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36 She tried to snatch them away. "Oh, these ungallant Englishmen!"

"I've got them," he said, "but they are so spoilt they are not worth keeping; however, it's such a fine day I will come, and finish my work to-night."

"Paul mustn't miss his music," she said, becoming suddenly serious.

"But I may miss my sleep," he observed half to himself, as he went out of the room with the remains of the roses in his hand.

Marcelle stood for a moment by the window smiling, then she turned to me.

"You won't be afraid of coming to feed the poor witch, will you? Mr. Sutcliffe will take care of you."

So I went up to get ready. I thought I should not have the fatigue of having to join much in the conversation while we three went to feed the witch.

"I was convinced from the first that there was 'no sich person,'" said Mr. Sutcliffe. He and I, and the donkey, were waiting in a steep street of a nominal village of scattered grey stone cottages and innumerable low walls of reddish brown stones without mortar. A little crowd of children gathered about us as Marcelle dashed in and out of cottages trying to make a few dull old people she could find direct us to the witch's cottage. Happily we knew also that the witch bore the very ordinary name of Mrs. Brown.

"It is part of a plot," she exclaimed to us in French as she came out of the last cottage; "they will not let us find her and help her." Marcelle was flushed and almost tearful. At last she allowed Mr. Sutcliffe to make the inquiries, and he made out our way to a lonely, miserable cottage, high up among the hills. By the time we got to the cottage Marcelle's benevolence was at a white heat. The door was opened by one of the sternest and most forbidding old