friend in the three-cornered hat moved not a muscle.

After a decent pause I said,"Well, what is the picture?"

"The story is of the picture," he replied.

This answer seemed like an attempt at repartee, flavored with French exercises, and I began to think that the policeman's remark about the poor man's mental state was true; still I persisted.

"Ah, yes," I said, "the story is of the picture. I want to hear about it-the picture-the story of it, you know." "The story that I tell to myself. It is because nobody else will listen. Today it is the beginning."

"Go on, please," said I.

"I go to and fro under that gateway many times, and the day is a hot day. The little ledge there on the wall is the height of my shoulder. I run with my hand on it, and make a humming noise to imitate the diligence. The women carry tall baskets past my place of amusement and curtsey to me. I grimace at them in reply. Then I run across to the other side where there is no ledge, and lie down on my back, and look at the roof, and kick up my heels, because I am in idleness."

"But when do you do this?" I inquired.

to

"Men pass me," he continued, without noticing the interruption, "and some of them scowl, which makes me cease kicking, and think what they mean. But I am not afraid. I forget their words very soon. There are people coming down to the fountain drink the water, some on crutches. I jump up and run towards them, shouting that the gutter is good enough for them. All this is ignorance. They pretend not to hear. The water from the fountain is warm, and salt to taste. A man in a faded livery stands by and takes money from the people who drink it."

There was another pause.

"It is evening," he went on at last, "and I follow my father about the house on tiptoe; he does not see or hear me. He takes a trowel from a cup

board and goes out into the gateway. There is a flat stone by the wall, and he moves it away-then he brings out ten heavy bags and puts them in a deep hole. He drops the stone again, and covers it with earth."

He stopped, just as he had begun, like a machine.

I waited for several minutes in s1lence, trying to fashion a meaning for this strange story.

"When did all this happen?" I asked at length.

He shook his head and smiled faintly. "You don't remember, I suppose," I said. "It's like a dream, perhaps, isn't it?"

Again he made a gesture of dissent. "It's real then-do you mean that?" He nodded.

"Have you got no more to say about it?" I asked.

"No more to-day. The picture will be changed to-morrow. I will say more then." And with this he took a rag from behind him, and swept the picture away.

I held out a shilling, but he looked up at me and said,

"Wait for the end-you will give me more then."

The best bred of the angels could not have said it with such gentle dignity of manner. I went back to the policeman and asked him where the man lived.

"Somewhere back of the Harmy and Navy, sir-one of them little streets leading off Vincent Square." "Any relations?"

"No relations, no friends, no effects,' that would be our report of him."

This seemed to shut the door altogether, for I felt that it was hopeless to expect to learn the truth about this man from himself, even if the picture represented reality, and his record was true. I went home in great disgust and thought it over. If the man was thirty now, and ten years old when he ran about under the gateway, that would make it twenty years ago, but somehow I treasured the conviction that such a calculation was utterly false. I found myself saying, "Ages

were

further back than that; hang it all, look at his clothes!" This was again most unreasonable, the clothes certainly not more than twenty years old, probably not as much. And the man looked less than thirty really. Thus buffeted between reason and unaccountable belief, I became restless, and the evening went badly. I alternately swore never to go near Picca dilly again, and started up with the intention of immediately drawing all the little streets at the back of the Stores. During the night I dreamed that I demonstrated with chalks on the pavement to the whole A. division, how to fix the man's age by algebra! he however wiped out my figures with his rag, before the sum was done, and all the A. division laughed at us.

were

The wind of March blew dry and shril as I walked down Kensington Gore next morning on my way to the yellow-haired street artist. The dust of the town, which is grittier and more penetrating than country dust, blew in great eddies everywhere. People with puckered faces, heads lowered, and their hands on their hat-brims, passing, heedless of the man lying there on the pavement with his picture and his half-told story, and I felt conscious of a certain superiority of knowledge, as I threaded my way across to him, and noticed a sign of recognition on his wasted countenance. The picture was ready. It seemed very much the same as on the day previous, except that it was drawn on a slightly smaller scale, and that above the archway was a row of casement windows, as if the former led under a suite of living rooms. I noticed too that at the further end of it stood a man with rifle and bayonet, in a red cap. While I was gathering these details, he began again as follows:

"We are assembled in a bed-chamber, with a low roof and windows on both sides. There are five of us-and my father, he is dying. The priest alone speaks. He bends over him, and whispers words which 1 cannot hear. Then we kneel down. The old nurse moves

quickly to the window and throws it open. See, the window over the gateway is open. She does it that my father's spirit may have immediate passage to God. There is a sudden clamor outside of soldiers; three of them come up to the door of the chamber, and the priest opens it, holding up his hand. My father's head falls back, the nurse closes his eyes. At once comes a rumbling noise, all the house shakes; I look out and see that the fountain is running no longer."

He stopped and took a deep breath as if the telling of the tale was a terrible strain. Then he leant over the picture, so that it was hidden from me, and took his chalks from his pocket. When he raised himself, I saw that the soldier in the gateway had disappeared, while in the foreground a file of red-capped men were standing guard over several indistinct heaps. The water lately gushing from the fountain was now erased and close to it he had drawn a fire on which people were throwing things. At the base of the tower was a gaping crack in the masonry.

He continued: "The soldiers take the old swords and pictures and the armor, and throw them upon a my picture to myself, for nobidy lister are taken away in a coach. I am guarded by a soldier. I ask him why all this is being done, and he looks at me and laughs. The night falls soon afterwards, and the soldiers bring out wine. My guard drinks and falls asleep. I crawl away to the gateway and sit by the wide crack in the tower. I can hear the stones grinding together. Presently the light from the fire the soldiers have made falls on me. I am afraid of being seen, and crawl into the crack. It leads downwards; as I go I feel that it is slowly closing up. I press on into a dark place, dry and warm. There is a stream of warm air coming upwards which makes me sleepy. Soon it overcomes me altogether, and I sink down. After that, there is a great space of silent years."

He was speaking in a kind of reverie now, forgetful of the presence of a listener.

"A very very long time," I said, with a tremble in my voice.

He repeated his words, "a great space of silent years."

I felt awe-struck. This seemed to be a corroboration of my unaccountable impression gained the day before. Yet the interpretation of it was as far off

as ever.

"Can't you remember one word, one name to help me?" I cried.

The artist looked up, with the vista of a hundred years gleaming in his

eyes.

"You say help," he said slowly-"help from a name. I can remember one." He leant once more over his picture, and wrote something below it. When he moved I read in straggling characters the word "Fleuraye." I stooped down and reverently laid all the money I had got on that word "Fleuraye." Something told me that it was the key of the whole riddle, if I could use it aright. He smiled his old-world smile again, and said,

"That is all the story."

I left him, and walked slowly home.

"The château itself is a fine specimen of old Gascon domestic architecture. Alas, alas, that it should be uninherited and falling to ruin!"

The grizzled curé spoke these words, while I riveted my eyes on that venerable pile, the Château Thericourt. I had come upon it almost unexpectedly, and at the same moment had happily lighted upon the only inhabitant who was likely to be able to tell me its history, namely, the parish priest.

"It has a history, no doubt," I said, striving to conceal my excitement.

"Ah, monsieur, the poor old place has doubtless a thrilling tale to tell, if its stones could speak. The story is little better than tradition, so far as it goes." "There is often something in tradition," I murmured.

"Perhaps-perhaps! Have you a particular interest in it, though?" The old man looked at me with an inquiring smile.

"I feel a great interest in this place. certainly."

""Tis a pity, then, you were not here thirty years ago, when first I knew it. There was living then an old woman who declared herself an eye-witness of the deeds of the revolutionaries here." "It was ransacked then, eh?"

"Something worse than that, monsieur. She used to tell how the baron lay sick to death when the troops were sent to take their prisoner. He died, in fact, just as they entered his house, and finding no money, as they had expected, they burned in anger all they could lay hands on. His lady suffered death at Paris like the rest."

"The property was confiscated, I suppose?"

"Yes, yes; and like others, it was held at the Restoration to have reverted to the State, because no heir could be discovered."

"It must be a mortification to you that so beautiful a spot should be wasted-ownerless. I mean that it could not but benefit the neighborhood if it found a purchaser."

The curé shrugged his shoulders, and sighed.

"The glory has departed," he said, "from here and all around. The district has never recovered its ancient prosperity."

"How so?"

"Ah, my friend, Serenne was once renowned for its water-çure. There is a legend, by the way, attaching to this place regarding that water-cure." "Please let me hear it."

"It is merely this. The springs were the exclusive property of the Fleurayes, and from some cause they dried up. The legend, of course, runs that they ceased when they were wrested from their rightful owner. We live here, however, in a region mildly volcanic, which would account for their failure. Our wells show this by their strange behavior not unfrequently."

"Was there no heir, at the time of the confiscation?"

deeply, "there is no one left! I often

His words sank into my soul like flakes of molten iron. My search was rewarded at last, and the reward-I need have expected none other to look helplessly at the ruins of the Château Thericourt, and think of its rightful possessor as a wretched street artist, an outcast in a strange city, telling mechanically to himself the story of the downfall of his race. The miracle of his existence faded into insignificance before the stronger reality of that grey roofless building standing out against the fading light. There was the gateway-the very gateway in which he had played-half-choked with briars. I pushed my way through them to the courtyard-the curé following at my elbow-and walked on to where the nettles were growing rankest.

"The fountain stood somewhere here," I said dreamily. "He was looking out of one of those windows when it stopped."

The curé looked hard at me.

"You must excuse these wanderings on my part," I cried. "These old legends interest me so much, you know. I am more obliged to you than I can say for this information about it, and I hope you will let me contribute something for the benefit of your poor."

He bowed and accepted my alms with much grace.

If the seeking out of the Château Thericourt had been a toilsome affair, I felt that the task of announcing my success to the street artist would require infinite tact. His unearthly smile and strange method of narration had filled me with a distrust of myself. I was haunted perpetually, on my way back to England, with a waking vision of myself modestly mentioning my visit

sub

It was not unnatural, therefore, when I did come face to face with him, that I should have been for the moment unmanned. He looked so uncommonly like the phantom of my dream, limely indifferent to everything and every one near him. I had chosen the time of day when the thoroughfare was least frequented, at least so far as errand-boys were concerned, and I was the only man within hail, except the eternal policeman, as I advanced across the street to his place. I knelt down close to him and said the three words, "Gascogne, Serenne, Thericourt."

He started as if he had been suddenly waked from a deep sleep, and rose slowly to his feet. We stood facing one another without speaking, and I watched, for the first, and doubtless the last time in my life, the eyes of a man gradually lighting up with the fire of a rekindling memory. In uttering those words I had applied the match, and the pile was already ablaze. The expression of careworn indifference faded away, the hard drawn lines round his mouth relaxed, his frowning forehead was smoothed down.

A distant clock struck half past something, and its chimes brought me back to a sense of where I stood, and the risk I ran of looking ridiculous. It immediately occurred to me that this was the golden opportunity to do as I pleased with the man, that was to say before the whirl of returning memories had subsided. I took him by the arm and began to lead him towards the cabrank; he came a few steps, but turned and went back to his picture, which he carefully rubbed out. Then he rejoined me of his own accord.

The cabman seemed surprised when I engaged him to drive the baron and myself; not unnaturally either, as he

Seeing this, I said with much presence of mind:

"The poor fellow is unwell; yes-well -drive me home, 27 Welgrave Street; it's nearer than the hospital."

My friend the baron sat silent beside me in the hansom, and I dared not look at him, until I had got him safely indoors. He sank, at my bidding, into an armchair, and fell fast asleep. It was the exhaustion following restored animation-mental, however, in this case, not physical. The week following was tantalizing experience for me. I did not like to press him for an account of his mysterious existence, for fear of entirely unhinging his already overstrained intellect. He would sit motionless for hours in the armchair, which he had occupied after his arrival, and think, or appear to think. Some times he walked up and down the room, murmuring to himself incoherently. My patience was at last rewarded when one evening he began to question me about my visit to Thericourt. He spoke in the same snatchy English as usual, and I was often obliged to assist him by suggesting words, or reducing my own replies to simpler language. degrees, however, I managed to explain to him the circumstances of my interview with the curé, and the appearance of the château. He accepted all I said, and yet I could see that it was a hard struggle with him to believe that I had really been there. While I contemplated his perplexed look, I remembered that I had brought a relic of the place with me a little fragment of marble carved with a fleur-de-lys, which I had picked up in the courtyard. I fetched it from a desk and handed it to him. He caught it out of my hand and looked it over closely.

By

"Above the fire," he said, "there were those in a row." He pointed to the chimney-piece.

The ice was now entirely broken. He spoke of his childhood, of his dim remembrance of his stern father, and of his priestly tutor, whom he adored; of the stag-hunt in the forest, and of the visit of the king and queen, who

smiled on and caressed him; of his pale mother and timid sister, who played apart from him with her dolls; of his faithful friend the steward, who wore the livery with the fleur-de-lys on it, a privilege granted by the king; of the crowd of begging country-folk and the murmuring peasantry; of the sudden inroad of the rough hideous republican guards, and the general destruction. There was silence after the series of disjointed sentences which the foregoing recountal implies, as if he had told all he knew.

"Nay," I said, "that is not the end though. You took refuge in the crack which the earthquake made in the wall, and fell asleep."

"Yes," he replied thoughtfully-"yes; that is so. Yet I do not know more than that. I can only say that I came to stand on the bank of a pool near the château; it was early morning, and I knew that I saw the light again after years, so many that I could not think of them. I was cold because I was naked, except for a few rags, and a string round my neck. A little image was fastened to the string; it was of gold. They found me wandering there, and I was taken to a dreadful place, with bare walls, and I had no liberty there. I ran away at last, and an Italian man brought me to this place. He had an organ, and I gathered money for him. When he died, I sat by him and starved, and thought of Thericourt. I had forgotten the name, as you know, so I made a picture of it. There was a man who also lived in that room who made pictures like mine, but in colors. He took me to a place where I could buy them."

"That was some years ago, I suppose?"

"Ten years, perhaps. Well, well, I cannot say. I have moved from street to street, and forget the time."

"I was chiefly struck by your costume,' I said.

He laughed softly. "I know it myself now," said he, "but I did not then. I used to see, in some sort of a dream, people that I loved, and I would try in vain to make my clothes like theirs."