r the
last half hour. Ha! ha! it is Sunday to-day."

He would laugh at his own wit, and I laughed with him, and would then
bid him good-morning and be down the stairs at a bound.

Very few people were stirring, but Sepel the butcher would always call
out: "Come here, Joseph, I have something to tell you." But I only
just turned my head, and ten minutes after was on the high-road to
Quatre Vents, outside the city walls. Oh! how fine the weather was
that beautiful year! How green and flourishing everything looked, and
how busy the people were, trying to make up for lost time, planting and
watering their cabbages and turnips, and digging over the ground
trodden down by the cavalry; how confident everybody was too of the
goodness of God, who, they hoped, would send the sun and the rain which
they so much needed. All along the road, in the little gardens, women
and old men, everybody, were at work, digging, planting, and watering.

"Work away, Father Thiebeau, and you too, Mother Furst. Courage!"
cried I.

"Yes, yes, Mr. Joseph, there is need enough for that; this blockade has
put everything back, there is no time to lose."

The roads were filled with carts and wagons, laden with brick and
lumber and materials for repairing the houses and roofs which had been
destroyed by the howitzers. How the whips cracked and the hammers rang
in all the country round! On every side carpenters and masons were
seen busily at work on the summer houses. Father Ulrich and his three
boys were already on the roof of the "Flower Basket," which had been
broken to pieces by the balls, strengthening the new timbers, whistling
and hammering in concert. What a busy time it was, indeed, when peace
returned! They wanted no more war then. They knew the worth of
tranquillity, and only asked to repair their losses as far as possible.
They knew that a stroke of a saw or a plane was of more value than a
cannon-shot, and how many tears and how much fatigue it would cost to
rebuild even in ten years, that which the bombs had destroyed in ten
minutes. Oh! how happy I was as I went along. No more marches and
counter-marches; I did not need the countersign from Sergeant Pinto
where I was going! And how sweetly the lark sang as it soared
tremblingly upward, and the quails whistled and linnets twittered. The
sweet freshness of the morning, the fragrant eglantine in the hedges,
urged me on till I caught sight of the gable of the old roof of Quat