road, it was not very direct, and I found myself thinking it very creditable to the topographical instinct of my friend and successor, Pierre, that he should have discovered on a first visit, and without having been to the house, that this was the best route to follow. With the knowledge of where the house lay, however, it was not difficult to keep right, and another forty minutes brought me, now creeping along very cautiously, alertly, and with open ears, to the door of old Jean’s little cottage. No doubt he was fast asleep in his bed, and I feared the need of a good deal of noisy knocking before he could be awakened from a peasant’s heavy slumber.
My delight was therefore great when I discovered that—either because he trusted his fellow-men, or because he possessed nothing in the least worth stealing—he had left his door simply on the latch. I lifted the latch and walked in. A dim lantern burned on a little table near the smoldering log-fire. Yet the light was enough to tell me that my involuntary host was not in the room. I passed across its short breadth to a door in the opposite wall. The door yielded to a push; all was dark inside. I listened for a sleeper’s breathing, but heard nothing. I returned, took up the lantern, and carried it with me into the inner room. I held it above my head, and it enabled me to see the low pallet-bed in the corner. But Jean was not lying in the bed—nay, it was clear that he had not lain on the bed all that night. Yet his bedtime was half-past eight or nine, and it was now hard on one o’clock. Jean was “mak-
