again the word. My father
laid his hand firmly on my right arm, and Madeleine hers on my left.
Though her touch was as light as a snow-flake, I would not have shaken
it off for the world.

"The streets are unquiet to-night," said my father, "and I mean no one
to go forth till the girls return home, when we will see them safely to
their door; going out the back way."

So we spent the next hour in a sober, subdued manner. Madeleine shyly
let me steal her hand and hold it some minutes, as though she knew it
would calm me. And so it did; there was much sweetness in that hour,
after all.

At length it was time to see them home; my mother kissed and blessed
them as if they were going further than into the next street. We went
out the back way, my father taking Gabrielle and I Madeleine, and we met
with no evil by the way. Being rather high-wrought, I would willingly
have faced a little danger for Madeleine's sake.

I kissed her soft cheek unrebuked, and followed my father through the
dark with a happy heart Mechanically, rather than from either devotion
or defiance, I began to hum "Chantez de Dieu," when my father's warning
hand plucked my sleeve, and, at the same instant, a rough voice beside
me said, "Hold your peace! Have you not heard of the _arret?_" and
passed on.

We had heard nothing of any _arret_; but next morning, when I went
to the glazier's, he told me that an order had been issued forbidding
the Reformed to sing psalms in the streets and public walks, or even
within their own houses loud enough to be heard outside. And he told
me he was so full of work that he hardly knew which way to turn, in
consequence of the many windows broken over night by evil-disposed men
suborned to interrupt psalmody. I asked him, half jesting, if he thought
any of the suborned men were glaziers; but it hurt him, for he was as
good a Huguenot as any in Nismes.

Going home with him, I saw a horrid sight--a dead body that had been
some time buried, torn from the grave, stripped of its shroud, and lying
in the gutter. I shuddered, and asked the glazier if we had not better
tell the authorities; but he hurried on, saying, "Better let it be. The
authorities doubtless know all about it." So there had we to leave the
ghastly object, though its remaining there was equally prejudicial to
decency and to health.

Men's tongues were very busy that day; every one foreboding calamity and
nobody knowing how to meet it.

My mother sent me,