THE FALSE ZOUAVE 125

The mother threw herself between
them.

‘Lory, Lory, don’t kill him... it
is I who wrote and told him to come
back, and that you had need of him
at the forge.’

She clung to his arm, dragging her-
self along, sobbing. In the darkness of
their room the children shrieked to hear
voices so full of anger and tears that
they could not be recognised... .
The blacksmith stopped and looked at
his wife :

‘Ah, it is you who made him come
back, is it? . . .. Very well—good, let
him go to bed. I will see to-morrow
what I have to do.’

Next morning Christian, awakening
from heavy slumber full of nightmare
’ and causeless terrors, finds himself in
his old nursery. Through the little
leaded casements, crossed by honey-
suckle flowers, the sun shines already
high and hot. Below stairsthe hammers
resound on the anvil. . . . His mother