d obscured his perspicacity. Providence was now
punishing him for his lukewarmness, by interposing across his path this
stumbling-block, which was probably sent to him as a salutary warning,
but which he saw no way of getting over.

While he was thus meditating and reproaching himself, the thrushes were
calling to one another from the branches of their favorite trees; whole
flights of yellowhammers burst forth from the hedges red with haws; but
he took no heed of them and did not even give a single thought to his
neglected nests and snares.

He went straight on, stumbling over the juniper bushes, and wondering
what he should say when he reached the farm, and how he should begin.
Sometimes he addressed himself, thus: "Have I the right to speak? What
a revelation! And to a young girl! Oh, Lord, lead me in the straight way
of thy truth, and instruct me in the right path!"

As he continued piously repeating this verse of the Psalmist, in order
to gain spiritual strength, the gray roofs of La Thuiliere rose before
him; he could hear the crowing of the cocks and the lowing of the cows
in the stable. Five minutes after, he had pushed open the door of the
kitchen where La Guite was arranging the bowls for breakfast.

"Good-morning, Guitiote," said he, in a choking voice; "is Mademoiselle
Vincart up?"

"Holy Virgin! Monsieur le Cure! Why, certainly Mademoiselle is up.
She was on foot before any of us, and now she is trotting around the
orchard. I will go fetch her."

"No, do not stir. I know the way, and I will go and find her myself."

She was in the orchard, was she? The Abbe preferred it should be so; he
thought the interview would be less painful, and that the surrounding
trees would give him ideas. He walked across the kitchen, descended
the steps leading from the ground floor to the garden, and ascended the
slope in search of Reine, whom he soon perceived in the midst of a bower
formed by clustering filbert-trees.

At sight of the cure, Reine turned pale; he had doubtless come to tell
her the result of his interview with Claudet, and what day had been
definitely chosen for the nuptial celebration. She had been troubled all
night by the reflection that her fate would soon be irrevocably scaled;
she had wept, and her eyes betrayed it. Only the day before, she had
looked upon this project of marriage, which she had entertained in
a moment of anger and injured feeling, as a vague thing, a vaporous
eventuality of which