SIR ISUMBRAS AT THE FORD

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
IN COLLABORATION WITH
G. W. TAYLOR

CHANTEMERLE

THE VISION SPLENDID

SIR ISUMBRAS AT THE FORD

By D. K. BROSTER

LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1918

TO
BARBARA AND HER SON PHILIP

"And als he wente by a woodë schawe,

Thare mette he with a lytille knave

Came rynnande him agayne—

'Gramercy, faire Syr Isumbras,

Have pitie on us in this case,

And lifte us uppe for Marie's grace!'

N'as never childe so fayne.

Theretoe of a mayden he was ware,

That over floude ne mighte not fare,

Sir Ysumbras stoopède him thare

And uppe ahent hem twayne."

Metrical Romance of Sir Ysumbras.

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

THE ROAD TO FRANCE

BOOK TWO

THE ROAD TO ENGLAND

BOOK THREE

THE ROAD THAT FEW RETURNED ON

BOOK FOUR

THE OLDEST ROAD OF ALL

BOOK ONE
THE ROAD TO FRANCE

"But, Thomas, ye sall haud your tongue,

Whatever ye may hear or see;

For speak ye word in Elflyn-land,

Ye'll ne'er win back to your ain countrie."

Thomas the Rhymer.

CHAPTER I
Anne-Hilarion gets out of Bed

(1)

"And well ye ken, Maister Anne, ye should hae been asleep lang syne!" said Elspeth severely.

Master Anne—M. le Comte Anne-Hilarion de Flavigny—gave a little sigh from the bed. "I have tried . . . if you would say 'Noroway,' perhaps? . . . Say 'Noroway-over-the-foam,' Elspeth, je vous en prie!"

"Dinna be using ony of yer French havers tae me, wean!" exclaimed the elderly woman thus addressed, still more threateningly. "Aweel then. . . . Ye're no' for 'True Thomas' the nicht?"

The silky brown head on the pillow was shaken. "No, please. I like well enough the Queen of Elfland, but best of all 'Noroway-over-the-foam' and the shoes with cork heels."

Elspeth Saunders grunted, for there was something highly congenial to her Calvinistic soul in that verse of 'Thomas the Rhymer' which deals with the Path of Wickedness—'Yon braid, braid road that lies across the lily leven,' and she was accustomed to render it with unction. However, she sat down, took up her knitting, and began:

"'The king sat in Dunfermline toun

Drinking the blude-red wine,'"

and the little Franco-Scottish boy in the curtained bed closed his eyes, that he might seem to be composing himself to slumber. In reality he was seeing the pictures which are set in that most vivid of all ballads—Sir Patrick Spens receiving the King's letter as he walked on the seashore, the sailor telling of the new moon with the old in her arms (a phenomenon never quite clear to the Comte de Flavigny), the storm and shipwreck, and the ladies with their fans, the maidens with their golden combs, waiting for those who would never come back again.

"'And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens

Wi' the Scots lords at his feet,'"

finished Elspeth. The knitting needles proceeded a little with their tale, then they too stopped.

"Losh! the bairn's asleep already!" thought Mrs. Saunders, looking over her spectacles. She tiptoed from the room.

Yet although Anne-Hilarion's long lashes lay quietly on his cheeks he was not by any means asleep, and under those dark curtains he watched, not without a certain drowsiness, the gigantic shadow of his attendant vanish from the wall. The night-light shed a very faint gleam on the vast mahogany wardrobe, whose polished doors reflected darkly much that passed without, and suggested, to a lively imagination, all kinds of secret happenings within. It also illumined Anne's minute garments, neatly folded on a chair, his high-waisted blue kerseymere pantaloons on the top of the pile, and the small coat, into which Elspeth had been sewing a fresh ruffle, over the back. This much of his apartment could Anne see between the chintz curtains, figured with many a long-tailed tropic bird, which hung tent-like from the short pole fixed in the wall above his pillow. But he could not see Mme. d'Aulnoy's fairy-tales, in their original French, which were lying face downwards on the floor not very far away (and which he would be scolded for having left about, when they were found to-morrow); nor the figure of Notre Dame de Pontmain, in her star-decked robe of blue and her long black veil, holding in her hands not her Son but a crucifix—the figure which M. l'Abbé, being of Laval, her country, had given to the little boy. For this image had a knack of disappearing entirely when Anne's father the Marquis was away, since, as may readily be supposed, it found no favour in the eyes of Mrs. Saunders, and was an even more violent irritant than all 'the bairn's Popish exercises,' to which she would so much have liked to put an end. That she might see as little as possible of the heathen idol she had banished it, with its bracket, to an obscure corner of the room, over the discarded high nursery-chair in which Anne, at six years old, no longer took his meals. The fact of the image's being in the room at all just now showed that the Marquis was at home . . . for to him, as to his small son, in this April of the year 1795, the solid Cavendish Square house was home, though it belonged to neither of them. Anne-Hilarion, for his part, could remember no other.

(2)

The unusual presence of a statue of the Virgin, and of Mme. d'Aulnoy's Contes de fées on the second floor this London house, was, naturally, but a consequence of that same series of events which had brought thither their small owner. Seven years before, the only daughter of James Elphinstone of Glenauchtie, a retired official of high standing in the service of John Company, had lost her heart to a young Frenchman, the Marquis René de Flavigny, whom she had met on a visit to Paris. Although the necessary separation from his daughter was very bitter to him, Mr. Elphinstone could find no real objection to the match, and so the Scotch girl and the Frenchman were married, lived happily on de Flavigny's estate in the Nivernais, and were joined there in due time by a son.

But Anne-Hilarion had not chosen well the date of his entry into this world. On the very July day that René and Janet de Flavigny and all their tenants were celebrating the admirable prowess displayed by M. le Comte in attaining, without accident or illness—without flying back to heaven, as his nurse had it—the age of one year, the people of Paris also were keeping a festival, the first anniversary of the day when the bloody head of the governor of the Bastille had swung along the streets at the end of a pike. Before that summer was out the Marquis de Flavigny, urged by his father-in-law, had decided to place his wife and child in safety, and so, bidding the most reluctant of good-byes to the tourelles and the swans which had witnessed their two short years of happiness, they left France for England. Perhaps they would have fared no worse had they remained there. For Janet de Flavigny caught on the journey a chill from which she never recovered, and died, after a few months, leaving to her little son not even a memory, and to these two men who had passionately loved her a remembrance only too poignant.

Her death forced both their lives into fresh channels. Mr. Elphinstone left Scotland and settled in London, where, to distract himself from his grief, he began to write those long-planned memoirs of his Indian career which, after more than four years, still absorbed him. As for the Marquis de Flavigny, having once emigrated, he could not now return to France even had he wished it. He therefore threw himself heart and soul into the schemes of French Royalism, at first for the rescue of the Royal Family from their quasi-imprisonment in their own palace, and—now that King and Queen alike were done to death, their children captives and a Republic in being—into all the hopes that centred round the stubborn loyalists of Brittany, Maine, and Vendée, round du Boisguy or Stofflet or Charette. And though the rightful little King might be close prisoner in the Temple, his uncles—the Comte de Provence (Regent in name of France) and the Comte d'Artois—were still at large, as exiles, in Europe, and it was to one or other of these princes that Royalist émigrés looked, and under their ægis that they plotted and fought. Not many of them, impoverished as they were by the Revolution, had the good fortune to possess, like René de Flavigny, a British father-in-law who put money and house at his son-in-law's disposal, welcomed his friends, and strove to bear his absences on Royalist business with equanimity.

The fact was that the young Frenchman had become very dear to Mr. Elphinstone, not only for Janet's sake but also for his own. He had liked de Flavigny from the first moment that he met him; it was only during the shock of finding that Janet wished to marry him that his feelings had temporarily cooled. Indeed, René de Flavigny's character and disposition were not ill summed up in the word 'lovable.' He had little of the traditional French gaiety—and still less after his wife's death—just as Mr. Elphinstone had little of the traditional Scotch dourness. And the old man knew how happy his daughter was with him. Afterwards, their common bereavement drew the two more than ever together. Mr. Elphinstone discovered in his son-in-law tastes and sympathies more akin to his own than he had imagined, and sometimes, though he would not have had him settle down, at thirty-two, into a bookworm like himself, he regretted the political activities in which the Marquis was immersed, for he knew him to be of too fine a temper to take pleasure in the plottings and intrigues which almost of necessity accompany the attempts to reinstate a dispossessed dynasty. And while not, perhaps, taking those plottings over-seriously, he realised that his son-in-law's tact and ability made him a very useful person to his own party and a person proportionately obnoxious to the other. The game he was engaged in playing against the French Republic was not without danger; that adversary across the Channel was known to have hidden agents in England, and if these had the opportunity as well as the orders, it was not scruples that would hold them back from actual violence. Still, that was a contingency sufficiently remote, although the thought of it sometimes caused Mr. Elphinstone to feel, during his son-in-law's absences, a certain uneasiness for his safety as well as regret at the loss of his society.

(3)

Anne-Hilarion was quite aware, in a general way, of his father's occupations. In fact, as he lay now in his bed, looking through the curtains at the wardrobe doors, he was meditating on the important meeting which Papa was having with his friends this very evening in the dining-room. He did not know exactly what they were discussing, but from something which Papa had said in his hearing he believed that there was some question of going over to France—in ships, of course, since there was sea (he did not know how much) between England and that country. And because his mind was full of Sir Patrick Spens and his shipwreck, this undertaking seemed to him terribly dangerous, and he much wished that Papa were not thinking of it.

"To Noroway, to Noroway,

To Noroway o'er the faem,"

the words lilted in his head like the rocking of a boat. They would be going over the foam to that land which he did not remember:

"Half owre, half owre, to Aberdour,

'Tis fifty fathoms deep. . . ."

Anne had no idea what fifty fathoms might mean, but it sounded terrifying. Suppose Papa were to be drowned like that—suppose he too were obliged to stuff 'silken cloth' into the hole of the ship to keep out the water which would not be kept out! . . .

Anne-Hilarion sat up suddenly in bed and threw back the clothes. A very strong impulse, and by no means a righteous, was upon him, but he was ridden by an agonising fear, and there was nothing for it save to go down and ascertain the truth. He slipped out of bed and pattered on to the landing.

The stairs were steep, there was little light upon the road, the balusters looked like rows of brown, square-faced soldiers. Not now, however, was there room for thoughts of Barbe Bleue, that French ogre, who was possibly hanging the last but one of his wives at that moment in the linen-press, nor of the terrible Kelpie of the Flow, which might that evening have left its Scottish loch and be looking in, with its horse face, at the staircase window. No, the chief terror was really Elspeth, who would certainly snatch him swiftly back to bed, not comprehending (nor he either, for that matter) how it was she who had started him on the path of this fear. So he went down as quickly as one foot at a time permitted, knowing that Grandpapa would be safe and busy in his study, and that Baptiste, his father's old body-servant, was, if met, more likely to forward him in his journey than to hinder him. He would, in fact, have been rather glad to encounter that elderly slave of his as he made his solitary way down to the dining-room, past the descending row of antlers and dirks and lairds of Glenauchtie in their wigs and tartan.

CHAPTER II
And is put back again

(1)

But on the dining-room wall it was Janet Elphinstone, a fair-haired child of ten, in a long white dress girt with a blue sash, her arm over the neck of a deerhound, who looked down at the guests assembled round her father's table. Not one was of her own nationality, for Mr. Elphinstone himself had withdrawn after supper, following his custom on similar occasions, and was by now very tolerably engrossed, as usual, with his memoirs. His national shrewdness made him perfectly aware that some of his friends, and probably all of his domestics except Baptiste, esteemed that in his unfailing hospitality to his son-in-law's unfortunate compatriots he was allowing himself to be victimised by a pack of starveling adventurers, as he had once heard them called; but he considered that his conduct in this regard was no one's affair but his own, and for several of the Marquis's friends he had a great respect—they bore misfortune so gallantly. So he scratched away contentedly in the library, while in the dining-room René talked to his companions.

For though it was not primarily the personal attraction of the Marquis de Flavigny which bound together this evening's visitors, but rather devotion to a common cause, they were all his friends, from the old Abbé with the kindly, humorous mouth and the snuffy rabat to the tall, lean man with a scar on his cheek who, at the end of the table, was lazily drawing devices on a map spread before him on the mahogany, among the empty glasses. They were talking of the intrigues and counter-intrigues which ate like a canker into the heart of the Royalist cause, dividing that never very stable house against itself, setting the party of the Comte de Provence against that of his younger brother, the Comte d'Artois, and filling the clear-minded or the generous with mingled sorrow and disgust.

"I declare," said the gentleman with the scar at the end of the table, without lifting his eyes from his occupation, "that the behaviour of the Abbé Brottier, when I think of it, renders me the prey of indigestion. So I try not to think of it."

"Perhaps you remember, my son," interposed the old priest, "what Cardinal Maury is reported to have said of him—that he would bring disunion into the very host of heaven. And we émigrés, alas, are not angels."

"M. de la Vireville's disgust is natural," observed a middle-aged, thin-featured man on the other side of the Abbé. "I have no doubt he finds the atmosphere of London stifling, and is longing to be back in the broom of Brittany with his Chouans."

"It is my desire, de Soucy," confessed he with the map, briefly. "But even there one is not safe from the meddling of that intriguer and the agence de Paris. However, this does seem a chance of moving, for once, without it, for I understand you to say, René, that Mr. Windham seriously suggests your going personally to Verona to see the Regent?"

"He thinks it advisable," answered de Flavigny. "For my part, I would much rather not put my finger between the trunk and the bark, but it has been quite clear since last November that the agence de Paris is trying to get Spanish help instead of accepting that of England, and therefore someone not under the Abbé Brottier's influence ought to lay before the Comte de Provence what the English Government is inclined to do for us—and lay it before him directly, without the intervention of the Duc de la Vauguyon, who, as you know, is also a partisan of Madrid. Let me read to you, if I may, the notes of my conversation with Mr. Windham this morning."

He began to read out what had passed between him and that cultured, high-minded English gentleman, now Secretary for War, to whom the French émigrés in general owed so much. But he had not proceeded very far before the Chevalier de la Vireville, his bright, bold eyes fixed attentively on him, gave an exclamation:

"Messieurs, a new recruit! Welcome, small conspirator! Come in—but shut the door!"

And all the rest turned on the instant to look at the little figure, clad only in a nightshirt, which was visible in the doorway, behind René de Flavigny's back.

"Anne!" exclaimed the latter. "Whatever are you doing here—and in that costume!"

A trifle daunted, the child hung back, clutching the door handle, though he knew all the company, and one of them—he who had hailed him—had his especial favour. Then he made a dash for his father.

"Papa," he burst out, clinging to him, "do not go to Noroway-over-the-foam! You know what it says, how the feather-beds floated about in the waves, and they lost their shoes, and the sea came in, and they were all drowned fifty fathoms deep!"

"My child," said the young man gently, putting his arm round him, "what on earth are you talking about? I think you must be walking in your sleep. Nobody is going to Noroway, so nobody will be drowned. And you must not interrupt these gentlemen. You see, we are busy. You must go back to bed, my little one. La Vireville, have the goodness to ring the bell, will you?"

The tall Chouan leader rose at once from his place, but, instead of obeying, he snatched the cloth off a neighbouring table, and in a moment had picked up the intruder and enveloped him in it. "Bed is not recommended, I think, René, for this parishioner. We cannot, however, have such a sans-culotte amongst us. That lack being remedied, I fancy we shall sleep more comfortably here, don't you, Anne?" And he was back in his place, the boy, wrapped in the red and black tablecloth, on his knee, before even paternal authority could object.

"I am sure that is the best solution," said the old Abbé, smiling at the child over his glasses. "Pray proceed, Marquis."

So René de Flavigny finished his notes, and looked round for opinions, while his son whispered to the Chevalier de la Vireville, "Where is Verona? Could it be fifty fathoms deep there?" And the Chouan said softly, "No, foolish one, for it is nowhere near the sea, and all this talk only means that Papa is going to Italy to see the Regent, who is a stout, middle-aged gentleman, and not a king's daughter, so you need not be frightened."

"I am of Mr. Windham's opinion," the Vicomte de Soucy was meanwhile saying; "and I verily believe that he has our interests at heart, probably more than Mr. Pitt, certainly more than Mr. Dundas. If the British Government really means seriously to support an expedition to France, the Regent should be sounded."

"How much does the Duc d'Harcourt know of the Government's dispositions?" asked someone, referring to the Regent's accredited representative in London.

De Flavigny shook his head. "I do not know."

"In any case you must disregard him—go behind him, in fact," observed the Chevalier de la Vireville, settling Anne-Hilarion in his arms.

"I suppose so," said de Flavigny, with an expression of distaste, for he did not like the task, as he had said.

"And Monseigneur le Comte d'Artois?" asked the Abbé.

"Of course the Government will acquaint him in good time. Almost certainly His Royal Highness will wish to lead the expedition. But since he is so near, at Bremen or thereabouts, there will be little difficulty in personal communication with him later, if this project of the Government comes to anything."

"As no doubt it will not," observed La Vireville sceptically.

"If ever it did, Monsieur Augustin," remarked M. de Soucy, with an emphasis on the name, "it would concern you very much, I imagine. For if, as seems natural, it took place in the West, you could join it with your Chouans, while we, though we should bring our swords, could bring nothing else."

La Vireville nodded.

"It goes without question," said a voice, "that any expeditionary force should be landed in the West; the question is, Where?"

"A port would be needed, of course," said de Flavigny, "and the port would be best as near M. de Charette as possible, if not actually in Vendée."

"If the country south of the Loire is suggested," objected La Vireville, "the expedition will not have any support to speak of from the Chouans. I know the Breton; he will not willingly leave his province, even his corner of it. It will be as much as we can do to induce those of Northern Brittany to go to South Brittany, supposing, for instance, a landing were effected in the Morbihan, as being near Vendée."

"It was the Morbihan that Mr. Windham had in his mind, I think," said the Marquis de Flavigny. "He had even thought of a place, but he said that if it was finally decided upon, it would have, of course, to be kept secret till the last moment."

"And what was the place?"

René de Flavigny lowered his voice. "Quiberon Bay."

"Not a name of good omen to a Frenchman," observed the Abbé, thinking of Hawke's victory of nearly half a century ago.

"Where exactly is Quiberon Bay?" inquired M. de Soucy, who was of Lorraine.

The Chevalier de la Vireville pushed the map of Brittany towards him, putting his finger on a long, thin tongue of land at the bottom. "Permit me to observe, Messieurs," he said, "that we are wandering from the immediate question, which is, Verona or not Verona? I cannot see that to approach the Regent can do harm, and so long as I myself," he smiled, "am not required to undertake diplomatic service, I am more than willing to push a friend into it. If it be conceded that one of us should go, then I think that de Flavigny is the person. He has rank, something of diplomatic training in the past, and—though I say it to his face—an address likely to commend itself to Monseigneur. Then, too, René, you were in his household in old days, were you not?"

"I was one of his pages," assented the Marquis. "Well, gentlemen, if you wish it, I will go to Verona, and, I suppose, the sooner the better. Will you drink a glass of wine to my mission? Surely, Fortuné, that child is a nuisance, and must be asleep by now?"

For Anne-Hilarion, huddled in the tablecloth, was lying as still as a dormouse, and no longer sitting upright against his friend's breast, trying to follow the conversation.

"I will take him to bed," announced the émigré, without giving an opinion on the Comte de Flavigny's condition. "You permit, René?"

(2)

But as the Chouan was replacing him under the parrots and humming-birds, Anne-Hilarion murmured sleepily, "I am glad that Papa is not going to fetch the King's daughter; but if he is going to this place—Ver . . . Verona, will you not come and see me, M. le Chevalier, while he is away?"

"But I am going away too, in a few days," replied his friend. "To Jersey, and then to France."

"Then will you come and say good-bye to me?"

"Yes, I will do that," assented the émigré. "Now go to sleep. Good-night, my little cabbage."

Then he too went quickly and quietly out of the room, for neither had he any desire that the justly scandalised and incensed Elspeth should fall upon him. But, alas, the dragon was standing outside the door.

"Eh, sirs!" she ejaculated at sight of him. "'Tis easy tae see ye hae nae childer o' yer ain! Tae tak' yon bairn oot o' his bed at sic a time o' nicht!"

M. de la Vireville might have retorted that not only was he innocent of this crime, but that he had, on the contrary, restored the wanderer—though not instantly—to that refuge. Also, had he but known, it was Elspeth, with her rendering of a too-suggestive tale, who had been at the bottom of Anne's exploit, and was therefore, partly at least, responsible for the consequences which were to follow it. But, being French and not Scotch, he had never heard of Sir Patrick Spens, and could not claim second-sight. He set up a weak defence by observing that the Marquis knew of the occurrence.

"Indeed, it's a verra gude thing for the bairn that his father is gaein' awa," retorted Elspeth instantly. "'Tis bad eno' wi' Glenauchtie himsel'" (thus she preferred to speak of Mr. Elphinstone), "but when there's twa puir misguidit bodies tae——"

La Vireville, who was already a step or two down the staircase, stopped suddenly.

"How do you know that the Marquis is going away?"

"And hoo should we not ken it, sir?" demanded she, stiffening. "'Tis common news amangst us in the hoose."

"Indeed? Then, as M. de Flavigny himself has only known it for the last quarter of an hour or so, I should recommend you, Mrs. Saunders, to quell this gift of prophecy in your fellow-servants. Above all, see that it is confined to the house. Do you understand?"

And the Frenchman ran downstairs again, a little frown on his forehead, leaving Elspeth petrified with indignation on the landing.

(3)

Down in the hall de Flavigny was speeding the last of his guests. The Chouan went back into the deserted dining-room to wait for him. Standing in front of Janet de Flavigny's picture he looked up at her. He had never seen her in life, for his friendship with her husband was only some two years old, and owed its rapid growth partly, no doubt, to just the right amount of dissimilarity of character between them. Of tougher fibre than his friend, and of a disposition less openly sensitive, Fortuné de la Vireville, who had known more than his share of knocking about the world, had something of an elder brother's protective attitude towards him, though de Flavigny was only three years younger than himself. It was this which was causing him to wait for the Marquis now.

"Shut the door a moment, René, will you," he said, as his friend came back. "How is it that the domestics seem to know so much about your future movements? Mrs. Saunders has just considerably surprised me by telling me that you are going away."

The Marquis looked at him and bit his lip. "I suppose," he said, after a moment, "that I must have said something to Baptiste about preparing my valise in case I went. But Baptiste, of course, is above suspicion."

"Granted. But he repeated that order, not unnaturally perhaps, to the other servants."

"There is no great harm in that," replied de Flavigny, with a smile. "It is not a piece of information of much interest to anyone outside the house, and is not therefore likely to be conveyed elsewhere."

"Ah, pardon me, mon ami," interposed the Chevalier de la Vireville quickly, "you underrate your importance. There are people who would find it quite interesting if they knew of it—our dear compatriots of the Committee of Public Safety in Paris, for instance. And they have spies in the most unlikely places."

"But not in this house," said René, throwing himself into a chair.

"Perhaps not," agreed his friend. "I should certainly not suspect Elspeth or that Indian of M. votre beau-père of selling information. As to the others, I do not know."

M. de Flavigny was perfectly right; there was no spy in Mr. Elphinstone's house at the moment. He did not know that the unsatisfactoriness of the destitute French lad, whom Mr. Elphinstone (out of the kindness of his heart and on Baptiste's suggestion) had seen fit to engage for some obscure minor office in the kitchen regions, had that day reached such a culminating point as to lead to his summary dismissal, and that he was at that very moment preparing to carry his unsatisfactoriness and other useful possessions—including a torn-up letter in de Flavigny's handwriting—to some destination unknown.

CHAPTER III
Purchase of a Goldfish, and other Important Matters

(1)

Four days later Mr. Elphinstone and his grandson were breakfasting alone in the room where Anne-Hilarion had remained, so unsuitably attired, to hear matters not primarily intended for the ears of little boys. And now the Comte de Flavigny was seated again at that very table, his legs dangling, eating his porridge, not with any great appetite, but because it was commanded him.

And Mr. Elphinstone did the same, glancing across now and again with his kind blue eyes to observe his grandson's progress. The suns of India, where so much of his life had been passed, had done little more than fade his apple cheeks to a complexion somewhat less sanguine than would have been theirs under Scottish skies. His very precise British attire bore no traces of his long sojourn in the East, save that the brooch in the lace at his throat was of Oriental workmanship, and that the pigeon's-blood ruby on his finger had an exotic look—and an equally exotic history. Anne-Hilarion knew that it had been given by a rajah to his grandfather, instead of an elephant, and never ceased to regret so disastrous a preference.

If James Elphinstone had known, when he left India, that in years to come an elephant would be so fervently desired in Cavendish Square, it is possible that he might have considered the bringing of one with him, such was his attitude (justly condemned by Mrs. Saunders) towards Janet's child. At this moment, in fact, he was meditating some extra little pleasure for Anne-Hilarion, to make up for his father's departure of two days ago. M. le Comte, though he had a certain philosophical turn of mind of his own, fretted a good deal after M. le Marquis, and his grandfather was wondering whether to assign to that cause the very slow rate at which his porridge was disappearing this morning.

"Come, child, I shall be finished long before you," he observed at last.

Anne-Hilarion sighed, and, addressing himself once more to the fray, made great play with his spoon, finally announcing, in true Scots phrase, that he had finished 'them.'

"That's right," said the old gentleman. "Some more milk, my bairn? Bring your cup."

Anne slipped down and presented his mug. "I think we were going out this morning, Grandpapa," he observed, with his little engaging air, watching the filling of the receptacle.

"So we were, my lamb. And we were going to buy something. What was it?"

"A goldfish," whispered the little boy. "A goldfish!" He gave his grandfather's arm a sudden ecstatic squeeze, and climbed back to his place.

"To be sure, a goldfish," was beginning Mr. Elphinstone, when at that moment in came a letter, brought by Lal Khan, the dusky, turbaned bearer—source, once, of much infantile terror to M. le Comte, but now one of his greatest friends. On him Anne-Hilarion bestowed, ere he salaamed himself out again, one of his sudden smiles. Mr. Elphinstone, after hunting vainly for his spectacles, opened the letter. It drew from him an exclamation.

"Here's actually a letter from your father already, Anne. He has written from Canterbury, on his way to Dover."

Above the milk he was drinking, Anne-Hilarion's dark, rather solemn eyes were fixed on his grandfather.

"Dear me, this is very curious," said Mr. Elphinstone, looking up from the perusal of the letter. "Your father finds, he says, that some old friends of his family are living there—at Canterbury, that is—two old French ladies. What's the name? . . . de Chaulnes—Madame and Mademoiselle de Chaulnes. He came across them quite by chance, it appears. And—I wonder what you will say to this, Anne—he wants you to go and stay with them for a few days."

"Now?" asked the little boy.

"Yes, quite soon. They are very anxious to see you, having known your grandparents in France. There is a letter from them enclosed in your Papa's. I am to send you with Elspeth. See, I will read you Madame de Chaulnes' letter."

And he read it out to his grandson, in its original French, a tongue which he spoke well, though with a Scottish flavouring.

"'MONSIEUR,—It has been, as you may well imagine, a pleasure as great as it was unexpected to encounter, in his passage through Canterbury to-day—on his way to a destination as to which prudence invites silence—the son of my old friend Mme. de Flavigny. From his lips I have learnt of his marriage—of so short a duration, alas!—with your beautiful daughter, in whose untimely grave one sees that so much of his heart is buried; and also of the existence of the dear little boy who remains to him as a pledge of their love.

"'I do not know, Monsieur, if René—I can scarcely bring myself to call him anything else—has ever spoken to you of my sister-in-law and myself, and our old friendship with his family.'"—"I do seem to remember his mentioning the name," observed Mr. Elphinstone, fingering his chin.—"'It is possible that he has done so, and that this fact, joined to the letter which he was good enough to write to accompany this, may move you to a favourable reception of my request, which is, that some day, before the weather becomes unpleasantly hot for travel, you should allow the little boy and his nurse, Mrs. Saunders, to pay us a few days' visit here at Canterbury. Perhaps, indeed, if I might suggest such a thing, this would serve to distract him during his father's absence. Our modest dwelling boasts a garden of fair size, and my sister and myself are both devoted to children. You, Monsieur, from what we hear of your charities to us unfortunate exiles, will well understand what the sight of the grandchild of our departed friends would mean to two old women, and it is this conviction which emboldens me to make a request which I know to be no light one.

"'I have the honour to remain, Monsieur, your obedient servant,

"'BARONNE DE CHAULNES.'"

Mr. Elphinstone reflected. "I shall not like parting with you, child," he murmured, half to himself. "Not at all, not at all. But I suppose if René wishes it, as he obviously does . . . And it is not far to Canterbury. Shall you like to go and visit these old French ladies, Anne?"

"I do not know," replied the Comte de Flavigny, considering. "You are not coming too, Grandpapa?"

"No, no. But Elspeth will be with you."

"Perhaps I shall like it. Have they a dog, ces dames, des chats?"

"Cats, very probably. But I do not know. I think you will find it interesting, Anne, for a few days. You will be able to play in the garden there. These old ladies"—he referred once more to the letter—"Mme. de Chaulnes and her sister-in-law, can tell you, I expect, all about your father when he was a little boy like you."

"Yes," assented the prospective visitor in tones of resignation rather than of anticipation. "But——" He looked mournful.

"Yes, my bairn?"

"The goldfish!"

Mr. Elphinstone laughed. "Oh, the goldfish! That is easily arranged. We will go out directly after breakfast and buy it, while Elspeth is packing."

"I could take it with me?"

"Well, I don't know. . . . Yes, I suppose you could."

Anne fell into meditation on the goldfish. He evidently saw it swimming before him, and the idea of parting so soon from this treasure, not yet even acquired, was clearly distressing.

"Then, if I could take it, Grandpapa, perhaps I would not mind very much, as Papa wishes it."

"That's a good child!" exclaimed Mr. Elphinstone, relieved. Not that Anne-Hilarion was, as a rule, anything else but good, yet, as he was very sensitive and his grandfather ridiculously tender-hearted, the old man dreaded even the remotest shadow of a difference of opinion. "It will only be for a few days," he went on, "and I think you had better go at once, this afternoon, in fact, so that you will get back all the earlier, in case Papa should return from Italy sooner than we expect."

This he said with a view of heartening his grandson, well knowing that the term of 'a few days,' elastic as it was, could hardly see René back from Verona.

(2)

But if Anne-Hilarion was resigned, Mrs. Saunders received the news of the proposed expedition in a manner indicative of the highest disapproval. Such a plan was, she declared, against sense and nature; she could not imagine what the Marquis was thinking of. He must be clean daft. No one but a man would have conceived of such a scheme. She supposed that was the way they did things in France. Fifty odd miles to Canterbury—seven hours at the very least; the bairn would take his death of fatigue; and here was Glenauchtie proposing that they should start that very afternoon! She was a little mollified, but not greatly, on hearing that they were only to go as far as Rochester that day, and sleep there, continuing their journey next morning.

But 'Glenauchtie,' for all his gentleness, was always obeyed, and Elspeth packed her charge's 'duds' and her own that morning with considerable promptitude in spite of her protestations.

Meanwhile Mr. Elphinstone, after writing a letter to Anne's hostesses, which he dispatched direct to Canterbury, and sending a servant to take two places in the afternoon stage-coach to Rochester, set out with his grandson to buy the promised goldfish. It proved to be a transaction which took time, because Anne found it difficult to make up his mind between two similarly priced fishes, one of which, though larger than the other, was not of so good a colour. As he remarked, in a tone of puzzled reproach, the gold was coming off, and this disillusioning fact caused him to put to the shopman, in his clear, precise, and oddly stressed English, many searching questions on what further sorrowful transformations of the sort might be expected in any fish he bought. Finally the smaller and more perfect fish was selected, and they left the little shop, Anne carrying his purchase very carefully by a piece of string tied round the top of its glass bowl.

"Will it be lonely, Grandpapa? Do you think we ought to have bought two?" he suggested, as he trotted along by Mr. Elphinstone's side, all his energies directed to keeping the water steady.

"There would hardly be room for two in there, child. Perhaps when you come back from Canterbury we might get another, and have them both in a larger bowl. But the present is best for travelling purposes."

"Yes, perhaps it is best to have only one goldfish. Last year, when I had tadpoles, they ate one another—you remember, Grandpapa? This goldfish could not eat itself, could it, Grandpapa?"

"I should hardly think it possible," replied Mr. Elphinstone gravely.

"I shall be able to show it to M. le Chevalier," observed the little boy happily, holding up the bowl and surveying the swinging captive. "—Oh, Grandpapa, but perhaps I shall not see him! He promised to come and say good-bye to me, but when he comes I shall be gone to Canterbury, and when I return from those ladies he will have gone away to Jersey. Oh, Grandpapa, isn't that sad!"

CHAPTER IV
Visit to two Fairy Godmothers

(1)

The coach ride to Rochester, the night's stay there, and the journey on to Canterbury through the fine April weather had been all delight to Anne-Hilarion. And now he was being helped down at the gate of the dearest little garden, surrounding the dearest little house, and walking, with his hand in Elspeth's, up a cobbled path between wallflowers and forget-me-nots to a little green-painted door with shining handle, under a portico with fluted pillars. This door opened, and inside, in a small panelled entrance hall that was also a room, stood a veritable fairy godmother of an old lady, leaning, as a fairy godmother should, on a black and silver stick with a crooked handle. She had, moreover, black lace mittens on her hands, a cap of fine lace on her silver hair, and, under the cap, just such a face as a fairy godmother might have, even to the delicately-cut hooked nose and bright blue eyes.

"Welcome, welcome, my child," said she in French, stooping—but not much, for she was little herself—and kissing the boy. A faint, delicious scent came out of her grey silk dress. "I hope you are not tired, my dear? And this is your attendant. What is your name, if you please?—no, I know it; Mrs. Saunders, is it not?"

The dragon curtsied—Elspeth's curtsy, which could express many things, but seldom what a curtsy is supposed to indicate.

"Doubtless you have some baggage," said Mme. de Chaulnes—if this were she. "Ask the driver to set it down by the gate, and presently we will find some passer-by to bring it in, for we are only women here. Now, my child—Anne, that is your name, is it not?—here is my sister-in-law, Mademoiselle Angèle de Chaulnes, waiting to make your acquaintance."

Anne then perceived that it was a second fairy godmother who had opened the door to them. She too was small and exquisitely dressed, in lavender silk, but she held no stick, seemed younger than the other (but for all that, to a child's eye, phenomenally aged), and had a face which, lacking Mme. de Chaulnes' fine aquiline features, was, to Anne's mind, more 'comfortable.'

"The little darling!" she murmured as she kissed him. "And what have you there—a goldfish?" For all the time Anne-Hilarion was carefully holding his glass bowl by the string.

After that, Elspeth having arranged about the baggage, they went upstairs into a spotless little bedroom smelling of lavender.

"I am very sorry," said the elder of the old ladies, addressing herself to Elspeth, "that there is not a bed for you in the house. You see, our establishment is very small. But we have arranged for you to sleep at a house a few minutes away, where there is a good woman who will make you very comfortable. You can put the little boy to bed before retiring there, and, of course, come and dress him in the morning, if he requires it."

Elspeth looked mutinous, and her mouth took on a line which Anne-Hilarion knew very well.

"A'm thinkin', Mem," she replied, "it wad be best for me tae hae a wee bit bed in here."

Mme. de Chaulnes shook her head. "I am afraid," she said, with equal pleasantness and firmness, "that that arrangement would not suit us at all." And there was nothing for it but acquiescence.

"See, here is a good place to put your goldfish," said Mlle. Angèle meanwhile to Anne-Hilarion. "And then, when she has washed your face and hands for you, mon chéri, your nurse will bring you downstairs, and you shall have something to eat, for I am sure you must be hungry after your journey."

(2)

Dwellers in Canterbury were well accustomed to the two old French ladies who lived so retired and so refined a life in the little brick house with the portico; indeed the dames of that ancient city took a sympathetic interest in the exiles. Those who were on visiting terms with them spoke many a laudatory word of the interior of Rose Cottage—of its exquisite neatness and elegance, of the superior china and the spotless napery. But the number of ladies in a position to pronounce these encomiums was limited, for Mme. and Mlle. de Chaulnes entertained not at all in the regular sense of the word. Yet, for all their modest manner of life, they were not penurious; rather was it noised abroad that they gave largely of their substance to their needy fellow-countrymen of their own convictions—for, of course, they were Royalists themselves and of noble birth. Hence, if any émigré were stranded on the Dover road in the neighbourhood of Canterbury it was usual—if the speaker's command of French were sufficient—to direct him to these charitable compatriots. Often, indeed, refugees were to be found staying for a few days at Rose Cottage.

Rumour had endowed the French ladies with a moving and tragic past. Over Mme. de Chaulnes' mantelpiece hung a small portrait in oils of a gentleman in uniform—to be precise, that of a Garde Française of the fifties, but nobody knew that—and the story went that this was her husband, the brother of Mlle. Angèle, who had either been (1) guillotined, or (2) slain in the defence of the Tuileries on the 10th of August 1792, or (3) killed in the prison massacres in the September of the same year. No one, not even the boldest canon's wife, had dared to ask Mme. de Chaulnes which of these theories might claim authentic circulation; no one, in fact, had even ventured to inquire if the gentleman in uniform was her husband. For, though so small and gentle, she 'had an air about her' which was far from displeasing the ladies of the Close and elsewhere; they were, on the contrary, rather proud of knowing the possessor of it.

(3)

Not many hours later, Anne-Hilarion, fed and reposed (for, as each old lady said to the other, he must not be overtired), was seated on a small chair in front of a cheerful little fire in the hall, chattering gaily to the two fairy godmothers who knitted on either side of the hearth. He was never inordinately shy with strangers, and, the first encounter over, he was probably much happier than was Elspeth in the company of the old Frenchwoman in the kitchen. He related to them every detail of his journey, while the old grey cat on the rug, with tucked-in paws, blinked her eyes sleepily at the unfamiliar treble. And Mme. de Chaulnes told him about the cat, and how she had once brought up a family of orphaned kittens, and Mlle. Angèle was much interested in his goldfish, though as yet there was hardly any history to relate of that acquisition.

"Your Papa has not seen it yet, then?" inquired Mme. de Chaulnes, having listened to the whole narrative of its purchase.

"No," replied Anne-Hilarion. "It is to be a surprise for him when he comes back." He pulled himself suddenly higher in the chair, which was a trifle slippery. "Did you know my Papa when he was little, like me, Madame? Grandpapa said so."

Mme. de Chaulnes laid down her knitting. "Cher petit, yes. I saw your Papa first when he was about your age, playing in the garden of the château in France where you were afterwards born, Anne. He was playing with a ball near a stone basin full of water, and—is not this curious?—there were goldfish like yours swimming about in the water. I remember it after all these years." And Mme. de Chaulnes' keen old eyes grew dreamy.

"Sister," said Mlle. Angèle, "tell the child how René was lost."

"Ah yes," said Mme. de Chaulnes. "Only I hope Anne will never imitate such conduct. Your father, as he grew older, Anne, was very fond of reading. One day his father—your grandfather, Anne, your French grandfather, that is—had given him a new book (I forget what it was), and your father was so delighted with it that he wandered off and took it to read in an old quarry. You know what that is, Anne—a place where they get stone from. So René—your father—scrambled down into this quarry, and sat there to read, and he was so much interested in the book that he forgot about dinner. And at the château they were very anxious because they did not know where he had got to, and the afternoon went on and still he did not come, and then at last they sent out to look for him. And how do you think they found him, Anne?"

But Anne could not guess.

"They took a big dog that belonged to the Marquis, your grandfather, and gave him a coat of your father's to smell, and told him to find your father. So the big dog trotted off, smelling the ground all the way, and at last he led them to the stone quarry, and there was René at the bottom of it. He could not climb up again!"

"He must have been frightened, Papa," said Anne reflectively. "I could not have read so long as that. When the words have many letters it is tiring, especially if the book is English. Do you speak English, Mesdames?" For all their converse hitherto had naturally been conducted in French, and Anne had forgotten that Elspeth had been addressed in her native tongue.

"A little," said Mme. de Chaulnes, smiling. "But you, child, speak it as easily as French, no doubt."

"I speak English to Grandpapa, and French to Papa," replied the linguist. "Did my Papa have a pony when he was little?" he next inquired.

"I do not remember," said the old lady. "Have you one, Anne?"

"Not yet," responded Anne-Hilarion. "Grandpapa has promised me one when I shall be seven."

"Your Grandpapa is very good to you, I think," commented Mlle. Angèle.

"Yes, indeed," agreed the child. "Papa says that he spoils me."

"I expect he does," said Mme. de Chaulnes, smiling at him over the top of her tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles.

A little silence fell. The two old ladies knitted on; the grey cat stretched herself. There hung over the mantelpiece a head of the late Louis XVI., an engraving of no particular merit, having the similitude of a bust, and Mlle. Angèle, looking up, found their visitor studying that full, petulant profile.

"You know who that is, of course, mon petit? The King—the late King, whose head they cut off."

Anne-Hilarion nodded. "M. le Chevalier has a picture of the Queen too, on a snuff-box. He showed it to me one day."

Mlle. Angèle rose and took something from the mantelpiece. It was a miniature of a little boy in general appearance not unlike Anne himself, but fairer, with falling curls and a deep ruffle. "Do you know who that is, child?" she asked, in a voice gone suddenly sad.

Anne did know.

"He is in prison, the little King, and can't get out," he replied gravely. "'Domine, salvum fac regem!' M. l'Abbé taught me to say that—it is Latin," he added, not without pride.

"You have learned friends, little one," observed Mme. de Chaulnes kindly.

"Yes," replied the child, with interest. "M. l'Abbé knows a great many things. He teaches French also—but that is because he has not much money, I think. And M. le Vicomte de Soucy, he is very poor; Grandpapa thinks that he often goes without his dinner. But he is very proud too; he will not dine at our house often."

"He might make some money by selling his snuff-box with the picture of the Queen," suggested Mme. de Chaulnes, with rather a sad smile. "But I dare say he would sooner starve than do that."

"Oh, but it is not he who has the snuff-box," corrected Anne-Hilarion. "It is M. le Chevalier de la Vireville."

"But no doubt M. le Chevalier is poor too—like all the rest of us," said the old lady, sighing.

Anne-Hilarion considered this supposition about M. le Chevalier. Having no definite standard of wealth except the seldom seen contents of his own money-box, he only knew that M. de Soucy and the Abbé and the rest were poor because he had heard Mr. Elphinstone and his father say so. He had never seriously weighed M. le Chevalier's financial condition, yet, remembering now that on several occasions M. de la Vireville had contributed to the money-box in question, he was inclined to dispute this judgment.

"I do not know about M. le Chevalier," he said at length. "You see, he does not live in London; he is only there sometimes. It is more interesting for him, because he is a great deal in Brittany, and he fights, and goes to Jersey. He is going there soon. That is more amusing than teaching French like M. l'Abbé, or music, which I think is what M. le Vicomte teaches."

"Much more amusing," agreed Mme. de Chaulnes. "Why then does not M. le Vicomte do something of the same sort as M. le Chevalier? If I were a man, Anne, instead of an old woman, I am sure I should set off to Brittany to fight for the little King."

"I think the reason why M. de Soucy does not go to fight is because he is lame. It is a pity. It is from a wound."

"Then he might do the same sort of thing as your Papa," suggested Mlle. de Chaulnes, "and go abroad to see the Princes, and so on."

"Indeed," said Anne rather wistfully, "I wish M. le Vicomte could have gone to Verona instead of Papa. But they all wanted Papa to go."

"They had a meeting to settle it, of course," said Mme. de Chaulnes, as one stating a fact rather than asking a question.

"Yes," said Anne, nodding. "In our house."

"Your Papa told you all about it afterwards, I suppose?"

"No," replied the Comte de Flavigny sedately; "I was there."

"You, child!" exclaimed Mme. de Chaulnes incredulously. "Nonsense!"

"But yes!" persisted Anne, wriggling on his chair. "You see, it was in the dining-room, and I got out of bed and went down, because I thought they were going to Noroway-over-the-foam, as it says in the poem, and M. le Chevalier wrapped me up in the tablecloth and took me on his knee, and I heard all about it. Elspeth was dreadfully angry next morning," he concluded.

"I don't wonder!" was Mme. de Chaulnes' comment. "Fancy a boy of your age up at that time of night. You know, Anne," she went on seriously, "you must be careful how you talk about what you heard at that meeting—if you were really awake and heard anything. You must not speak of such things except to your father's friends. But I expect you know that, my child, don't you?"

Anne-Hilarion had flushed up. "But yes, Madame," he replied earnestly. "Papa has told me that often, not to be a chatterbox. But I did not really understand what they were talking about, except that Papa was to go to see the Regent—I do not know why—and that there was soon to be an expedition to France."

One of Mlle. Angèle's knitting-needles here dropped with a clatter on to the polished floor.

"Oh, there is no harm in talking about that," said Mme. de Chaulnes placidly. "That is common property—the news of the coming expedition. (Yes, sit upon the rug, child, by the cat, if you are tired of the chair.) You see, all we Royalists are interested in the expedition, and know about it, even the place where it is going to land. Angèle, if it is your knitting-needle that you are looking for, it has rolled just by your foot."

"I heard where the expedition was going to land," said Anne, with some excitement, as he slipped down beside the cat. "But I have forgotten it again."

He looked inquiringly up at the old lady. Mme. de Chaulnes threw him a quizzical glance.

"A very good thing too," she said, knitting rapidly. "I am not going to revive your memory, child. It is a mercy that children have short ones, if they are going to make a practice of attending consultations that should be secret," she remarked across the hearth to her sister.

"I do not know that they are so short," said Mlle. Angèle, recapturing her needle. "I will wager you a crown, sister, that before he leaves us Anne remembers the name of the place where the expedition is to land."

"Very good," said her sister-in-law. "But I do not think that he will."

"Or better still," went on the younger fairy godmother, "let us wager with Anne himself that he does not remember it, and is not able to tell us before he leaves us. Then, if he does, he will have the crown to put into his money-box—for I expect he has a money-box of his own."

"Oh yes, indeed I have," said the little boy. He suddenly became silent, gently stroking the grey fur to his hand. Mme. de Chaulnes finished turning the heel of her stocking.

"Well, what are you thinking of, child?" she asked at length, resuming her fourth needle.

"I was remembering that there was something I wanted to ask M. le Chevalier when he came to say good-bye to me before going to Jersey; but now when he comes to our house for that, he will find that I came away here first, so I cannot ask him."

Mme. de Chaulnes put down her knitting. "So he was going to say good-bye to you before leaving for Jersey, was he? He is a great friend of yours, then, this M. de la Vireville?"

"I like him very much," responded the Comte de Flavigny with precision.

"Well, what did you want to ask him? Perhaps I can tell you the answer."

"I wanted very much to know," said Anne slowly, "why he has two names?"

Mme. de Chaulnes raised her eyebrows. "Has he then two?"

"Oh yes," exclaimed the child. "At the meeting I heard them call him 'Monsieur Augustin,' and I wondered why, because I know it is not one of his noms de baptême."

Mlle. Angèle made a strange gesture with her little mittened hands. Mme. de Chaulnes frowned at her.

"That is quite simple, mon petit; at least, I think so," she said, looking down at Anne's upturned visage, rather flushed by the proximity of the fire. "'Monsieur Augustin' is a nom de guerre, and it is the name of one of the Chouan leaders—you know who the Chouans are, who fight for the King in Brittany? So that your M. de la Vireville and 'Monsieur Augustin' must be one and the same person. He is tall and dark, and has a scar on his cheek, has he not, M. le Chevalier?"

"Yes," said Anne. "Yes, there is a mark there. Oh, do you know him?"

"No," said Mme. de Chaulnes, "but I have heard of him. And your Chevalier will be 'Monsieur Augustin.' Well, that is the answer to your question, and you see it is quite simple. Now, do you not think it is time for you to go to bed, Anne? First, however, I think you should write a little letter to Grandpapa—quite a short letter, to say that you have arrived safely. Do you not think that would please him?"

And Anne, assenting, was shortly installed at an escritoire, where, perched upon a chair heightened by a cushion, he slowly and laboriously penned a brief epistle to Mr. Elphinstone. And at the table in the middle of the little hall Mme. de Chaulnes was writing too.

CHAPTER V
Thomas the Rhymer

(1)

Elspeth was very glum as she put the little boy to bed in the delightful room where there was no place for her.

"At ony rate," she remarked, when the operation was concluded, "A'll no leave ye till A please, and gif ane of these madams comes A'll e'en gar her turn me oot."

"They are very kind ladies," said Anne-Hilarion, who was excited. "I think Mme. de Chaulnes is a beautiful old lady like a fée marraine—yes, like the Queen of Elfland. Elspeth, say the 'Queen of Elfland'!" he added coaxingly.

And, much more because she thought it would enable her to stay longer in her charge's room than to please him, Elspeth embarked on the tale of 'True Thomas,' which she had proffered in vain in London a few nights ago. Her favourite passage was rendered with even more emphasis than usual:

"'O see ye not yon narrow road,

So thick beset wi' thorns and briers?

That is the Path of Righteousness,

Though after it but few enquires.

'And see ye not yon braid braid road,

That lies across the lily leven?

That is the Path of Wickedness,

Though some call it the Road to Heaven.

'And see ye not yon bonny road,

That winds about the fernie brae?

That is the road to fair Elfland,

Where thou and I this night maun gae.'"

"This is Elfland, then," put in Anne-Hilarion contentedly.

"'But, Thomas, ye sall haud yer tongue

Whatever ye may hear or see;

For speak ye word in Elflyn-land,

Ye'l ne'er win back to your ain countrie.'"

She paused a second. "Go on!" commanded Anne-Hilarion.

"'Syne they came to a garden green,

And she pu'd an apple——'"

"You have missed some out!" exclaimed the listener. "Do not miss any, Elspeth! Say about the rivers abune the knee and all the blood that's shed on the earth——"

"Fie, Maister Anne!" said Mrs. Saunders reprovingly. "Yon verses are no' fittin' for a bairn, and A did wrang ever tae tell them tae ye." However, to get them over as quickly as possible, she went back and repeated them.