TOINE

He was known for thirty miles round was father Toine--fat Toine,
Toine-my-extra, Antoine Macheble, nicknamed Burnt-Brandy--the
innkeeper of Tournevent.

It was he who had made famous this hamlet buried in a niche in the valley
that led down to the sea, a poor little peasants' hamlet consisting of
ten Norman cottages surrounded by ditches and trees.

The houses were hidden behind a curve which had given the place the name
of Tournevent. It seemed to have sought shelter in this ravine overgrown
with grass and rushes, from the keen, salt sea wind--the ocean wind
that devours and burns like fire, that drys up and withers like the
sharpest frost of winter, just as birds seek shelter in the furrows of
the fields in time of storm.

But the whole hamlet seemed to be the property of Antoine
Macheble, nicknamed Burnt-Brandy, who was called also Toine,
or Toine-My-Extra-Special, the latter in consequence of a phrase current
in his mouth:

"My Extra-Special is the best in France:"

His "Extra-Special" was, of course, his cognac.

For the last twenty years he had served the whole countryside with his