And she whispered to Rose, “Only think, your Edouard to be our referee!”

Rose blushed and bent over her work; and wondered how Edouard would discharge so grave an office.

The matter approached a climax; for, as the reader is aware, Edouard was hourly expected at Beaurepaire.

He did not come; but it was not his fault.  On receiving Rose’s letter he declined to stay another hour at his uncle’s.

He flung himself on his horse; and, before he was well settled on the stirrups, the animal shied violently at a wheelbarrow some fool had left there; and threw Edouard on the stones of the courtyard.  He jumped up in a moment and laughed at Marthe’s terror; meantime a farm-servant caught the nag and brought him back to his work.

But when Edouard went to put his hand on the saddle, he found it would not obey him.  “Wait a minute,” said he; “my arm is benumbed.”

“Let me see!” said the farmer, and examined the limb himself; “benumbed? yes; and no wonder.  Jacques, get on the brute and ride for the surgeon.”

“Are you mad, uncle?” cried Edouard.  “I can’t spare my horse, and I want no surgeon; it will be well directly.”

“It will be worse before it is better.”

“I don’t know what you mean, uncle; it is only numbed, ah! it hurts when I rub it.”

“It is worse than numbed, boy; it is broken.”

“Broken? nonsense:”  and he looked at it in piteous bewilderment:  “how can it be broken? it does not hurt except when I touch it.”

“It will hurt:  I know all about it.  I broke mine fifteen years ago:  fell off a haystack.”

“Oh, how unfortunate I am!” cried Edouard, piteously.  “But I will go to Beaurepaire all the same.  I can have the thing mended there, as well as here.”

“You will go to bed,” said the old man, quietly; “that is where you’ll go.”

“I’ll go to blazes sooner,” yelled the young one.

The old man made a signal to his myrmidons, whom Marthe’s cries had brought around, and four stout fellows took hold of Edouard by the legs and the left shoulder and carried him up-stairs raging and kicking; and deposited him on a bed.

Presently he began to feel faint, and so more reasonable.  They cut his coat off, and put him in a loose wrapper, and after considerable delay the surgeon came, and set his arm skilfully, and behold this ardent spirit caged.  He chafed and fretted sadly.  Fortitude was not his forte.

It was two days after his accident.  He was lying on his back, environed by slops and cursing his evil fate, and fretting his soul out of its fleshly prison, when suddenly he heard a cheerful trombone saying three words to Marthe, then came a clink-clank, and Marthe ushered into the sickroom the Commandant Raynal.  The sick man raised himself in bed, with great surprise and joy.

“O commandant! this is kind to come and see your poor officer in purgatory.”