“A coward’s trade,—a coward’s trade!”
“Why, there are more honest pursuits, it is true. But it is not for you to tell me this!”
“Then why did you not take up with those honest trades, instead of coming here skulking and feeding out of my saucepans?”
“I give you the fish I catch, and what money I have. It isn’t much, but it’s enough; and I don’t cost you anything. I have tried to be a locksmith to earn more; but when one has from one’s infancy led a vagabond life on the river and in the woods, it is impossible to confine oneself to one spot. It is a settled thing, and one’s life is decided. And then,” added Martial, with a gloomy air, “I have always preferred living alone on the water or in the forest. There no one questions me; whilst elsewhere men twit me about my father, who was (can
