to say,--

"I will, indeed, be a brother to you, and my mother will love you as if
you were her child. But we shall not take the bread from your mouth to
prove it. Our daughter and our sister in the Lord, we thank you and love
you, Jacqueline. I know what you have been doing since I went away.
The Lord love you, Jacqueline! You will no longer be a stranger and
friendless in Meaux, while John Leclerc and his mother are alive,--nay,
as long as a true man or woman lives in Meaux. Fear not."

"I will not fear," said Jacqueline.

And she sat by the side of the mother of Leclerc, and thought of her
own mother in the heavens, and was tranquil, and prepared, she said to
herself, to walk, if indeed she must, through the valley of the shadow
of death, and would still fear no evil.

IX.

Strengthened and inspired by the scenes of the last three days, Martial
Mazurier began to preach with an enthusiasm, bravery, and eloquence
unknown before to his hearers. He threw himself into the work of
preaching, the new revelation of the ancient eternal Truth, with
an ardor that defied authority, that scorned danger, and with a
recklessness that had its own reward.

Victor Le Roy was his ardent admirer, his constant follower, his
loving friend, his servant. Day by day this youth was studying with
indefatigable zeal the truths and doctrines adopted by his teacher.
Enchanted by the wise man's eloquence, already a convert to the faith
he magnified, he was prepared to follow wherever the preacher led. The
fascination of danger he felt, and was allured by. Frowning faces had
for him no terrors. He could defy evil.

Jacqueline and he might be called most friendly students. Often in
the cool of the day the young man walked out from Meaux along the
country-roads, and his face was always toward the setting sun, whence
towards the east Jacqueline at that hour would be coming. The girls were
living in the region of the vineyards now, and among the vines they
worked.

It began to be remarked by some of their companions how much Jacqueline
Gabrie and the young student from the city walked together. But the
subject of their discourse, as they rested under the trees that fringed
the river, was not within the range of common speculation; far enough
removed from the ordinary use to which the peasants put their thought
was the thinking of Le Roy and Jacqueline.

Often Victor went, carefully and with a student's precision, over the
grounds of Ma