beautiful memory
if passers-by did not contribute their share; a threat the marble duly
executed on account of the dampness of the church and the hardness of
men's hearts. But it was impossible to disturb a religious service. So
she coaxed the boy, dragging behind her, down the ambulatory beside the
oasis of chapel, where the singers, sitting side-wise, in rows facing
each other, chanted the Venite. A few worshipers from the close, all of
them women, pattered in to take part in this daily office. The smithy
hammers rang under organ measures, and an odor of cooking sifted down
from the arcades.

Outside the church big fat-bellied pigeons were cooing about the tower
or strutting and pecking on the ground. To kill one was a grave offense.
The worst boy playing in the lane durst not lift a hand against them.

Very different game were Eagle and the other alien whom she led past the
red faced English children.

"Good day," she spoke pleasantly, feeling their antagonism. They
answered her with a titter.

"Sally Blake is the only one I know," she explained in French, to her
companion who moved feebly and stiffly behind her dancing step. "I
cannot talk English to them, and besides, their manners are not good,
for they are not like our peasants."

Sally Blake and a bare kneed lad began to amble behind the foreigners,
he taking his cue smartly and lolling out his tongue. The whole crowd
set up a shout, and Eagle looked back. She wheeled and slapped the St.
Bat's girl in the face.

That silent being whom she had taken under her care recoiled from the
blow which the bare kneed boy instantly gave him, and without defending
himself or her, shrank down in an attitude of entreaty. She screamed
with pain at this sight, which hurt worse than the hair-pulling of the
mob around her. She fought like a panther in front of him.

Two men in the long narrow lane leading from Smithfield, interfered, and
scattered her assailants.

You may pass up a step into the graveyard, which is separated by a wall
from the lane. And though nobody followed, the two men hurried Eagle and
the boy into the graveyard and closed the gate.

It was not a large enclosure, and thread-like paths, grassy and
ungraveled, wound among crowded graves. There was a very high outside
wall: and the place insured such privacy as could not be had in St.
Bat's church. Some crusted stones lay broad as gray doors on ancient
graves; but the most stood up in irregular oblong