knowledge. She looked steadily into the red fire and her
heart seemed bursting with the breath that could not find an outlet.

The bells began to ring again. "Come," "come," they said. Had she better
not go to the sisters and live with them? The Church would be father and
mother.

She bent down her head and cried very softly, for it seemed as if all
joy had gone out of her life. Pani fell asleep and snored.

But the next morning the world was lovelier than ever with the new
fallen snow. Men were shoveling it away from doorways and stamping it
down in the streets with their great boots, the soles being wooden and
the legs of fur. And they snowballed each other. The children joined and
rolled in the snow. Now and then a daring young fellow caught a
demoiselle and rubbed roses into her cheeks.

All the rest of the week was given over to holiday life. There were
great doings at the Citadel and in some of the grand houses. There were
dances and dinners, and weddings so brilliant that Marie De Ber's was
only a little rushlight in comparison.

The master went down to Marietta for a visit. Jeanne seemed like a
pendulum swinging this way and that. She was lonely and miserable. One
day the Church seemed a refuge, the next she shrank with a sort of
terror and longed for spring, as a drowning man longs for everything
that promises succor.

One morning Monsieur Loisel, the notary, came in with a grave and solemn
mien.

"I have news for thee, Pani and Mam'selle, a great word of sorrow, and
it grieves me to be the bearer of it. Yet the good Lord has a right to
his own, for I cannot doubt but that Madame Bellestre's intercession has
been of some avail. And Monsieur Bellestre was an upright, honorable,
kindly man."

"Monsieur Bellestre is dead," said Pani with the shock of a sudden
revelation.

Jeanne stood motionless. Then he could never come back! And, oh, what if
Monsieur St. Armand never came back!

"Yes. Heaven rest his soul, say I, and so does the good Father Rameau.
For his gift to the Church seems an act of faith."

"And Jeanne?" inquired the woman tremblingly.

"It is about the child I have come to talk. Monsieur Bellestre has made
some provision for her, queerly worded, too."

"Oh, he does not take her away from me!" cried the foster mother in
anguish.

"No. He had some strange notions not in accord with the Church, we all
know, that liberty to follow one's opinion is a good thing. It is not
always so in wor