Perth Amboy evening news., 1922-09-11
H Louis
Joseph Vance
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Constant exercise turned up
muscle gone slack and soft with
easy living. A keen sun darkened
his face and hands, brushed up in
his cheek a warmer glow than they
had shown in many a year. and
faded out the heavier lines with
which Time had marked MS counte-
nance.
Moreover, because this was France
where n may affect a whisker
without losing face, he neglected his
razors; and though this was not his
first thought, a fair disguise it
proved.
Rain at length interned the trav-
eler for three days in a little place
called Meyrueis. long leagues re-
mote from railroads and the world
they stitch together.
Here (said Duchemin) nothing can
disturb me! and it is high time for
me to be considering what | am TO
make of the remainder of my days.
Too many of them have been wasted,
toe great a portion of my span has
been sacrificed to vanities.
Yet a little while and one must
bid adieu to that Youth which M
has so heedlessly squandered, a last
adieu to Youth with its days of high
adventure, its carefree heart, Its
susceptibility to the infinite seduc-
tions of Romance.
And for all this mood OF prema-
ture resignation to the bourgeois
| virtues Duchemin was glad enough
dawned fair, and by eight was up
and away, %purposing a days tramp
to Observation-Disclosures Concerning
which one heard curious tales.)
Long after o sheer FOOLS luck
led him to a hamlet whose mean
auberge served him bread and cheese
with a wine ngularly thin n acid.
The one a~ble-bodied man in evil
dence, a hulking, surly animal, on
learning that Duchemin wished TO
visit NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. refused
with a growl to have anything to do
with him. Several times during the
course of luncheon he caught the
fellow cycling him strangely. he
thought, from a window of the
auherge. In the end the peasant girl
who waited on him grudgingly con-
scented to put him on his way.
He followed her directions, con-
tirued his long tramp and in tho
silver and purple mystery of a per-
feet moonlight night found himself
looking down from a hilltop upon
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS..
Rumor had prepared him to know
the place when he saw it. nothing for
it's stupendous lunacy. Heaven
knows what conclusion or measured
process of Nature accomplished this
thing. For his part Duchemin was
unable to accept any possible scien-
tiic explanation, and will go to his
grave believing that some half
witted cyclops created Montpelier
le-Vieux / n an hour of idleness,
building him a play city of titanic
monoliths, then wandered away and
forgot it altogether.
To his mind there was something
sinister in h ~portentous immobil-
ty of the place: in its silence, its
want of excuse for being. a sense OF
aee-old evil like an inarticulate men,
ace
When abruptly a man moved from
behind a rock some thirty or forty
PAGES ahead, Duchimen stopped
short. with tangled nerves and a
barely smothered exclamation. Pos
sibly a shape of spectral terror
would have been less startling: in
that weird place and hour humanity
seemed more incongruous than the
supernatural.
1t was at once apparent That the
man had neither knowledge of nor
concern with the stranger. For an
instant he stood with his back to the
latter. a stout body filled u too
well the uniform of a private soldier
in the American Expeditionary
Forces-that most ungainly, inutile,
~unbecoming costume that ever
graced the form of man.
Then he half turned, beckoned
hastily to one invisible to the OBJ
server, and furtively moved on. AS
furtively his signal was answered by
a fellow who wore the nondescript
garments of a peasant. And as sud-
denly as they had come into sight.
tho two slipped round a rocky
shoulder. and the street of mono
liths was empty.
Continued in Next Issue.)