assy balks dividing the fields, or across the stubble, till, about
three miles from the castle, they came to a narrow valley, dipping so
suddenly between the hills that it could hardly have been suspected by
one unaware of its locality, and the sides were dotted with copsewood,
which entirely hid the bottom. Beranger guided his pony to a winding
path that led down the steep side of the valley, already hearing the
cadence of a loud, chanting voice, throwing out its sounds over the
assembly, whence arose assenting hums over an undercurrent of sobs, as
though the excitable French assembly were strongly affected.

The thicket was so close that Beranger was almost among the congregation
before he could see more than a passing glimpse of a sea of heads.
Stout, ruddy, Norman peasants, and high white-capped women, mingled with
a few soberly-clad townsfolk, almost all with the grave, steadfast cast
of countenance imparted by unresisted persecution, stood gathered
round the green mound that served as a natural pulpit for a Calvinist
minister, who more the dress of a burgher, but entirely black. To
Beranger's despair, he was in the act of inviting his hearers to join
with him in singing one of Marot's psalms; and the boy, eager to lose
not a moment, grasped the skirt of the outermost of the crowd. The man,
an absorbed-looking stranger, merely said, 'Importune me not, child.'

'Listen!' said Beranger; 'it imports---'

'Peace,' was the stern answer; but a Norman farmer looked round at that
moment, and Beranger exclaimed, 'Stop the singing! The _gens d'armes_!'
The psalm broke off; the whisper circulated; the words 'from Leurre'
were next conveyed from lip to lip, and, as it were in a moment, the
dense human mass had broken up and vanished, stealing through the
numerous paths in the brushwood, or along the brook, as it descended
through tall sedges and bulrushes. The valley was soon as lonely as
it had been populous; the pulpit remained a mere mossy bank, more
suggestive or fairy dances than of Calvinist sermons, and no one
remained on the scene save Beranger with his pony, Jacques the groom, a
stout farmer, the preacher, and a tall thin figure in the plainest dark
cloth dress that could be worn by a gentleman, a hawk on his wrist.

'Thou here, my boy!' he exclaimed, as Beranger came to his side; and as
the little fellow replied in a few brief words, he took him by the hand,
and said to the minister, 'Good Master Isaac, let me pres