“Well, I will speak to my wife,” the miller said.  “Our last hand went away three months since, and all the able-bodied men have been sent to the army.  So I can do with you if my wife likes you.”

The miller’s wife again came and inspected the wanderer, and declared that if he were not so white he would be well enough, but that such a colour did not seem natural.

Rupert answered her that it would soon go, and offered that if, at the end of a week, he did not begin to show signs of colour coming, he would give up the job.

The bargain was sealed.  The miller supplied him with a pair of canvas trousers and a blouse.  Rupert cut off his long hair, and set to work as the miller’s man.

In a week the miller’s wife, as well as the miller himself, was delighted with him.  His great strength, his willingness and cheeriness kept, as they said, the place alive, and the pallor of his face had so far worn off by the end of the week that the miller’s wife was satisfied that he would, as he said, soon look like a human being, and not like a walking corpse.

The winter passed off quietly, and Rupert stood higher and higher in the liking of the worthy couple with whom he lived; the climax being reached when, in midwinter, a party of marauders—­for at that time the wars of France and the distress of the people had filled the country with bands of men who set the laws at defiance—­five in number, came to the mill and demanded money.

The miller, who was not of a warlike disposition, would have given up all the earnings which he had stored away, but Rupert took down an old sword which hung over the fireplace; and sallying out, ran through the chief of the party, desperately wounded two others, and by sheer strength tossed the others into the mill stream, standing over them when they scrambled out, and forcing them to dig a grave and bury their dead captain and to carry off their wounded comrades.

Thus when the spring came, and Rupert said that he must be going, the regrets of the miller and his wife were deep, and by offer of higher pay they tried to get him to stay.  Rupert however was, of course, unable to accede to their request, and was glad when they received a letter from a son in the army, saying that he had been laid up with fever, and had got his discharge, and was just starting to settle with them at the mill.

Saying goodbye to his kind employers, Rupert started with a stout suit of clothes, fifty francs in his pocket, and a document signed by the Maire of the parish to the effect that Antoine Duprat, miller’s man, had been working through the winter at Evres, and was now on his way to join his regiment with the army of Flanders.

Determined to run no more risks if he could avoid it, he took a line which would avoid Paris and all other towns at which he had ever shown himself.  Sometimes he tramped alone, more often with other soldiers who had been during the winter on leave to recover from the effects of wounds or of fevers.  From their talk Rupert learned with satisfaction that the campaign which he had missed had been very uneventful, and that no great battles had taken place.  It was expected that the struggle that would begin in a few weeks would be a desperate one, both sides having made great efforts to place a predominating force in the field.