Down verdant lanes—past thatched cottages, past a windmill, past houses of more substantial mien, with a glimpse down a rolling green valley——

"Hotel?" asked the ancient abruptly, from beneath his load.

"No, I want rooms in some cottage. Can you——"

"John Philip," said the ancient one didactically, and trudged on, and finally dumped his share of the burden at the door of what looked like a house but was a shop, in fact the shop.

He went inside and Graeme followed him. A genial-faced elderly man, with gray hair and long gray beard and gray shirt-sleeves, leaned over the counter, talking in an unknown tongue to a blue-guernseyed fisherman, and a quiet-faced old lady in a black velvet hair-net stood listening.

They all looked up and saluted the ancient one with ejaculations of surprise in the unknown tongue, and Graeme stared hard at the gray-bearded man, while they all discussed him to his face.

"Mr. De Carteret," said the ancient at last, with a jerk of the head towards Gray-Beard. "He tell you where to find rooms."

"Thanks! Do you speak any English, Mr. De Carteret?"

The pleasant old face broke into a smile. "I am En-glish," he said, with a quaint soft intonation, and as one who speaks a foreign tongue, and beamed genially on his young compatriot.

"That\'s all right then. Do you know you\'re very like Count Tolstoi?"

"I haf been told so, but I do not know him. What is it you would like, if you please to tell me?"

"I want a sitting-room and a bedroom for a month or so, perhaps more,—not at an hotel. I want to be quiet and all to myself."

"Ah—you don\' want an hotel. You want to be quiet," and he nodded understandingly. "But the hotels is quiet joost now—"

"I\'d sooner have rooms in a cottage if I can get them."

Count Tolstoi turned to the fisherman to whom he had been speaking, and discussed the matter at length with him in the patois.

Then, to Graeme, "If you please to............