"Ah well! But I have come now. We will try to get on without them, won't we?" "And I?" put in a thick voice. The soldier left Rousille, and hastened to Mathurin who was coming towards them; dragging his limbs after him. "Do not hurry, old man! I must do the running for both; I have sound legs." Stooping over his crutches, and stroking his elder brother's tawny head, André could find no words of comfort. Coming fresh from a military centre where all was young, active, alert, he could not hide the distress and a certain feeling of horror with which Mathurin's infirmity inspired him. However, compelled by the other's anxious look, which seemed to ask, "What do you think of me?--you who come back, judge--can I live?" he hastened to say: "My poor old man, I am so glad to find you like this. So you have not got any worse?" With a shrug of the shoulders, the cripple angrily pushed him away. "I am much better," he returned. "You will see. I walk more easily. I can stand as firmly as I did three years ago, when I thought I was getting well ... and, for a beginning, I am going with you to mass at Sallertaine to-morrow." To avoid answering, the young soldier turned to meet his father, who, having unharnessed La Rousse, was coming towards them, with happy, smiling face, having eyes only for his Driot come home to him again. The men, one following the other, turned towards the house, and went in; but on this happy day it was the farmer who held back, and the returned son who went first. Alert, interested as on a first visit, rejoiced to be made the object of the eyes and ears of the others, he did not sit down but wandered from room to room, the blue and red uniform an unfamiliar sight in this home of the toilers of the field. To amuse his auditors he made the old walls ring again with words of command; knocked up against corners to feel the strength of the massive stones; opened the cupboard, cut himself a slice of bread, and tasted it, with a, "Better than the bread of Algiers, my friends. This is Rousille's baking, eh? It is excellent; we shall have a good farmer's wife in her." Followed everywhere by his father, Mathurin, and Marie-Rose, he went from the house into the stables and barns. "I do not know these oxen," said he. "No, my boy, I bought them last winter at Beauvoir fair." "Well, I'll bet that I can tell their names from their faces. This dun-coloured one, that does not look great shakes, is Noblet, and his companion, the little tawny one, is Matelot?" "Right," answered his father. "As for the others, our old ones, they have not changed much, save to put on more horn and muscle. The plough ought to work well drawn by them. Good day, Paladin; good day, Cavalier!" The good creatures lying in the straw, hearing the young voice that called to them, thrust out their heads, and with their thoughtful eyes followed the young master. A little further, stooping down, he took up a handful of green forage.