I was softened by the sadness of his tone and the real grief that showed itself in his small pinched features. So I looked up at him, and tried to smile.
"What is your name?" he questioned of me, eagerly, in a whisper, as if to extract a secret that I might not care to disclose aloud.
"John Hurdiss," I replied. "That's all I know."
The old man drew a long sigh. "Was your mother's name Hortense or Hélène?" he questioned again, suddenly and hoarsely.
"I don't know," I said. "I have no idea."
"So be it," he replied, as if accepting a decision against which there was no use railing. "Come, son; up with you, and we will ride on to my château."
We followed the well-worn road, and then turned off through the woods, and came to some pasture bars at the edge of a clearing. I slid to the ground and opened them at a command from my uncle, and replaced them after he had gone through. The field that we entered had been sheep-grazed, and was poor pasturage. Here and there crumbling hoof-worn patches of rock showed through the wiry close-cropped turf; clusters of rank fern and hard-back bushes were dotted about, and we threaded them, following a narrow path, until we came to another gate, which I opened in the way I had the first. A half-mile of travelling through an expanse of soft swampy ground, grown with alders and dogwood, and I heard the sound of running water. Soon we came to a clear brook that gurgled under overhanging banks, and purled about gleaming time-smoothed stones; crossing it, and clambering up the steep bank, we came to a second clearing, hardly five acres in extent. A half-score of large apple-trees and a diminutive garden were to the left, and at the upper edge of the clearing was a small unpainted house, and behind it a little barn, whose foundations extended into the hill-side.
"Gaston! Gaston!" called Monsieur de Brienne, at top voice. "Where are you hiding?"
In answer a head was thrust from the doorway, and the oddest-looking figure that I had ever seen came into view. It was an old man, whose frame when covered with flesh or muscles must have been enormous, but now so scantily cushioned were the bones that the quaint clothes hung on him much in the way that a coat hangs on a fence post. But the man moved with incredible swiftness. He gave a strange look at me, and took Monsieur de Brienne's stirrup-leather in his hand and assisted him to dismount. I pushed myself backwards over the horse's hind quarters.
"A guest, Gaston, to Belair. My nephew, Monsieur Jean Hurdiss. This is Gaston, my valet, chef, major-domo, and standing army."