quite right to run away from persons with
the evil eye. When you came to think of it, what was more probable?
They always said, those girls in the village, that the saints did the
things they asked them to do. When Barbe lost her gold earring, did
not Saint Joseph find it for her, and tell her to look among the
potato-parings that had been thrown out the day before? and there, sure
enough, it was, and the pigs never touching it, because they had been
told not to touch! Well, and if the saints could do that, it would be
a pity indeed if the Good Lord could not make the sun dance when he
felt like doing a kind thing for a poor girl.

With the dazzle of that dancing sun still in her eyes, with happy
thoughts filling her mind, Marie turned the corner of the straggling
road that was called a street by the people who lived along it,--turned
the corner, and almost fell into the arms of a man, who was coming in
the opposite direction. Both uttered a cry at the same moment: Marie
first giving a little startled shriek, but her voice dying away in
terrified silence as she saw the man's face; the latter uttering a
shout of delight, of fierce and cruel triumph, that rang out strangely
in the quiet morning air. For this was Le Boss!

A man with a bloated, cruel face, sodden with drink and inflamed with
all fierce and inhuman passions; a strong man, who held the trembling
girl by the shoulder as if she were a reed, and gazed into her face
with eyes of fiendish triumph; an angry man, who poured out a torrent
of furious words, reproaching, threatening, by turns, as he found his
victim once more within his grasp, just when he had given up all hope
of finding her again. Ah, but he had her now, though! let her try it
again, to run away! she would find even this time that she had enough,
but another time--and on and on, as a coarse and brutal man can go on
to a helpless creature that is wholly in his power.

Marie was silent, cowering in his grasp, looking about with hunted,
despairing eyes. There was nothing to do, no word to say that would
help. It had all been a mistake,--the sun dancing, the heavens bending
down to aid and cheer her,--all had been a mistake, a lie. There was
nothing now for the rest of her life but this,--this brutality that
clutched and shook her slender figure, this hatred that hissed venomous
words in her ear. This was the end, forever, till death should come to
set her free.

But what was this? what w