Upon entering the flower garden a resonant voice, alternating with tremendous bursts of glee, destroyed the stillness of the evening. Husband and wife looked at each other in complete understanding, and Madeleine held a finger to her lips, and motioned Geoffrey to advance on tip-toe. They pressed through a bower of roses, beneath a tangle of creepers, through tall rye-grass, and as they advanced the great voice came more strongly to their ears. At length they stood unseen within sight of their house front, and, drawing close together, laughed restrainedly. Upon the topmost step, in a line with the entrance, sat a man of immense bulk, holding a pretty fair-haired child upon his mighty knee; and this child he was dancing up and down, shouting a quaint accompaniment meantime. Around his head trailed the luxuriant vines, covered with their fluffy white blooms, and the dainty humming-birds went whirring by, chasing in sport the hivebound bees. Leaning back, and heaving his knee up and down, the big man continued to serenely bellow his nursery refrain: "Ha! Pieter von Donck! Pieter von Donck! 'Tis as cunning an old rogue as ever wore shoe-leather!" "Funny man! Do it again," chirruped Geoffrey Viner the younger. CHAPTER XXXVIII. VALEDICTORY. And now in the days when the world is small, and ships of iron rush to and fro upon the seas, and the sword has become a burden, and the mightier plowshare ripples the plain, gone are the golden lilies, gone the power of the soutane rouge, gone the House of Bourbon; and two small islands of the gulf, St. Pierre and Miquelon, bound by their rocks and beaten by the waves, gather the harvest of the sea under the lion's protection, and mourn in their loneliness over that proud supremacy which has passed away for ever. PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.