Now came the klop-klop of a pair of sabots—then the creak of a heavy key as it turned over twice in the rusty lock, and his faithful Marie cautiously opened the garden door. I do not know how old Marie is, there is so little left of this good soul to guess by. Her small shrunken body is bent from age and hard work. Her hands are heavy—the fingers gnarled and out of proportion to her gaunt thin wrists. She has the wrinkled, leathery face of some kindly gnome. She opened her eyes in a sort of mute appeal as I inquired if Monsieur le Curé was at home.
"Ah! My poor monsieur, his reverence will see no one"—she faltered—"Ah! Mais"—she sighed, knowing that I knew the change in her master and the gossip thereof.
"My good Marie," I said, persuasively patting her bony shoulder, "tell his reverence that I must see him. Old friends as we are—"
"Bon Dieu, oui!" she exclaimed after another sigh. "Such old friends as you and he—I will go and see," said she, and turned bravely back down the path that led to his door while I waited among the roses.
A few moments later Marie beckoned to me from the kitchen window.
"He will see you," she whispered, as I crossed the stone floor of the kitchen. "He is in the little room," and she pointed to a narrow door close by the big chimney, a door provided with old-fashioned little glass panes upon which are glued transparent chromos of wild ducks.
I knocked gently.
"Entrez!" came a tired voice from within.
I turned the knob and entered his den—a dingy little box of a room, sunk a step below the level of the kitchen, with a smoke-grimed ceiling and corners littered with dusty books and pamphlets.
He was sitting with his back to me, humped up in a worn arm-chair, before his small stove, just as Tanrade had found him. As I edged around his table—past a rack holding his guns, half-hidden under two dilapidated game bags and a bicycle tyre long out of service, he turned his hollow eyes to mine, with a look I shall long remember, and feebly grasped my outstretched hand.