spreading over his face. He knew well enough what the answer would be.

"I'd set him adrift," was Pauline's reply, spoken without the least
pretence of caution.

"Hush!" said her husband; but that was because he was the jailer. He
laughed outright close on this admonition, and asked Elizabeth if
she expected him to make a frame for this picture to hang opposite
Chalons.

"No," she answered, "I am going to take it with me."

"Where now?" asked the parents in one breath.

"Oh, home,--Chalons."

This reply seemed to merit some consideration, by the way the eyes
of Adolphus and Pauline regarded their child. They did not
understand her;--her meaning was deeper than her utterance.

"To Chalons?" repeated Adolphus, quietly.

"Home?" said Pauline;--it was almost the sweetest word she knew,
almost the easiest of utterance.

"You have promised me a hundred times that I should go. Did you mean
it? May I go? You wish me to see the old place and the old people.
But the old place is changing, and the old people are dying. Soon,
if I go to Chalons, it will not be your Chalons I shall see."