d go," said his old grandfather. "When I was no older than
he I watched my father's flock."

Jean's father said the same thing, so the mother made haste to get the
little boy ready.

"Eat your dinner when the shadows lie straight across the grass," she
said as she kissed him good-bye.

"And keep the sheep from the forest paths," called his sick father.

"And watch, for it is when the shepherd is not watching that the wolf
comes to the flock," said the old grandfather.

"Never fear," said little Jean. "The wolf shall not have any of my
white lambs."

They were white sheep and black sheep and frolicsome lambs in the
shepherd's flock, and each one had a name of its own. There was
Babbette, and Nannette, and Pierrot, and Jeannot,--I cannot tell them
all, but Jean knew every name.

"Come, Bettine and Marie. Come, Pierrot and Croisette. Come, pretty
ones all," he called as he led them from the fold that day. "I will
carry you to the meadows where the daisies grow."

"Baa," answered the sheep, well satisfied, as they followed him down
the king's highway, and over the hill to the pasture lands.

The other shepherds were already there with their flocks, so Jean was
not lonely. He watered his sheep at the dancing brook that ran through
the flowers, and led them along its shady banks to feed in the sunny
fields beyond, and not one lambkin strayed from his care to the forest
paths.

The forest lay dim and shadowy on one side of the pasture lands. The
deer lived there, and the boars that fed upon acorns, and many other
creatures that loved the wild woods. There had been wolves in the
forest, but the king's knights had driven them away and the shepherds
feared them no longer. Only the old men like Jean's grandfather, and
the little boys like Jean, talked of them still.

Jean was not afraid. Oh, no. There was not a lamb in the flock so
merry and fearless as he. He sang with the birds and ran with the
brook, and laughed till the echoes laughed with him as he watched the
sheep from early morn to noon, when the shadows fell straight across
the grass and it was time for him to eat his dinner.

There were little cakes in Jean's dinner basket. He had seen his
mother put them there, but he had not tasted a single one when, out on
the king's highway, beyond the hill, he heard the sound of pipes and
drums, and the tramp, tramp of many feet.

The other shepherds heard too, and they began to listen and to stare
and to run. "The