fine exhilaration, "she will, perhaps, think of the hard words she
spoke this day."

Except the roisterers in the tavern, the village folk were abed.
David crept softly into his room in the shed of his father's cottage
and made a bundle of his small store of clothing. With this upon a
staff, he set his face outward upon the road that ran from Vernoy.

He passed his father's herd of sheep, huddled in their nightly
pen--the sheep he herded daily, leaving them to scatter while he
wrote verses on scraps of paper. He saw a light yet shining in
Yvonne's window, and a weakness shook his purpose of a sudden.
Perhaps that light meant that she rued, sleepless, her anger, and
that morning might--But, no! His decision was made. Vernoy was no
place for him. Not one soul there could share his thoughts. Out
along that road lay his fate and his future.

Three leagues across the dim, moonlit champaign ran the road,
straight as a ploughman's furrow. It was believed in the village
that the road ran to Paris, at least; and this name the poet
whispered often to himself as he walked. Never so far from Vernoy
had David travelled before.



THE LEFT BRANCH

_Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puzzle.
It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David
stood, uncertain, for a while, and then took the road to the