Monsieur Maurice | Page 8

my dragoman; everything. He slept on a mat at the foot of my bed every night, like a dog. So he lived with me for nearly four years--till I lost him."
He paused.
I did not dare to ask, "what more?" but waited breathlessly.
"The rest is soon told," he said presently; but in an altered voice. "It happened in Ceylon. Our way lay along a bridle-path overhanging a steep gorge on the one hand and skirting the jungle on the other. Do you know what the jungle is, little Gretchen? Fancy an untrodden wilderness where huge trees, matted together by trailing creepers of gigantic size, shut out the sun and make a green roof of inextricable shade--where the very grass grows taller than the tallest man--where apes chatter, and parrots scream, and deadly reptiles swarm; and where nature has run wild since ever the world began. Well, so we went--I on my horse; Ali at my bridle; two porters following with food and baggage; the precipice below; the forest above; the morning sun just risen over all. On a sudden, Ali held his breath and listened. His practised ear had caught a sound that mine could not detect. He seized my rein--forced my horse back upon his haunches--drew his hunting knife, and ran forward to reconnoitre. The turn of the road hid him for a moment from my sight. The next instant, I had sprung from the saddle, pistol in hand, and run after him to share the sport or the danger. My little Gretchen--he was gone."
"Gone!" I echoed.
Monsieur Maurice shook his head, and turned his face away.
"I heard a crashing and crackling of the underwood," he said; "a faint moan dying on the sultry air. I saw a space of dusty road trampled over with prints of an enormous paw--a tiny trail of blood--a shred of silken fringe--and nothing more. He was gone."
"What was it?" I asked presently, in an awestruck whisper.
Monsieur Maurice, instead of answering my question, opened the sketch-book at a page full of little outlines of animals and birds, and laid his finger silently on the figure of a sleeping tiger.
I shuddered.
"Pauvre petite!" he said, shutting up the book, "it is too terrible a story. I ought not to have told it to you. Try to forget it."
"Ah, no!" I said. "I shall never forget it, Monsieur Maurice. Poor Ali! Have you still the piece of fringe you found lying in the road?"
He unlocked his desk and touched a secret spring; whereupon a small drawer flew out from a recess just under the lock.
"Here it is," he said, taking out a piece of folded paper.
It contained the thing he had described--a scrap of fringe composed of crimson and yellow twist, about two inches in length.
"And those other things?" I said, peering into the secret drawer with a child's inquisitiveness. "Have they a history, too?"
Monsieur Maurice hesitated--took them out--sighed--and said, somewhat reluctantly:--
"You may see them, little Gretchen, if you will. Yes; they, too, have their history--but let it be. We have had enough sad stories for to-day."
Those other things, as I had called them, were a withered rose in a little cardboard box, and a miniature of a lady in a purple morocco case.

5
It so happened that the Winter this year was unusually severe, not only at Br��hl and the parts about Cologne, but throughout all the Rhine country. Heavy snows fell at Christmas and lay unmelted for weeks upon the ground. Long forgotten sleighs were dragged out from their hiding places and put upon the road, not only for the transport of goods, but for the conveyance of passengers. The ponds in every direction and all the smaller streams were fast frozen. Great masses of dirty ice, too, came floating down the Rhine, and there were rumours of the great river being quite frozen over somewhere up in Switzerland, many hundred miles nearer its source.
For myself, I enjoyed it all--the bitter cold, the short days, the rapid exercise, the blazing fires within, and the glittering snow without. I made snow-men and snow-castles to my heart's content. I learned to skate with my father on the frozen ponds. I was never weary of admiring the wintry landscape--the wide plains sheeted with silver; the purple mountains peeping through brown vistas of bare forest; the nearer trees standing out in featherlike tracery against the blue-green sky. To me it was all beautiful; even more beautiful than in the radiant summertime.
Not so, however, was it with Monsieur Maurice. Racked by a severe cough and unable to leave the house for weeks together, he suffered intensely all the winter through. He suffered in body, and he suffered also in mind. I could see that he was very sad, and that there were times when the burden of life was almost more than he