ving his watering-can. The stout figure
of the canon issued from the doorway of a small pavilion which he called
his _omnibus_, passed along under the shadow of the wall, and out into
the glowing sun. Madame entered the _salon_, her light quick steps
ringing on the _parquet_, her holiday voice clear as a carol, her
holiday figure gay as a showy-plumaged bird.

"Ma cherie, tu n'es pas sortie? tu ne fais rien?"

Bessie awoke from her reverie, and confessed that she was idle this
morning, very idle and uncomfortably restless: it was the heat, she
thought, and she breathed a vast sigh. Madame invited her to _do_
something by way of relief to her _ennui_, and after a brief considering
fit she said she would go into the cathedral, where it was the coolest,
and take her sketching-block.

Oh, for the moist glades of the Forest, for the soft turf under foot and
the thick verdure overhead! Bessie longed for them with all her heart as
she passed upon the sun-baked stones to the great door of the cathedral.
The dusk of its vaulted roof was not cool and sweet like the arching of
green branches, but chill with damp odors of antiquity. She sat down in
one of the arcades near the portal above the steps that descend into the
nave. The immense edifice seemed quite empty. The perpetual lamp burned
before the altar, and wandering echoes thrilled in the upper galleries.
Through a low-browed open door streamed across the aisle a flood of
sunshine, and there was the sound of chisel and mallet from the same
quarter, the stone-yard of the cathedral; but there was no visible
worshipper--nothing to interrupt her mood of reverie.

For a long while, that is. Presently chimed in with the music of chisel
and mallet the ring of eager young footsteps outside, young men's
footsteps, voices and dear English speech. One was freely translating
from his guide-book: "The cathedral, many times destroyed, was rebuilt
after the fire of 1106, and not completed until the eighteenth century.
It is therefore of several styles. The length is one hundred and two
metres and the height twenty-three metres from floor to vault."

Bessie's breath came and went very fast; so did the blood in her cheeks.
Surely that voice she knew. It was Harry Musgrave's voice, and this was
why thoughts of the Forest had haunted her all the morning.

The owner of the voice entered, and it was Harry Musgrave--he and two
others, all with the fresh air of British tourists not long starte