and fat sac de voyage (how much more romantic a title than our prosaic "traveling bag "!). The driver

But M'sieur has left out the most important item. The evening before, wandering through the open street market, with its long double line of booths filled with every imaginable kind of merchandise from sweetmeats to live birds, we had found and purchased a tidy little basket. In the morning we stored it with supplies. Frugality was for the moment our watchword. Two cents for "little breads," fourteen for a bit of delicious Roquefort cheese, eight for a half-bottle of vin ordinaire, and ten for a generous supply of great rosy strawberries, left us a balance of six cents from our appropriation of two francs. A tempting luncheon-it tempted us all the morning.

On the bow of the canoe rode the driver, as amiable as his horse and hardly less impassive. His stolidity, at first impregnable, as we advanced was pierced by something of interest and curiosity. During the process of unpacking, launching, and loading the canoe the gleam brightened, until at the moment of embarkation he thrust a sympathetic left hand into mine and murmured an "Au revoir" whose tone seemed compounded of admiration for our boldness and hopelessness for our fate, his face breaking into unwonted lines of humor and good will.

woods and waters. Our joy found vent in loving little pats of the graceful upcurving bow and stern, and on M'dame's part in strenuous endeavors to remove the dust of travel from the shining interior.

The assembling idlers of the town. draped themselves over the parapet of bridge and quay; gravely watchful small boys gathered on the shore; even the workers in the adjacent wash-house suspended for a moment their incessant pounding and scrubbing-all Orléans, in fact, held its breath as Gray Brother, with M'sieur in the stern and M'dame in the bow, started on his journey down the Loire. The sun at that moment, out of curiosity, I believe, thrust his face through the clouds, while friendly voices and waving hands wished us good speed. The strong, swift current of the Loire bore us merrily on under the second bridge and past the last of the city streets till only the outlying farms bordered the river. There we turned Gray Brother's

nose and paddled across stream for a last look at Orléans, its two cathedral spires thrust up above the trees dominating and ennobling the dull little city. Suddenly our more intimate acquaintance with the river which was to bear us on our journey began. An energetic stroke of the paddles was stopped in mid-career. The impediment was the river bottom, which at this point inconveniently rose to the surface. Further investigation discovered a sand-bar of considerable area, but avoidable by a slight detour. This experience proved characteristic of our entire progress down the river. The current was remarkably swift, but the channel was constantly crossing from bank to bank.

To disregard its course was inevitably to run into water too shallow for even Gray Brother's few inches of draught.

Its ways once learned, however, it was a delightful stream to navigate. Paddling was easy; the prospect, always lovely, was sufficiently various to sustain interest and provoke curiosity, and remote enough occasionally to suggest a voyage of discovery, while the wooded, grass-grown banks were a constant invitation. On this first day, however, grass and trees were too wet for expeditions or even for the noonday halt. So we lunched in the canoe.

The afternoon was a dream of happy idleness. The current bore us gently onward; the sun, relenting, wrapped us

round with warmth and brightness; yellow iris at the water's edge allured, flaming poppies higher up the bank threw us a gay challenge, little trailing white water flowers wooed us gently as we passed; now and again the cuckoo's clear note broke the stillness, or the bubbling murmur of the turtle-doves filled the air, and over all, pervading all, was the sweet, haunting fragrance of the locust bloom. Nature in all her fairest, subtlest guises of light, color, sound, and scent charmed us.

The little village of Meung (a name, by the way, as nearly impossible as may be of pronunciation by the stranger; the natives make it sound like the staccato moo of a bereaved cow) has, I believe, a station on the railway. From our point of view, however, this contact with the world did not exist. Meung was merely a waterside hamlet, a port of call on our voyage of discovery. Gray Brother poked his nose into the sand with an almost audible sigh of content (it was his first day of action, remember, after the bondage of his long journey). M'dame rested at his side while I reconnoitered the town for an inn. The Hôtel St. Jacques, an amiable hostess, a tidy chambre à deux lits, and a two-wheeled white cart to fetch M'dame and the baggage, rewarded the quest. Gray Brother was safely housed through the courtesy of a man who plainly conceived that his official occupation of marking the shifting channel of the Loire for the

guidance of the fishing boats marked him as the logical custodian of the craft; and we mounted the cart.

Before we reached the inn the "note" of Meung had forced itself upon us as an overpowering one of hides and the too fragrant processes of tanning. This somewhat harsh note, however, was soon ameliorated for M'dame, by the sight of the spotless linen of the bedchamber, its floor of warm red tiles, even then undergoing a thorough scrubbing, and the green of the vine that came creeping into the window. M'sieur's compen-. sation came later, in the excellence and the abundance of the dinner.

A stroll through the town after dinner discovered an unexpected source of entertainment. On a plot of green near the river a traveling show had set up its meager apparatus; before a tattered curtain the orchestra, consisting of two horns of amazing brazenness, and two drums whose loose heads resounded but dully, performed just recognizable travesties of popular airs. The musicians, who were presently to be revealed as forming the entire troupe, were evidently the members of a family. The father, a burly fellow with crude abilities as acrobat and clown, worked untiringly. Now he played the horn, with undoubted emphasis if not with finesse, then hurried to regulate the "flares" (of acetylene gas!) which lighted the little arena. After exhorting, in a flood of showman "patter," the bashful spectators to take seats on