the mountain.'

'Pardon me,' said Mr. Romaine; 'you know already your uncle is an
aged man; but I have not yet told you that he is quite broken up,
and his death shortly looked for. No, no, there is no doubt about
it--it is the mountain that must come to Mahomet.'

'From an Englishman, the remark is certainly significant,' said I;
'but you are of course, and by trade, a keeper of men's secrets,
and I see you keep that of Cousin Alain, which is not the mark of a
truculent patriotism, to say the least.'

'I am first of all the lawyer of your family!' says he.

'That being so,' said I, 'I can perhaps stretch a point myself.
This rock is very high, and it is very steep; a man might come by a
devil of a fall from almost any part of it, and yet I believe I
have a pair of wings that might carry me just so far as to the
bottom. Once at the bottom I am helpless.'

'And perhaps it is just then that I could step in,' returned the
lawyer. 'Suppose by some contingency, at which I make no guess,
and on which I offer no opinion--'

But here I interrupted him. 'One word ere you go further. I am
under no parole,' said I.

'I understood so much,' he replied, 'although some of you French
gentry find their word sit lightly on them.'