"No," said the poet, "I must be back in the fields cawing at my sheep." Back along the road to Vernoy he trudged with his poems under his arm. When he reached his village he turned into the shop of one Zeigler, a Jew out of Armenia, who sold anything that came to his hand. "Friend," said David, "wolves from the forest harass my sheep on the hills. I must purchase firearms to protect them. What have you?" "A bad day, this, for me, friend Mignot," said Zeigler, spreading his hands, "for I perceive that I must sell you a weapon that will not fetch a tenth of its value. Only last I week I bought from a peddlar a wagon full of goods that he procured at a sale by a _commissionaire_ of the crown. The sale was of the _château_ and belongings of a great lord--I know not his title--who has been banished for conspiracy against the king. There are some choice firearms in the lot. This pistol--oh, a weapon fit for a prince!--it shall be only forty francs to you, friend Mignot--if I lose ten by the sale. But perhaps an arquebuse--" "This will do," said David, throwing the money on the counter. "Is it charged?" "I will charge it," said Zeigler. "And, for ten francs more, add a store of powder and ball." David laid his pistol under his coat and walked to his cottage. Yvonne was not there. Of late she had taken to gadding much among the neighbours. But a fire was glowing in the kitchen stove. David opened the door of it and thrust his poems in upon the coals. As they blazed up they made a singing, harsh sound in the flue. "The song of the crow!" said the poet. He went up to his attic room and closed the door. So quiet was the village that a score of people heard the roar of the great pistol. They flocked thither, and up the stairs where the smoke, issuing, drew their notice. The men laid the body of the poet upon his bed, awkwardly arranging it to conceal the torn plumage of the poor black crow. The women chattered in a luxury of zealous pity. Some of them ran to tell Yvonne. M. Papineau, whose nose had brought him there among the first, picked up the weapon and ran his eye over its silver mountings with a mingled air of connoisseurship and grief. "The arms," he explained, aside, to the _curé_, "and crest of Monseigneur, the Marquis de Beaupertuys." II THE GUARDIAN OF THE ACCOLADE Not the least important of the force of the Weymouth Bank was Uncle Bushrod. Sixty years had Uncle Bushrod given of faithful service to the house of Weymouth as chattel, servitor, and friend. Of the colour of the mahogany bank furniture was Uncle Bushrod--thus dark was he externally; white as the uninked pages of the bank ledgers was his soul. Eminently pleasing to Uncle Bushrod would the comparison have been; for to him the only institution in existence worth considering was the Weymouth Bank, of which he was something between porter and generalissimo-in-charge.