A few moments later the eyes of this lone son of the morning sought the distant village. The gray smoke of wood-fires, bespeaking the approach of the breakfast hour, arose from the chimneys of friendly kitchens. Far-away voices, calling the cows to be milked, mingled with snatches of song, the rattle of well-sweeps and the chopping of wood lent a human note of melody to the hour. The man's nostrils extended as in imagination he scented the smell of frying ham. He had slept by the roadside on the hilltop, and his appetite was healthful and ample. He had provisions with him, it was true, but for ten days he had eaten his own cooking by the camp-fire, and he had promised himself a change of food at the table of the little hotel the virtue of whose menu he had learned years ago. Besides, while the roving spirit of the road was strong in his blood, he loved human companionship. This morning he wanted the touch of some congenial hand.

"All right, Rogue," said he, and the shaggy mare, pulling onto the turnpike, began to leisurely make her way toward the village. Columbine was glorying in a glistening new coat of paint—yellow, to be sure. Pierrett, yes, certainly, the immortal Pierrett, only a trifle blacker, a bit more burned at the bowl, a little more worn at the mouthpiece. Following them all—Rogue, Columbine, Pierrett—in single file, was the happy master of the caravan, Jean FranÇois. As he walked, hatless, coatless, head thrown back and eyes upon the sky, he sang. The music, if music it might be called at all, seemed an improvisation, yet it had a certain strange, chanting melody in harmony with this picture of the morning:

As he sauntered singing down the hill-road the thoughts of Jean FranÇois were in Oldmeadow. This was for more reasons than one. His mood called for friends, and there were to be found his truest. Also the village in the valley below him, with its inviting streets and old hotel, recalled certain pleasant features of the home of Nance and Charles and Doctor Longstreet. More than all else, less than two weeks and once more he would be camping on his friendly common by the river. He expected this summer to be the best in many years. The little freckle-faced King boy, after four years in a deadly medical college, had graduated in April, and was now occupying Doctor Longstreet's office, while trying to assume the old gentleman's practise. There was doubtless a new sign hung from the post by the door, bearing the legend:

Doctor Longstreet, having retired, would certainly have more time for fishing, yarning, and philosophizing. For the matter of that, the chances were that he would be all the more irascible. This, however, would prove an amusement for Jean FranÇois. The old fellow's irony and wit were truest when brought forth under a passing flash of irritability.

The summer of a year ago Nance Gwyn had been in Europe. Now and then she had written Jean FranÇois humorous and amusing little letters. She had returned during the spring. Before she left she had grown into quite a beautiful and charming young woman, yet there still clung to her the spirit of her childhood.... He wondered if a year in Paris—his Paris—and Berlin, would spoil her. If she would become worldly, artificial, and conventionalized. He thought of her old simplicity, her open-mindedness, her frank disregard of the factitious, her courage to act, and realized that it would take a veritable revolution to even modify her temperament.

As for himself, he smiled as he rubbed his hand into his bushy beard, thinking that, though it scarcely seemed more than a year or two since he was thirty, yet in reality he had recently passed his fiftieth birthday. He would have to die some day, he reckoned. Yet if he had ever grown older at any period of his life he wasn't aware of it. Forever young, thought he, forever young!... Maybe we—Columbine, Rogue, and I—are the exceptions. What if we should never die? As long as we were lusty and the road was at the morning, why should we care? Perhaps we are immortal!... And he pirouetted gaily like a premiÈre danseuse. Unlike the dancer, however, his caper was cut short midway. Rogue came to a sudden stop. A choking sob from someone seated directly in the center of the road just beneath the mare's nose brought him to earth.

He stooped and peered beneath the cart, beneath the mare at the obstruction. He saw the back of a woman, as she sat in the dust, with her head bowed in her hands. He reckoned her head was in her hands, for he could not see it. The back was shaking in accompaniment to tears or laughter, as to which of them he was uncertain. Doubtless both, it being a woman. Rogue smelled the object good humoredly and then turned her gaze inquiringly to her master. This was an unforeseen problem hitherto not dealt with in their varied experience as travelers. Jean FranÇois straightened up, smoothed his beard with his hands, gave his trousers a hitch at his belt, clearing his throat loudly and with ostentation. The shoulders in the road ceased their sobbing movement long enough to perceptibly shrug.

"Damn!" ejaculated Jean FranÇois, beneath his breath.

Then, removing an ample bandanna handkerchief from his pocket, he signaled by a demonstrative blowing of his nose. This, producing no effect save to heighten the disturbance of the shoulders before him, encouraged him to call out:

"I beg your pardon, Madame."

There was no reply.

"Bite her, Rogue, you sacrÉ pig of a zebra," he commanded, with mingled good humor and disgust showing in his voice as he, at the same time, stepped around the cart toward the cause of the disturbance.

As he approached, a rather disheveled young woman turned a tearful, laughing face toward him, and, not rising, cried somewhat trembly, yet merrily:

"Umbrellas to mend!... Umbrellas to mend!... Fine knacks for ladies. Within this pack are pins, points, laces, and gloves.... I am poet, pedler, and wandering troubadour. Fair ladies from their tears I rescue. A knight errant of the pack am I!"

Jean FranÇois threw up his hands in strong amazement, consternation upon every feature, and his tongue tied by surprise. A moment, that seemed to him as a nightmare in which he struggled in vain attempt for words, and then these expressions came with marvelous speed and versatility.

"Ventre de biche!... SacrÉ pig of a zebra!... By all the saints in paradise!" he cried with a hundred imprecations. Finally, as if exhausted, he asked rather meekly:

"From what star did you drop?... You little red-headed jade!"

Indeed it was Miss Nance Gwyn, about to cry, a little soiled and mussed, distractingly pretty, pointing a derisive finger as a baton, and shouting with laughter to the helpless and dumbfounded Jean FranÇois: