for crises. 

 Sabron, who had only seen Miss Redmond twice and thought about her countless times, never quite forgave his friend for the illness that kept him from the château. There was in Sabron's mind, much as he loved Pitchouné, the feeling that if he had gone that night... 

 There was never another invitation! 

 "Voyons, mon cher," his colonel had said to him kindly the next time he met him, "what stupidity have you been guilty of at the Château d'Esclignac?" 

 Poor Sabron blushed and shrugged his shoulders. 

 "I assure you," said the colonel, "that I did you harm there without knowing it. Madame d'Esclignac, who is a very clever woman, asked me with interest and sympathy, who your 'very sick friend' could be. As no one was very sick according to my knowledge, I told her so. She seemed triumphant and I saw at once that I had put you in the wrong." 

 It would have been simple to have explained to the colonel, but Sabron, reticent and reserved, did not choose to do so. He made a very insufficient excuse, and the colonel, as well as the marquise, thought ill of him. He learned later, with chagrin, that his friends were gone from the Midi. Rooted to the spot himself by his duties, he could not follow them. Meanwhile Pitchouné thrived, grew, cheered his loneliness, jumped over a stick, learned a trick or two from Brunet and a great many fascinating wiles and ways, no doubt inherited from his mother. He had a sense of humor truly Irish, a power of devotion that we designate as "canine," no doubt because no member of the human race has ever deserved it. 

 CHAPTER V THE GOLDEN AUTUMN 

 Sabron longed for a change with autumn, when the falling leaves made the roads golden roundabout the Château d'Esclignac. He thought he would like to go away. He rode his horse one day up to the property of the hard-hearted unforgiving lady and, finding the gate open, rode through the grounds up to the terrace. Seeing no one, he sat in his saddle looking over the golden country to the Rhone and the castle of the good King René, where the autumn mists were like banners floating from the towers. 

 There was a solitary beauty around the lovely place that spoke to the young officer with a sweet melancholy. He fancied that Miss Redmond must often have looked out from one of the windows, and he wondered which one. The terrace was deserted 

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