My action had so surprised the boys that they had gathered in a circle about us in silence and astonishment. When I had finished, the old gentleman looked at me with his black beadlike eyes and raised his hat.
"Thank you, thank you very much," he said, in broken English, in which I recognized at once the manner in which my mother had spoken. The trace of the French tongue was there beyond all doubt. So I lifted my own cap, and answered in what I may well call my native tongue, and told him in French that I was very glad to have been able to help him.
His astonishment at hearing me address him thus was so great that for a minute it deprived him of the power of answering, but then he burst forth into such rapid speech and into so many violent gesticulations that it was all I could do to follow. The little crowd pressed us so close that I became embarrassed, and the old man, who had been complaining of the conduct of the boys and the temper of his horse, and at the same time stating how welcome it was to hear his own tongue again, suddenly saw that he was creating a great deal of amusement for the gaping, snickering circle about us. He drew himself up and his lip curled with contempt. I now, for the first time, had an opportunity to ask a question that had been forming itself in my mind.
"Are you Monsieur de Brienne?" I ventured.
"I am, and you?" he replied.
"Am Jean Hurdiss, your nephew, who has come all the way from Baltimore to see you."
Instantly his manner changed. I thought he was going to fling his arms about me. But if such was his intention he controlled himself.
"We will not talk before this canaille," he said, quietly, "and I cannot here express my delight at seeing you."
This must have appeared very strange to the on-lookers, who, of course, understood no word of what we were saying, and what happened afterwards must have been stranger still; and I can now readily see why I was regarded as a mystery by the inhabitants of Miller's Falls during the whole course of my stopping there.
The old man with a great deal of dignity laid hold of the sack of corn, and seeing that nobody volunteered to help him, I took up the other end, and we carried it into the mill. There he flung it on the floor, and M. de Brienne pointed at it with his finger.