stricken with horror.
What he told me was not true, nor was it even original; being,

indeed, but a new edition, vamped up again by village ignorance and
superstition, of stories nearly as ancient as the race of man. It

was rather the application that appalled me. In the old days, he
said, the church would have burned out that nest of basilisks; but

the arm of the church was now shortened; his friend Miguel had been
unpunished by the hands of men, and left to the more awful judgment

of an offended God. This was wrong; but it should be so no more.
The Padre was sunk in age; he was even bewitched himself; but the

eyes of his flock were now awake to their own danger; and some day
- ay, and before long - the smoke of that house should go up to

heaven.
He left me filled with horror and fear. Which way to turn I knew

not; whether first to warn the Padre, or to carry my ill-news
direct to the threatened inhabitants of the residencia. Fate was

to decide for me; for, while I was still hesitating, I beheld the
veiled figure of a woman drawing near to me up the pathway. No

veil could deceive my penetration; by every line and every movement
I recognised Olalla; and keeping hidden behind a corner of the

rock, I suffered her to gain the summit. Then I came forward. She
knew me and paused, but did not speak; I, too, remained silent; and

we continued for some time to gaze upon each other with a
passionate sadness.

'I thought you had gone,' she said at length. 'It is all that you
can do for me - to go. It is all I ever asked of you. And you

still stay. But do you know, that every day heaps up the peril of
death, not only on your head, but on ours? A report has gone about

the mountain; it is thought you love me, and the people will not
suffer it.'

I saw she was already informed of her danger, and I rejoiced at it.
'Olalla,' I said, 'I am ready to go this day, this very hour, but

not alone.'
She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix to pray, and I

stood by and looked now at her and now at the object of her
adoration, now at the living figure of the penitent, and now at the

ghastly, daubed countenance, the painted wounds, and the projected
ribs of the image. The silence was only broken by the wailing of

some large birds that circled sidelong, as if in surprise or alarm,
about the summit of the hills. Presently Olalla rose again, turned

towards me, raised her veil, and, still leaning with one hand on
the shaft of the crucifix, looked upon me with a pale and sorrowful

countenance.
'I have laid my hand upon the cross,' she said. 'The Padre says

you are no Christian; but look up for a moment with my eyes, and
behold the face of the Man of Sorrows. We are all such as He was -

the inheritors of sin; we must all bear and expiate a past which
was not ours; there is in all of us - ay, even in me - a sparkle of

the divine. Like Him, we must endure for a little while, until
morning returns bringing peace. Suffer me to pass on upon my way

alone; it is thus that I shall be least lonely, counting for my
friend Him who is the friend of all the distressed; it is thus that

I shall be the most happy, having taken my farewell of earthly
happiness, and willingly accepted sorrow for my portion.'

I looked at the face of the crucifix, and, though I was no friend
to images, and despised that imitative and grimacing art of which

it was a rude example, some sense of what the thing implied was
carried home to my intelligence. The face looked down upon me with

a painful and deadlycontraction; but the rays of a glory encircled
it, and reminded me that the sacrifice was voluntary. It stood

there, crowning the rock, as it still stands on so many highway
sides, vainlypreaching to passers-by, an emblem of sad and noble

truths; that pleasure is not an end, but an accident; that pain is
the choice of the magnanimous; that it is best to suffer all things

and do well. I turned and went down the mountain in silence; and
when I looked back for the last time before the wood closed about

my path, I saw Olalla still leaning on the crucifix.
THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD.

CHAPTER I. BY THE DYING MOUNTEBANK.
They had sent for the doctor from Bourron before six. About eight

some villagers came round for the performance, and were told how
matters stood. It seemed a liberty for a mountebank to fall ill

like real people, and they made off again in dudgeon. By ten
Madame Tentaillon was gravely alarmed, and had sent down the street

for Doctor Desprez.
The Doctor was at work over his manuscripts in one corner of the

little dining-room, and his wife was asleep over the fire in
another, when the messenger arrived.

'Sapristi!' said the Doctor, 'you should have sent for me before.
It was a case for hurry.' And he followed the messenger as he was,

in his slippers and skull-cap.
The inn was not thirty yards away, but the messenger did not stop

there; he went in at one door and out by another into the court,
and then led the way by a flight of steps beside the stable, to the

loft where the mountebank lay sick. If Doctor Desprez were to live
a thousand years, he would never forget his arrival in that room;

for not only was the scene picturesque, but the moment made a date
in his existence. We reckon our lives, I hardly know why, from the

date of our first sorry appearance in society, as if from a first
humiliation; for no actor can come upon the stage with a worse

grace. Not to go further back, which would be judged too curious,
there are subsequently many moving and decisive accidents in the

lives of all, which would make as logical a period as this of
birth. And here, for instance, Doctor Desprez, a man past forty,

who had made what is called a failure in life, and was moreover
married, found himself at a new point of departure when he opened

the door of the loft above Tentaillon's stable,
It was a large place, lighted only by a single candle set upon the

floor. The mountebank lay on his back upon a pallet; a large man,
with a Quixotic nose inflamed with drinking. Madame Tentaillon

stooped over him, applying a hot water and mustard embrocation to
his feet; and on a chair close by sat a little fellow of eleven or

twelve, with his feet dangling. These three were the only
occupants, except the shadows. But the shadows were a company in

themselves; the extent of the room exaggerated them to a gigantic
size, and from the low position of the candle the light struck

upwards and produced deformed foreshortenings. The mountebank's
profile was enlarged upon the wall in caricature, and it was

strange to see his nose shorten and lengthen as the flame was blown
about by draughts. As for Madame Tentaillon, her shadow was no

more than a gross hump of shoulders, with now and again a
hemisphere of head. The chair legs were spindled out as long as

stilts, and the boy set perched atop of them, like a cloud, in the
corner of the roof.

It was the boy who took the Doctor's fancy. He had a great arched
skull, the forehead and the hands of a musician, and a pair of

haunting eyes. It was not merely that these eyes were large, or
steady, or the softest ruddy brown. There was a look in them,

besides, which thrilled the Doctor, and made him half uneasy. He
was sure he had seen such a look before, and yet he could not

remember how or where. It was as if this boy, who was quite a
stranger to him, had the eyes of an old friend or an old enemy.

And the boy would give him no peace; he seemed profoundly
indifferent to what was going on, or rather abstracted from it in a

superior contemplation, beatinggently with his feet against the
bars of the chair, and holding his hands folded on his lap. But,

for all that, his eyes kept following the Doctor about the room
with a thoughtful fixity of gaze. Desprez could not tell whether