her. She went to the neighbourhood of Aix; and there, in their own
chateau near the farmer's house she rented, she grew into intimacy with a
family belonging to that part of France. The intimacy began in her often
meeting among the vineyards a pretty child, a girl with a most
compassionate heart, who was never tired of listening to the solitary
English lady's stories of her poor son and the cruel wars. The family
were as gentle as the child, and at length she came to know them so well
that she accepted their invitation to pass the last month of her
residence abroad under their roof. All this intelligence she wrote home,
piecemeal as it came about, from time to time; and at last enclosed a
polite note, from the head of the chateau, soliciting, on the occasion of
his approaching mission to that neighbourhood, the honour of the company
of cet homme si justement celebre, Monsieur le Capitaine Richard
Doubledick.

Captain Doubledick, now a hardy, handsome man in the full vigour of life,
broader across the chest and shoulders than he had ever been before,
dispatched a courteous reply, and followed it in person. Travelling
through all that extent of country after three years of Peace, he blessed
the better days on which the world had fallen. The corn was golden, not
drenched in unnatural red; was bound in sheaves for food, not trodden
underfoot by men in mortal fight. The smoke rose up from peaceful
hearths, not blazing ruins. The carts were laden with the fair fruits of
the earth, not with wounds and death. To him who had so often seen the
terrible reverse, these things were beautiful indeed; and they brought
him in a softened spirit to the old chateau near Aix upon a deep blue
evening.

It was a large chateau of the genuine old ghostly kind, with round
towers, and extinguishers, and a high leaden roof, and more windows than