Frank Lucius Packard

The Beloved Traitor Frank Lucius Packard

"Hold your bibulous tongue, Jacques Fregeau, and get something with which to fix thatwindow before we are as wet inside as you!"-it was Madame Fregeau, stout, middle-aged androsy, already hurrying to the aid of the first speaker, who was wrestling with the dismantledfastening. Usually the nightly resort of the little fishing village of Bernay-sur-Mer, the Bas Rhône, inn, cabaret, tavern or cafe, as it was variously styled, now held but two others in the room that washabitually crowded to suffocation. One was a young man, sturdily built, with a tanned, clean-cutface, smooth-shaven save for a small black moustache, whose rumpled black hair straggled inpleasing disarray over his forehead; the other was older, a man of forty, whose skin was bronzedalmost to blackness from the Mediterranean sun. Both were in rough fishermen's dress, sitting atdominoes under the hanging lamp in the centre of the room. On the table, pushed to one side, were the remains of a simple meal of bread and cheese; and from the inside of the loaf, theyounger man, somewhat to the detriment of his own game and to the advantage of his opponent, had plucked out a piece of the soft bread, which he had kneaded between his fingers into aplastic lump, and thereafter, with amazing skill and deftness, had been engaged in moulding intolittle faces, and heads, and figures of various sorts, as he played.