Free! and Claude his forever! Monsieur Garbelle was crossing the bridge; he looked up at the other's radiant face with a frown. But Chelot did not care; he was free, and in his great happiness willing to love even his rival.

"I am free, M. Garbelle. See, all this money is mine!" he cried, nearly thrusting it into the other's face.

"You have received it already ?" M. Garbelle asked, retreating to the moss-grown stone railing.

"What do you mean? Who sent it?" Chelot asked, blankly.

M. Garbelle had had an unpleasant courting, and an expensive, so he was longing for a little revenge to soothe his soul.

"Ha! ha! It is a little bargain: Ma'm'selle Claude accepts three hundred francs from me, and I take Ma'm'selle Claude."

"Sold herself for me!" Bertrand thought over and over again, as if he could not grasp the idea. However, there stood M. Garbelle, grinning, until with one hand the young man grasped his broadcloth collar, and with the other stuffed the bank-bills in M. Garbelle's pocket, and then, with a vigorous kick, sent him staggering uphill.

"The debt is repaid, M. Garbelle," he said, sternly, and, turning his back on him, he went toward the mill.

That whole afternoon the miller was happy. M. Garbelle was his-his future son-in-law. As for Claude, she said nothing, but she worked with feverish activity. "I shall go mad if I think," she said to herself. After M. Garbelle had given her the money, he tried to reward himself by feebly clasping her arm with one bony hand, but she shook him off like a spider.

At dusk she sat down on a settle by the open hearth, shivering in the fire-light, and the miller put a fresh log on the fire and the flames went blazing and crackling up the great chimney.

She was sitting there still when Bertrand came in. He threw himself at her feet, and for a moment they looked silently and sorrowfully into each other's faces.

"Claude," he said, at last, drawing her toward him, "I shall come back to you again—I swear I shall. The price you paid for my life was too dear—I—I—have given the money back. Have patience, my darling, for a year-only a year."

She hid her face on his shoulder and wept silently, but something of peace touched her heart. God only knew how patient she

would be! It had grown darker, and the fire-light cast red shadows across the floor, and from the cracks in the door a sudden yellow glimmer pierced through.

It was the miller, who came in holding a lamp and shading his eyes from the gloom, followed by M. le Maire, longing to know what the letter and the money were about -so curious that he had trudged all the way down-hill for chance information.

The miller, placing the lamp on the table, caught sight of Bertrand.

"You here again ?" he asked, with much disfavor. He would have said more; but he was afraid of Claude. M. le Maire pricked up his sharp ears; but he was also a Frenchman, and polite, and he had no interest in family skirmishes.

There was an ominous silence, and M. le Maire, sitting down by the table, stretched out his fat hands to a ragged newspaper roll lying beside a forage-bag and a crust of bread. Anything to break the dead silence.

"Tiens! A paper from Paris! What a pleasure!" M. le Maire said, and, without a moment's hesitation, he began to unroll it with nimble fingers.

"It is the only thing Chelot brought from Paris," the miller said, with much scorn, while he filled a couple of pipes, and dived into the recesses of a huge carven chest for a bottle of new wine, for M. le Maire was an honored guest.

"In the name of heaven, how did you come by this?"

M. le Maire so asked the question that the miller leaped to his feet, and dropped the bottle in his hand with a crash, in his consternation. He wasn't dreaming, but money? The table was covered with it, and the ragged paper that Bertrand had brought from Paris was plethoric with more. It strewed the table and fell on the ground, and the numbers on the bills were of fabulous amounts. Between all stood M. le Maire, open-mouthed, petrified, and pointing a fat forefinger at Bertrand.

For a second Chelot was bewildered; then a sudden light dawned upon him.

"To be sure-yes, I remember! Jean Pierre thrust it in my bag yesterday, as I left Paris. He and Duval were kicking it about till Jean Pierre dropped it in there," pointing to the bag, which the miller was examining, to see if a bill or two had remained behind. "I suppose some one lost it," Bertrand said, indifferently.

It seemed like a nineteenth-century fairy tale, as the three stood about M. le Maire,

while he counted the bills with a moist forefinger. The miller watched each motion with open-mouthed wonder. After the first few thousands, his ears were dulled; he could comprehend no further; while Claude thought of the happiness such a bit of paper could give her and hers.

She turned to the window, and looked into the darkness till the last bill was counted and the whole was tucked safely into an inside pocket of M. le Maire's waistcoat.

"It was like a bad dream," she murmured, and looked humbly at Bertrand, who stood watching all with calm indifference.

"If we had all that money," she whispered, laying her hand on his arm.

Something of his old bright smile came back, as he stroked his mustache and looked down at her.

"Five hundred thousand francs. Some one has lost half a million," M. le Maire said, impressively. "Whoever it is will cry loud enough to be heard. If it hadn't been for me, that money would have lain there till doomsday," he said, with great solemnity. "What would you do without me-just tell me that? I shall ride to Merle to-night, and telegraph to the chief of police in Paris. As for you, Chelot, the money is yours till the owner appears; so you must sleep at the inn to-night. I shouldn't like all the world to know what lies in the 'Potau-Feu.' Come, Chelot! You, miller, bring a lantern. Good-night, Ma'm'selle Claude. In the meantime, I shall ride over to Merle." The miller accompanied the two to the inn. To say that M. le Maire was excited was to say nothing. He was magnificent!

"Legends," he declared, as he harnessed his fat horse to a square box on four wheels, -"legends will be handed down about that money, Chelot, my boy; and you, miller, wont be forgotten. But I "and M. le Maire stopped a second and laid his forefinger against his nose; "I-oh—I.

Language failed to provide him with. words sufficiently eulogistic, and, like other artists under equally impressive circumstances, M. le Maire remained silent.

VII.

M. LE MAIRE was still snoring placidly in the early morning, when a coach tore down the highway and pulled up, with a sweep, at the "Pot-au-Feu."

appear at his best. His nose was red and a pea-green haze covered his features; but with the last remnants of energy he pulled his cuffs over his knuckles. He trembled with joy and eagerness, and M. le Maire, enveloped in a mysterious, long garment, had hardly unbarred the door before M. Bertholet fell about his neck.

"My preserver!"

"No, not exactly," he answered, honestly, struggling to escape.

"Well, then, who is he? Where is he? Let me see him!"

"He is in bed; I'll send him down. directly."

That did not satisfy M. Bertholet's grateful impatience. ful impatience. He followed M. le Maire's fluttering garments down the winding corridors, and so burst into a small room where Bertrand was dreaming of Mexico with the magnificent fantasy of a Frenchman, and suddenly awoke to find a queer old man sitting at his bedside, clasping his hand,—a strange old man, with wisps of thin, green hair, and a limp but generous display of linen.

"You shall have the reward, twenty thou sand francs!" cried Bertholet, over and

over.

"He is mad!" Chelot thought, and shuddered.

"Day before yesterday I lost the money in the railway-station in Paris. In Calais they said I was mad, and sent me to Paris by the next train, with two keepers."

Chelot watched him, horror-struck. "I remember I saw you at the station, my fine fellow; I'll make your fortune." A light dawned on Chelot.

"To be sure; oh, I see,—why, yes."

"I'm the owner of the five hundred thousand francs," M. Bertholet interposed. "And you are not mad?" Chelot asked, still doubting M. Bertholet's feverish joy.

M. Bertholet mad? He was mad the night he had been left to recover his reason at leisure in a police-cell, after a forced journey back to Paris, with two keepers and a pair of handcuffs. He was mad the next morning, when Madame and "the little one" came, each in turn, and overwhelmed him with reproaches. But mad now? No, he was coming to himself; he had learned a lesson: Madame was nothing without him, and "the little one" less than nothing.

Experience is so extravagant a necessity that it has amounted to a luxury from the day Mother Eve ate an apple and lost Paradise, down to M. Bertholet, who paid twentyfive thousand francs for his share.

It was a great day for Plaileroi and the "Pot-au-Feu." Bertholet sat beside M. le Maire in the great kitchen, and watched him brew wonderful drinks for such of the villagers as chose to look in. All Plaileroi came and stared at the rich man, who had lost a fortune in Paris and found it in Plaileroi. They drank to his health and to M. le Maire's, and stared again when they heard that he had given the miller's Claude a dowry of twenty thousand francs, and remembered M. le Maire handsomely.

Chelot would accept nothing, even when he was told that twenty thousand francs was the advertised reward. However, after a moment's consultation with the host of the "Pot-au-Feu," Claude had been transformed into an heiress by the mere scratch of a pen in M. Bertholet's hand.

"It's all one," M. le Maire had said, in explanation, when Claude came shyly into the room, followed by Bertrand.

"Am I mad?" M. Bertholet asked the young man, and patted Claude's blushing face. It was an expensive pat. It was all he had seen of "life," and it cost a pile of money. Still he did not care, though he watched them rather enviously when the fiddlers arrived, and in a trivet set Plaileroi scampering and spinning down the long kitchen.

"They have the best of it," he thought, catching sudden glimpses of a laughing face, the glitter of white teeth, and Bertrand's brown mustache in dangerous proximity.

Grandeur begets solitude, and M. Bertholet pulled down his cuffs, rasped his throat a little, and wished M. le Maire to the devil.

"Will Monsieur dance with me?" asked a shy voice, and Claude stood before him, blushing.

Would he? Good heavens, yes!

He leaped to his feet, pulled down his cuffs, the fiddles struck up a new tune, and, after thirty years of inaction, M. Bertholet's feet cracked their old muscles to the tune of a dance, and M. Bertholet's elbows forced a way through the population of Plaileroi with superb effect. In the midst of it

"Mon mari!" said a familiar voice. M. Bertholet thought he was dreaming, and danced on.

"Mon mari!" said the voice again, plaintively.

He stopped as if he had been shot. There stood Madame at the open door, travelstained and humble.

“

"My friend, I heard that you were here, and so I followed you."

"And now you can go home again," M. Bertholet interposed, politely, and taking her by one fat elbow he led her through the garden to the vehicle in which she had come.

"Will you not come home with me, my friend?"

"Not till I choose, my dear," he answered, shutting her into the coach.

"Perhaps you haven't heard the news," she said, spitefully, looking out of the window. "The little one' is married."

"Then I pity him," M. Bertholet replied, with much feeling.

"She's a dancer-a ballet-dancer!" Madame screamed in a fury, as the coachman, with a crack of his whip, started his lank beasts toward Merle.

It was sinful and not fatherly but M. Bertholet laughed till he ached; he was still laughing when he reached the "Pot-au-Feu," and the merry tune of a dance tickled his

ears.

"Now," said M. Bertholet, and he pulled his cuffs down for the last time in this story,

"now I shall begin to live. Madame is crushed, and the little one' is-ha! ha! married."

The fiddles twanged and the trumpet tooted, and M. Bertholet and all Plaileroi whirled about in the kitchen of the " Pot-auFeu."

IF not in the certainty of resultant beauty, life is like a prism in the changing aspects which it has from different points of sight, and it is only when one angle of view is adhered to with the fixity of habit, that the world appears stagnant and wearisome. It is stimulating, for instance, to find another stand-point than the pavement for watch ing the throbbing traffic of the city street. These hollow channels, grooved like Western cañons between miles and miles of shops and houses, never let us know more than the immediate neighborhood; there are labyrinths and vistas, but no climax that displays to us the entirety and cohesion of part with part. The undeviating lengths of thoroughfare are monotonous, and the activities within them chafe and make us fretful without having the sonorousness and depth of meaning which the blended sounds gather as they roll up to the roof. As far as we are concerned, it is from a roof that we prefer to contemplate the city -such as that on which we stood yesterday, with the spire of Trinity near its apex across the way, and only the sky and a gilded vane above us. Nor is it idle fancy or idiosyncrasy that actuates us. Is Thomas Carlyle's picture of the sapient Teufelsdröckh's speculum or watch-tower still remembered?—

"It might truly be called the pinnacle of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous roofs, themselves rising from elevated ground wherefrom, sitting at ease, he might see the whole life-circulation of that considerable City; the streets and lanes of which, with all their doing and driving (Thun und Treiben), were for the most part visible there. * 'Ach, mein Lieber,' said he once, at midnight, when we had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest talk, 'it is true sublimity to dwell here; I sit above it all; I am alone with the Stars.'"

As we withdraw from the cornice, no streets and few living things can be seen. The yellow-green rivers and the bay of purer color bear a traffic that seems stealthy and noiseless. Glancing from these, there is open before us a vast surface of roofs, obscure in the distance under a pale haze of anthracite, with steeples and chimneys projecting from them, and gaps of invisible depth separating them. In level and color the space is like a desert; and this analogy is sustained by innumerable columns of vapor, which feather in the upper air like the issue of so many hot springs. At first, these white wreaths seem to give the only movement to the scene, but a further observation discovers one maiden in all the space, with the wind blowing her petticoats as she hangs some clothes to dry, in a pen-like inclosure on one of the dull red squares; and then we perceive three men stringing some telegraph-wires, and a flicker of sunshine attracts our attention to a fourth, who is securing plates of tin to an old gableroof. This is the metropolis seen from the Equitable building in the full glare of midday.

Our height conceals the traffic from us. Teufelsdröckh could see the living flood pouring through the streets, of all qualities and ages the couriers arriving, bestrapped and bebooted; the baron, with his household, coming in from the country; the old soldier begging alms, and thousands of carriages, wagons, and carts entering Weissnichtwo and setting out again. But though the multitudinous activities are veiled from us by the long, vacant, monochromatic areas of roofs, their existence is emphasized by the concealment, and what the eye cannot see the whole being feels with a strange and profound reflectiveness. So, too, the sound that deafens the pedestrians below reaches us in harmonious undulations, and though its volume is softened and blended, its depth and many sources strike us with increased impressiveness.

We are not describing a singular or personal effect. The "Equitable roof" is a gratuitous exhibition afforded to the public by an opulent insurance company, and is a point of view much frequented by strangers and persons in search of new sensations. It is attainable by luxurious elevators, without charge or exertion; and the other day, when