"Oh, a ripping good fellow," returned Louis in the same innocent, childlike tone--"a real comfort; best in the village outside the landlord and his wife, with whom I stayed two weeks. Brought me my luncheon every day and crawled up a breakneck hill to do it, and then kept on two miles to mail my letters." "Well, but Louis," I exclaimed, "what a mean, thin, fake of a yarn; no point, no plot--no nothing but a string of----" "Yes, High-Muck, quite true--no plot, no nothing; but it is as good as your bogus ghosts and shivering bishops. And then I always had my doubts about that bishop, High-Muck. I've heard you tell that story before, and it has always struck me as highly improper. I don't wonder the girl was scared to death and skipped the next morning. And the gay old bishop! Felt cold, did he?" and Louis threw back his head and laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks. XII WHY MIGNON WENT TO MARKET It is market day at Dives. This means that it is Saturday. On Friday the market is at Cabourg, on Wednesday at Buezval, and on the other days at the several small towns within a radius of twenty miles. It means, too, that the street fronting the Inn is blocked up with a line of carts, little and big, their shafts in the gutter, the horses eating from troughs tied to the hind axle; that another line stretches its length along the narrow street on the kitchen side of the Inn which leads to the quaint Norman church, squeezing itself through a yet narrower street into a small open square, where it comes bump up against a huge hulk of a building, choked up on these market days with piles of vegetables, crates of chickens, boxes of apples, unruly pigs alive and squealing; patient, tired, little calves; geese, ducks--all squawking; chrysanthemums in pots spread out on the sidewalk; old brass, old iron; everything that goes to supply the needs of the white-capped women and wide-hatted men who crowd every square foot of standing room.