"Yes; Hector certainly must resemble this young man," he murmured, as he wetted his hard hands, and, grasping the handle of his axe, smote heavily at the stem of a young pine-tree. Graham rapidly made his toilet in the open air. The plunge in the clear cold water had rather stimulated than expended the electric, nervous force which ran through his veins, quickening the life-blood in its flow. He felt ten years younger since yesterday morning. His thirty years and the gravity they had brought to him had shrunk to twenty. As he looked up at his tower he sang aloud a snatch of an old song which had been often on his lips in those happy, careless days in the _Rue d’ Enfer_,--words which he had painted over the tiny grate in the cramped apartment under the leads, where he had suffered from heat all summer, and shivered all winter: Dans un grenier qu’ on est bien A vingt ans, à vingt ans! He would have liked to dance. Had his years in truth been but twenty, he would have yielded to the temptation. He would gladly have thrown his arms about the old Frenchman, for lack of another confidant, and have told him the cause of his happiness. But, after all, this reflex of youth could not entirely melt the reserve of manhood from him; he wore his thirty years lightly indeed, but could not shake them off. "Give me your axe, John; I know something of your woodman’s craft; let me show you how easily I can fell this young tree." He took the tool from the woodcutter, and, whirling the sharp edge in the air, laid it at the root of the tree with a ringing blow. "It appears in truth that monsieur ’ave ’andled an axe before." "Surely, John. I once spent a summer with some friends of mine, who lived in a forest in Brittany; they were _sabotiers_." "Monsieur is jesting?" "Not in the least. I not only can fell a tree,--clumsily enough, be it confessed,--but if I had the tools I could shape you a pair of _sabots_, as good ones as you could buy for ten sous at Quimper; that is your town, I think?" He talked in short, jerky sentences between the strokes, while the white splinters flew about him like a hail-storm. After a few moments the knack which he seemed at first to have forgotten came back to him. The smell of the bruised bark was aromatic; the death-sigh of the young branches was musical as they trembled for the last time together, reaching out to touch their sister trees in solemn leave-taking. Their sigh was now drowned in the groan of the swaying tree. "Take care, monsieur, take care; it is about to fall," cried the Frenchman.