"How much distress he is saving himself and all of us," I caught myself
murmuring, audibly, out among my fig-trees.

Finding two or three figs fully ripe, I strolled over the way to see him
among his trees and maybe find chance for a little neighborly boasting. As
our custom with each other was, I ignored the bell on his gate, drew the
bolt, and, passing in among Mrs. Fontenette's invalid roses, must have
moved, without intention, quite noiselessly from one to another, until I
came around behind the house, where a strong old cloth-of-gold rose-vine
half covered the latticed side of the cistern shed. In the doorway I
stopped in silent amaze. A small looking-glass hanging against the wooden
cistern showed me--although I was in much the stronger light--Monsieur
Fontenette. He was just straightening up from an oil-stone he had been
using, and the reflection of his face fell full on the glass. Once before,
but once only, had I seen such agony of countenance--such fierce and awful
looking in and out at the same time; that was on a man who was still
trying to get the best of a fight in which he knew he was mortally shot.
Fontenette did not see me. I suppose the rose-vine screened me, and his
glance did not rise quite to the mirror, but followed the soft thumbings
with which he tried the two edges and point of as murderous a knife as
ever I saw.


As softly as a shadow I drew out of sight, turned away, and went almost
back to the gate before I let my footfall be heard, and called, "M'sieu'
Fontenette!"

He hallooed from the shed in a playful sham of being a mile or so away,
and emerged from the lattice and vine with that accustomed light of