browner every moment as the twilight deepened; and across its rough
furrows a tired boy was stumbling wearily homeward. He was not more than
nine years old, but the careworn expression of his thin white face might
have belonged to a little old man of ninety. He was driving two unruly
goats towards the house. The chase they led him would have been a
laughable sight, had he not looked so small and forlorn plodding along
in his clumsy wooden shoes, and a peasant's blouse of blue cotton,
several sizes too large for his thin little body.

The anxious look in his eyes changed to one of fear as he drew nearer
the house. At the sound of a gruff voice bellowing at him from the end
of the lane, he winced as if he had been struck.

"Ha, there, Jules! Thou lazy vagabond! Late again! Canst thou never
learn that I am not to be kept waiting?"

"But, Brossard," quavered the boy in his shrill, anxious voice, "it was
not my fault, indeed it was not. The goats were so stubborn to-night.
They broke through the hedge, and I had to chase them over
three fields."

"Have done with thy lying excuses," was the rough answer. "Thou shalt
have no supper to-night. Maybe an empty stomach will teach thee when my
commands fail. Hasten and drive the goats into the pen."

There was a scowl on Brossard's burly red face that made Jules's heart
bump up in his throat. Brossard was only the caretaker of the Ciseaux
place, but he had been there for twenty years,--so long that he felt
himself the master. The real master was in Algiers nearly all the time.
During his absence the great house was closed, excepting the kitchen and