* * * * * The usual afternoon wind was blowing in Drignan, chill and raw, with a depressing flavor of a spoilt ocean about it. The sky was overcast, and everything was dismal in the dismal little town. Dismalest of all, perhaps, was a wretched little corner of waste land, between the old barrack-wall and the dirty canal behind it. A few sick, stunted, faded olive and orange trees in the lee of a mean stone wall showed that the place had at one time been a garden or courtyard. Heaps of rubbish here and there showed also that it had long outlived its usefulness. Here sat, one on each side of a tiny fire of twigs, a shabby, soldierly-looking old gentleman and a sallow, lanky young girl with a sullenly pretty face. Right in the sluggish smoke of the fire, the old man held a small sign-board still fresh from the painter’s hand, and the more the smoke took the brightness out of the new colors, the more he gazed at it with thoughtful approval. The girl said nothing; but sat and stared at the fire and listened with an air of weary and indifferent toleration while the old man repeated over and over what sounded like a monotonous narrative recitation. From time to time she nodded her head; and, at last, she began to repeat after the old man in a listless, mechanical way. It was late in the afternoon before they rose and scrambled over the heaps of rubbish to the street, where the old gentleman bade the girl good-by with what were evidently words of earnest admonition. His iteration seemed to annoy her, for finally she let slip, in a tone of anger, a specimen of the speech of the people which wasn’t exactly this; though at this we will let it go: [Illustration] “Vous savez, mons vieux, je m’en fiche bien de votre Pé--Pé--Pétrarque--et de votre Laure aussi--” Then she as quickly dropped back into her natural tone of hopeless submission to all who were less wretched than herself, and said, with something like gratitude in her voice: “All the same, it is very kind of you, sir, I will try to do as you have told me.” And they parted, she entering a near-by passage-way, and he going to the railroad station. * * * * * Mr. Vincent Egg stood in the private office of the Lyons branch of Messrs. Sculry & Co., the great Excursion Managers. He was, for him, unusually smart as to his clothes--to those who knew him, a sign that he had reached the end of his period of abstinence. The Manager of the Branch, a thin, raw, red-faced little Englishman with sandy whiskers, was looking over the proofs of the guide-book pages set up from Mr. Egg’s copy. “Oh, ah, yes, Egg!” he said; “I knew there was something particular I wanted to speak to you about. Here it is.” And he slowly read aloud: * * * * *