it, her
sense of truth and of justice was not so acute as to lead her willingly
to incur a risk in the maintaining of the same.

She would not look into Antonine's Bible, which Jacqueline had read so
much during the last fortnight. She was not the girl to torment herself
about her soul, when the Church would save it for her by mere compliance
with a few easy regulations.

More and more was Elsie disappointing Jacqueline. Day by day these girls
were developing in ways which bade fair to separate them in the end.
When now they had most need of each other, their estrangement was
becoming more apparent and decided. The peasant-dress of Elsie would not
content her always, Jacqueline said sadly to herself.

Jacqueline's tracts, indeed, promised poorly as entertainment for an
hour of rest;--rest gained by hours of toil. The confusion of tongues
and the excitement of the city pleased Elsie better. So she went along
the road to Meaux, and was not talking, neither thinking, all the way,
of the wrongs of John Leclerc, and the sorrows of his mother,--neither
meditating constantly, and with deep-seated purpose, "I will not let
thee go, except thou bless me!"--neither on this problem, agitated then
in so many earnest minds, "What shall a man give in exchange for his
soul?"

Thus Jacqueline sat alone and thought that she would read by herself the
tracts Leclerc had found it good to study. But unopened she held the
little printed scroll, while she watched the home-returning birds, whose
nests were in the mighty branches of the chestnut-trees.

She needed the repose more than the teaching, even; for all day the
sun had fallen heavily on the harvesters,--and toiling with a troubled
heart, under a burning sun, will leave the laborer not in the best
condition for such work as Jacqueline believed she had to do.

But she had promised the old woman she would read these tracts, and this
was her only time, for they must be returned that night: others were
waiting for them with an eagerness and longing of which, haply,
tract-dispensers see little now. Still she delayed in opening them. The
news of Leclerc's sentence had filled her with dismay.

Did she dread to read the truth,--"the truth of Jesus Christ," as
his mother styled it? The frightful image of the bleeding, lacerated
wool-comber would come between her and the book in which that faith was
written for maintaining which this man must suffer. Strange contrast
between the heavy glo