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“Good day,” said Annette, shocked and sad, moving from the door. Suddenly she turned, and laid a hand on Julie’s arm. “Come and see my sweet Cecilia,” she said. “She is gay; she will amuse you.”

She was thinking again what a pity it was that Julie had no child.

“To see Cecilia and the black cat? Very well–some day.”

You could not have told what she meant. But, as Annette turned away again, she glanced at the mill; and there, high up in the dormer window, sat Parpon, his yellow cat on his shoulder, grinning down at her. She wheeled and went into the house.

II.

Parpon sat in the dormer window for a long time, the cat purring against his head, and not seeming the least afraid of falling, though its master was well out on the window-ledge. He kept mumbling to himself:

“Ho, ho, Farette is below there with the gun, rubbing and rubbing at the rust! Holy mother, how it will kick! But he will only meddle. If she set her eye at him and come up bold and said: ‘Farette, go and have your whiskey-wine, and then to bed,’ he would sneak away. But he has heard something. Some fool, perhaps that Benoit–no, he is sick–perhaps the herb-woman has been talking, and he thinks he will make a fuss. But it will be nothing. And M’sieu’ Armand, will he look at her?” He chuckled at the cat, which set its head back and hissed in reply. Then he sang something to himself.

Parpon was a poor little dwarf with a big head, but he had one thing which made up for all, though no one knew it–or, at least, he thought so. The Cure himself did not know. He had a beautiful voice. Even in speaking it was pleasant to hear, though he roughened it in a way. It pleased him that he had something of which the finest man or woman would be glad. He had said to himself many times that even Armand de la Riviere would envy him.

Sometimes Parpon went off away into the Bois Noir, and, perched there in a tree, sang away–a man, shaped something like an animal, with a voice like a muffled silver bell.

Some of his songs he had made himself: wild things, broken thoughts, not altogether human; the language of a world between man and the spirits. But it was all pleasant to hear, even when, at times, there ran a weird, dark thread through the woof. No one in the valley had ever heard the thing he sang softly as he sat looking down at Julie:

“The little white smoke blows there, blows here,
The little blue wolf comes down–
C’est la!
And the hill-dwarf laughs in the young wife’s ear,
When the devil comes back to town–
C’est la!”

It was crooned quietly, but it was distinct and melodious, and the cat purred an accompaniment, its head thrust into his thick black hair. From where Parpon sat he could see the House with the Tall Porch, and, as he sang, his eyes ran from the miller’s doorway to it.

Off in the grounds of the dead Seigneur’s manor he could see a man push the pebbles with his foot, or twist the branch of a shrub thoughtfully as he walked. At last another man entered the garden. The two greeted warmly, and passed up and down together.

III.

“My good friend,” said the Cure, “it is too late to mourn for those lost years. Nothing can give them back. As Parpon the dwarf said–you remember him, a wise little man, that Parpon–as he said one day, ‘For everything you lose you get something, if only how to laugh at yourself.”‘

Armand nodded thoughtfully and answered: “You are right–you and Parpon. But I cannot forgive myself; he was so fine a man: tall, with a grand look, and a tongue like a book. Yes, yes, I can laugh at myself–for a fool.”