VI. Gabriel's Prayer 74

VII. The Book Goes to Lady Anne 89

VIII. Lady Anne Writes to the King 99

IX. The King's Messenger 116

X. Gabriel's Christmas 136

XI. The King's Illuminator 162

[Illustration]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Gabriel _Frontispiece_

"He saw the Abbot walking up and down" 38

"Dreaming of all the beautiful things he meant to paint" 59

"Taking down the book . . . he unwrapped and unclasped it" 95

"Began slowly to turn over the pages" 105

"He passed a little peasant boy" 142

Gabriel and the Hour Book

CHAPTER I.

THE LITTLE COLOUR GRINDER

IT was a bright morning of early April, many hundred years ago; and
through all the fields and meadows of Normandy the violets and
cuckoo-buds were just beginning to peep through the tender green of the
young grass. The rows of tall poplar-trees that everywhere, instead of
fences, served to mark off the farms of the country folk, waved in the
spring wind like great, pale green plumes; and among their branches the
earliest robins and field-fares were gaily singing as a little boy
stepped out from a small thatched cottage standing among the fields, and
took his way along the highroad.

That Gabriel Viaud was a peasant lad, any one could have told from the
blouse of blue homespun, and the wooden shoes which he wore; and that he
felt the gladness of the April time could easily be known by the happy
little song he began to sing to himself, and by the eager delight with
which he now and then stooped to pluck a blue violet or to gather a
handful of golden cuckoo-buds.

A mile or two behind him, and hidden by a bend in the road, lay the
little village of St. Martin-de-Bouchage; while in the soft blue
distance ahead of him rose the gray walls of St. Martin's Abbey, whither
he was going.

Indeed, for almost a year now the little boy had been trudging every day
to the Abbey, where he earned a small sum by waiting upon the good
brothers who dwelt there, and who made the beautiful painted books for
which the Abbey had become famous. Gabriel could grind and mix their
colours for them, and prepare the parchment on which they did their
writing, and could do many other little