Jacques, while listening, continued following the stone-dray with his eyes. It was now crossing the line, but the wheels had got clogged by the metals, and the driver had to clack his whip, while Flore shouted to excite the horses. "The deuce!" exclaimed the young man, "it wouldn't do for a train to come along now. There would be a smash!" "Oh! there is no fear of that," replied Aunt Phasie. "Flore is sometimes funny, but she knows her business. She keeps her eyes open. It is now five years since we had an accident, thank God. A long time back a man was cut to pieces. We have only had a cow, which almost upset a train. Ah! the poor creature! We found its body here, and its head over there, near the tunnel. With Flore one can sleep soundly." The stone-dray had passed on. The loud shocks of the wheels in the ruts could be heard growing less distinct in the distance. Then Aunt Phasie returned to the subject that constantly occupied her thoughts--the question of health, in regard to others as much as herself. "And you," she inquired, "are you quite well now? You remember, when you were with us, that complaint you suffered from, and of which the doctor could make neither head nor tail?" His eyes became restless. "I am very well, godmother," said he. "Truly? It has all disappeared?" she inquired again. "That pain boring into your skull behind the ears, and the abrupt strokes of fever, and those periods of sadness, which made you hide yourself like an animal at the bottom of a hole?" As she proceeded, he became more and more troubled, and got so dreadfully uneasy that, at last, he interrupted her, saying in a brief tone: "I assure you I am very well. I feel nothing of all that. Nothing at all." "Well, so much the better, my lad," said she. "The fact of you being ill would not cure me. And then, you're of an age to enjoy good health. Ah! health! there is nothing like it. It is all the same very kind of you to have come to see me, when you could have been enjoying yourself somewhere else. You'll have dinner with us, won't you? And you'll sleep up there in the loft, next to the room Flore occupies?" But another blare of the horn interrupted her. Night had closed in, and, turning towards the window, they could only confusedly distinguish Misard talking with another man. Six o'clock had just struck, and he was giving over his service to the night watchman. At length he was about to be free after twelve hours passed in this hut, furnished only with a small table under the shelf supporting the apparatus, a stool, and a stove which threw out so much heat, that he was obliged to almost constantly keep the door open. "Ah! here he is, he is returning home," murmured Aunt Phasie, in a fright again.