At dinner the night before, it had struck me that Saffren was a rather silent young man by habit, and now I thought I began to understand the reason.  I hinted as much, saying, “That would make a quiet world of it.”

“All the better, my dear sir!” The professor turned beamingly upon me and continued, dropping into a Whistlerian mannerism that he had sometimes:  “You must not blame that great wind of a Keredec for preaching at other people to listen.  It gives the poor man more room for himself to talk!”

I found his talk worth hearing.

I would show you, if I could, our pleasant evenings of lingering, after coffee, behind the tremulous screen of honeysuckle, with the night very dark and quiet beyond the warm nimbus of our candle-light, the faces of my two companions clear-obscure in a mellow shadow like the middle tones of a Rembrandt, and the professor, good man, talking wonderfully of everything under the stars and over them,—­while Oliver Saffren and I sat under the spell of the big, kind voice, the young man listening with the same eagerness which marked him when he spoke.  It was an eagerness to understand, not to interrupt.

These were our evenings.  In the afternoons the two went for their walk as usual, though now they did not plunge out of sight of the main road with the noticeable haste which Amedee had described.  As time pressed, I perceived the caution of Keredec visibly slackening.  Whatever he had feared, the obscurity and continued quiet of Les trois pigeons reassured him; he felt more and more secure in this sheltered retreat, “far out of the world,” and obviously thought no danger imminent.  So the days went by, uneventful for my new friends,—­days of warm idleness for me.  Let them go unnarrated; we pass to the event.

My ankle had taken its wonted time to recover.  I was on my feet again and into the woods—­not traversing, on the way, a certain poppy-sprinkled field whence a fine Norman stallion snorted ridicule over a wall.  But the fortune of Keredec was to sink as I rose.  His summer rheumatism returned, came to grips with him, laid him low.  We hobbled together for a day or so, then I threw away my stick and he exchanged his for an improvised crutch.  By the time I was fit to run, he was able to do little better than to creep—­might well have taken to his bed.  But as he insisted that his pupil should not forego the daily long walks and the health of the forest, it came to pass that Saffren often made me the objective of his rambles.  At dinner he usually asked in what portion of the forest I should be painting late the next afternoon, and I got in the habit of expecting him to join me toward sunset.  We located each other through a code of yodeling that we arranged; his part of these vocal gymnastics being very pleasant to hear, for he had a flexible, rich voice.  I shudder to recall how largely my own performances partook of the grotesque.  But in the forest where were no musical persons (I supposed) to take hurt from whatever noise I made, I would let go with all the lungs I had; he followed the horrid sounds to their origin, and we would return to the inn together.