is not much to be said."

"No, assuredly."

"Madame has reason."

Veuve Angelin looked proudly at Nannon; Nannon laughed.

"Since the monsieur is dead, it is a little strange that Monsieur Deshouliéres should trouble himself to pass the morning with him," she said.

"And why?" demanded Mère Angelin, reddening with anger. "Is it likely I put the question frankly to you all, mesdames, is it likely that she-she! should be a better judge of what is strange in the proceedings of Monsieur Deshouliéres, than I who have lived in his service for nearly fifteen months?"

There was a murmur in the negative, but it was not very decided. These doubts, even if rejected, had the effect of weakening the general confidence.

"Certainly, madame should know," said her stanchest adherent, making a loyal effort.

Nevertheless," persisted Nannon, "you may rest assured that an hour ago he was not dead, and, moreover, that Monsieur Deshouliéres was doing his utmost that he should not die."

"Not dead! But I tell you I heard his skull crack!"

"How can you answer that, Nannon?"

"His skull? Bah! I was in the house at the time, and helped to carry him upstairs. M. Deshouliéres

came while I was there."

There was a general exclamation, and in a second old Nannon was surrounded. Here was one who had been more than an eye-witness, an actual actor in the event which was agitating all Charville. Fanchon quickly caught up her basket again, another seized her umbrella, she was the centre of the group which moved away, questioning as they went, towards the upper town, and it is certain that Veuve Angelin would have been left behind, bitter and friendless, to drag her heavy pitcher as best she might up the steep hill, and to moralise upon the fleeting charms of popularity, if old Nannon, generous in the moment of victory, had not desired one of her followers to assist her.

The hot sun streamed down upon the narrow, ill-paved streets; little gutters trickled crookedly through their middle; the women toiled slowly up, keeping under the shade of gaunt, picturesque houses, all irregularly built, high and low, gabled and carved, delightfully artistic in their very defiance of proportion. Rough steps led up to the houses, great projecting blocks of stone ran along their fronts, with pots of bright flowers resting upon them: everywhere there were windows-up in the roofs, down in quaint unexpected corners-clothes hung out of them, here and there long strings of peascods festooned across. Strange little stone workshops were built up by themselves in the street, so small that the workmen inside looked too big and overgrown for them; everything was shelving, dirty, picturesque. The people sat outside their houses, tightcapped children played about, the sun fell on them, on the gay flowers, the green peascods-somehow or other from everywhere bright bits of colour flashed out gorgeously. Nannon, with her poor, weather-beaten face, and her shoulders broadened with labour, walked sturdily on in her blue stuff gown, a little shawl crossed under an enormously wide black waistband, a plain white cap pulled forward on her forehead, and slanting upwards behind