It was dark before he returned, his green hat set at a rakish angle over his right ear, a long, closely wrapped brown paper parcel under his arm. “Eh bien,” he confided to me with an elfish grin, “it required much argument to secure this. That old priest, he is a stubborn one and unbelieving, almost as skeptical as you, Friend Trowbridge.”
Eh bien“What on earth is it?” I demanded, looking curiously at the package. Except that it was too long, it might have been an umbrella, judging by its shape.
He winked mysteriously as he led the way to his room, where, having glanced about furtively, as though he apprehended some secret watcher, he laid the bundle on the bed and began cutting the strings securing its brown paper swaddling clothes with his pocket knife. Laying back the final layer of p
