Lucien gave the couple a distant bow and a half-humbled half-defiant glance; then he turned away into a cross-country road in search of some farmhouse, where he might make a breakfast on milk and bread, and rest awhile, and think quietly over the future. He still had three francs left. On and on he walked with the hurrying pace of fever, noticing as he went, down by the riverside, that the country grew more and more picturesque. It was near mid-day when he came upon a sheet of water with willows growing about the margin, and stopped for awhile to rest his eyes on the cool, thick-growing leaves; and something of the grace of the fields entered into his soul. In among the crests of the willows, he caught a glimpse of a mill near-by on a branch stream, and of the thatched roof of the mill-house where the house-leeks were growing. For all ornament, the quaint cottage was covered with jessamine and honeysuckle and climbing hops, and the garden about it was gay with phloxes and tall, juicy-leaved plants. Nets lay drying in the sun along a paved causeway raised above the highest flood level, and secured by massive piles. Ducks were swimming in the clear mill-pond below the currents of water roaring over the wheel. As the poet came nearer he heard the clack of the mill, and saw the good-natured, homely woman of the house knitting on a garden bench, and keeping an eye upon a little one who was chasing the hens about. Lucien came forward. “My good woman,” he said, “I am tired out; I have a fever on me, and I have only three francs; will you undertake to give me brown bread and milk, and let me sleep in the barn for a week? I shall have time to write to my people, and they will either come to fetch me or send me money.” “I am quite willing, always supposing that my husband has no objection.--Hey! little man!” The miller came up, gave Lucien a look over, and took his pipe out of his mouth to remark, “Three francs for a week’s board? You might as well pay nothing at all.” “Perhaps I shall end as a miller’s man,” thought the poet, as his eyes wandered over the lovely country. Then the miller’s wife made a bed ready for him, and Lucien lay down and slept so long that his hostess was frightened. “Courtois,” she said, next day at noon, “just go in and see whether that young man is dead or alive; he has been lying there these fourteen hours.” The miller was busy spreading out his fishing-nets and lines. “It is my belief,” he said, “that the pretty fellow yonder is some starveling play-actor without a brass farthing to bless himself with.” “What makes you think that, little man?” asked the mistress of the mill. “Lord, he is not a prince, nor a lord, nor a member of parliament, nor a bishop; why are his hands as white as if he did nothing?”