"Jean FranÇois," Nance was pleased to say very earnestly, "the river and the hills have belonged to us for so very long—I wonder when we will own the old-fashioned home of the many pillars?"... Because of his talking so frequently about it, we had grown to accept as a settled thing the possibility of our one day possessing the house of our heart's desire.

Columbine stood securely packed, the pedler was shod with newly soled boots, the road lay wistfully before him. It was the last beautiful night of our summer. In the early morning, Jean FranÇois, mender of umbrellas, would be off, and, for us, the winter. Yet it was not an unhappy gathering beside the September camp-fire. No one might be unhappy with the master of the caravan.

We had cooked a genuine greenwood supper and eaten it in the twilight. There was bacon held over the embers on a sharpened stick, bread baked in the ashes on heated stones, eggs boiled in Jean FranÇois' great kettle, and coffee, black and strong. What else, pray you, could one have wished? Afterward, with the smoke of Pierrett curling about his head and filling the air with the aroma of burning tobacco, he sang for us. He told old tales of men-at-arms in France until our blood grew warm and with him we fought great battles. Sometimes he would speak of fairies, elves, and the people of the woods; or of ghostly visitors to winter firesides; of far-off roads in far-away lands where the fields were always in bloom and the sun always mellow, warm, and soft.... He then told us how houses had souls the same as men and hungered to be loved. It was at this time Nance asked her question about our possessions.

As I have said before, he had frequently talked of our one day possessing the old home, but never with the seriousness with which he now spoke. It was evident that this time he considered the matter with sincerity.

"So you would really like to grow up and live in the AbbÉ's house?" said he, answering his questioner by a question.

"It would be the most beautiful thing in the world," was her reply. After a moment's hesitation, as if doubtful of what she should say, she added:

"That is, if—if you would come and live with us, Jean FranÇois."

"Thank you, my dear," he replied, with a singular note of tenderness in his voice. "Thank you very much indeed, but that would be impossible. Quite as impossible as your becoming a gipsy. And what would become of Columbine, Rogue, and Pierrett without the dingle and le long trimard? No, that would never do!... But, as for the other, why not?

"Why not, my girl?" was his comment, this time addressed to Pierrett. His rather queer custom of consulting the little briar-root pipe as if it were a conscious being was something to which we had long become accustomed. It was his way of talking things over with himself. In the same manner he held one-sided discussions with Columbine and Rogue. He was not partial in his family, though I feel sure the shaggy, sure-footed little mare was valued most highly.

"Why not?" he continued. "Monsieur l'AbbÉ, whom I know full well, illy deserves the home.... He is doing nothing worthy of enjoying such a charming house, is he? Eh?... Monsieur Jacques, where are your poor? Your shabby little brothers of the Parisian street? Where are the pinched hungry mouths with whom you once shared your crusts?... Ah, those were the days of crusts!... Where is the little attic in la Rue St. Jacques?... Let me see, children, is this not what He said to him each night:

"'For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me.'

"Now, Monsieur Picot, the voices are far away. You live in an alien land. Your pleasures, instead of boldly as of old, you take surreptitiously.... One day, you poor renegade, you will die and pass to the only heaven I know of—the long roads and sunlit fields of Picardy.... You haven't an heir by blood in the world. Why not an heir by love? Eh, Pierrett? I knew that you would say, 'Yes.'... I'll suggest it to the old curmudgeon."

"My dears," said he, addressing us, "I know this Monsieur l'AbbÉ very well. Some day I shall pay him a call and suggest how generous a thing it would be if he were to make his will in your favor. Then, quietly, with exceeding propriety, so as not to offend any member of your family, pass unto his fathers.... I will say, 'Monsieur, He says that "inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my—"'"

"Dear Jean FranÇois," interrupted Nance, a bit horrified, "how disrespectfully you can talk!... I, too, know Monsieur l'AbbÉ—"

"But I know him much better than you, Nance." And he held his hand for her to be silent.

"I think to-night," said he a moment later, "I shall conclude by telling you the story of Monsieur l'AbbÉ Jacques Picot, of the little Rue St. Jacques, Paris."