as Laurent had heard him called. The double encomium was certainly borne out by his famous defence of the mill at Penescouët, where he and eighteen men were said to have kept five hundred Imperialists, troops of the line, at bay for more than four hours, till the soldiers were at last obliged to send for reinforcements, and contrived to burn the place over their heads. And even then the little band had operated a retreat almost more wonderful than their defence.

And now, if M. de Vicq were correct, this gallant fighter was in England, a shaggy, middle-aged peasant, not, after all, the young man of Laurent's own class who had seized the opportunity which he had missed. For it must be rather fine to have contributed by something more than prayers and wishes to restore Louis XVIII to that throne of his ancestors which, in a few weeks, he would almost certainly mount.

(3)

But these reflections were totally forgotten an hour later, when the young Frenchman was standing, in his high leather boots, the water swirling about his legs, casting hopefully over the particular pool in which it was impossible that there should not be a fish.

Maman was right (though he should not tell her so) about the river. It was running so strongly that, as Laurent moved slowly forward, he used considerable caution before he followed one foot by the other, for though he stood in shallow, broken water, there was enough stream to take him off his legs if he trod on a slippery stone or dropped unexpectedly into even a small hole. Nevertheless, it was not really the strength of the stream which prevented M. de Courtomer from immersing himself even to the fifth button of his waistcoat, which was then accounted the maximum depth, but the fact that, after the severe cold which had once followed this exploit, he had promised his mother never to repeat it. Indeed, in wading at all he was doing more than the majority of fishermen ever thought of attempting.

The long, twenty-foot rod bent; he cast again a little farther over the sliding, deeper water near the opposite bank, which there was flat and pebbly, and sprinkled with low shrubs. Yet the deepest part of the channel was below it. . . . No luck, not the ghost of a rise! Perhaps there was a little too much flood, after all, though the water was perfectly clear. Laurent thought he would try a change of fly. He reeled up and caught the line.

But as he was detaching the fly he had been using (rather clumsily, for his fingers were cold) he heard, 

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