n indulgent air, Sister Hyacinthe ended
by consenting.

"Well, then," said she, "I will allow you another short quarter of an
hour; but only a short quarter of an hour, mind. That is understood, is
it not? For I should otherwise be in fault."

Pierre had waited quietly without attempting to intervene. And he resumed
his narrative in the same penetrating voice as before, a voice in which
his own doubts were softened by pity for those who suffer and who hope.

The scene of the story was now transferred to Lourdes, to the Rue des
Petits Fosses, a narrow, tortuous, mournful street taking a downward
course between humble houses and roughly plastered dead walls. The
Soubirous family occupied a single room on the ground floor of one of
these sorry habitations, a room at the end of a dark passage, in which
seven persons were huddled together, the father, the mother, and five
children. You could scarcely see in the chamber; from the tiny, damp
inner courtyard of the house there came but a greenish light. And in that
room they slept, all of a heap; and there also they ate, when they had
bread. For some time past, the father, a miller by trade, could only with
difficulty obtain work as a journeyman. And it was from that dark hole,
that lowly wretchedness, that Bernadette, the elder girl, with Marie, her
sister, and Jeanne, a little friend of the neighbourhood, went out to
pick up dead wood, on the cold February Thursday already spoken of.

Then the beautiful tale was unfolded at length; how the three girls
followed the bank of the Gave from the other side of the castle, and how
they ended by finding themselves on the Ile du Chalet in front of the
rock of Massabielle, from which they were only separated by the narrow
stream diverted from the Gave, and used for working the mill of Savy. It
was a wild spot, whither the common herdsman often brought the pigs of
the neighbourhood, which, when showers suddenly came on, would take
shelter under this rock of Massabielle, at whose base there was a kind of
grotto of no great depth, blocked at the entrance by eglantine and
brambles. The girls found dead wood very scarce that day, but at last on
seeing on the other side of the stream quite a gleaning of branches
deposited there by the torrent, Marie and Jeanne crossed over through the
water; whilst Bernadette, more delicate than they were, a trifle
young-ladyfied, perhaps, remained on the bank lamenting, and not daring
to wet her feet. She