e beach, letting the horses
drink a little now and then, and watching the approach of the rafts.
When they came to the shallow water, men and boys jumped yelling from
the rafts and came wading ashore. In a few moments the rafts were
emptied of all except the very aged or the crippled who must be
carried off.

They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable Bishop and the girl with
wonder and a little superstition, for it was plain that these two
people must have come straight through the fire. But when Father
Ponfret came running forward and knelt at the Bishop's feet, a great
glad cry of wondering recognition went up from all the French people.
It was their Bishop! He who spoke the French of the most astonishing!
His coming was a sign! A deliverance! They had come through horrors.
Now all was well! The good God had hidden His face through the long
night. Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger to say that all
was well!

Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of spirits that makes their
race what it is, they threw themselves on their knees begging his
blessing. The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand slowly. He was
infinitely humbled by the quick, spontaneous outburst of their faith.
He had done nothing for them; could do nothing for them. They were
homeless, pitiable, without a hope or a stick of shelter. Yet it had
needed but the sight of his face to bring out their cheery unbounded
confidence that God was good, that the world was right again.

The other people, the hill people of the Bishop's own blood and race,
stood apart. They did not understand the scene. They were not a kind
of people that could weep and laugh at once. But they were not
unmoved. For years they had heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Some
two or three old men of them saw him now through a mist of memory and
battle smoke riding a mad horse across a field. They knew that this
was the man. That he should appear out of the fire after the nightmare
through which they had passed was not so much incredible as it was a
part of the strange things that they had always half believed about
him.

Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues around the Bishop.
Father Ponfret, a quick, eager little man of his people, would drag
the Bishop's story from him by very force. Had he dropped from Heaven?
How had he come to be in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the
fire?

The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the folly of his own
impr