"So far that he has no idea of coming back."
"Is that true? Won't he come back? has he gone for good and all? That ends my wanting to laugh and dance any more to-night."
"Ho, ho, pretty one!" cried Huriel; "so you are Joseph's sweetheart, are you? He did not tell me that."
"I am nobody's sweetheart," answered Brulette, drawing herself up.
"Nevertheless," said the muleteer, "here is a token which he told me to show you in case you hesitated to trust me with the bagpipe."
"Where is it? what is it?" I exclaimed.
"Look at my ear," said the muleteer, lifting a great lock of his curly black hair and showing us a tiny silver heart hanging to a large earring of fine gold, which pierced his ears after a fashion among the middle classes of those days.
I think that earring began to open Brulette's eyes, for she said to Huriel, "You can't be what you seem to be, but I see plainly that you are not a man to deceive poor folks. Besides, that token is really mine, or rather it is Joseph's, for it is a present his mother made to me on the day of our first communion, and I gave it to him the next day as a remembrance, when he left home to go to service. So, Tiennet," she said, turning to me, "go to my house and fetch the bagpipe, and bring it over there, under the church porch, where it is dark, so that people can't see where it comes from; for Père Carnat is a wicked old man and might do my grandfather some harm if he thought we were mixed up in the matter."