"But mayhap mine has. Down yonder the harvest is rotting; the land is laying unplowed; and my family languishes whom I love, and ten times more fondly since I have seen this corpse for which his family will weep."
"What are you driving at, Billet? Do you suppose that I am going to pity your fate?"
"Oh, no," answered the farmer simply; "but as I must cry out when I am in pain, and as crying out leads to nothing, I want to relieve myself in my own way. In short, I want to go home on my farm, Master Gilbert."
"What, again?"
"Look ye, a voice down there is calling me home."
"That voice is prompting you to desertion, Billet."
"I am no soldier to desert, sir."
"What you want to do is worse than desertion in a soldier."
"I should like that explained, doctor."
"You come to Paris to overthrow an old house and you turn away before the building is down."