hosen 'Thanase. The evening the speaker left for home on his
leave of absence 'Thanase was still in camp, but was to start the next
morning. It was just after Sunday morning mass that Sosthene and
Chaouache, with their families and friends, crowded around this bearer
of tidings.

"Had 'Thanase been in any battles?"

"Yes, two or three."

"And had not been wounded?"

"No, although he was the bravest fellow in his company."

Sosthene and Chaouache looked at each other triumphantly, smiled, and
swore two simultaneous oaths of admiration. Zosephine softly pinched
her mother, and whispered something. Madame Sosthene addressed the
home-comer aloud:

"Did 'Thanase send no other message except that mere 'How-d'ye all
do?'"

"No."

Zosephine leaned upon her mother's shoulder, and softly breathed:

"He is lying."

The mother looked around upon her daughter in astonishment. The flash
of scorn was just disappearing from the girl's eyes. She gave a little
smile and chuckle, and murmured, with her glance upon the man:

"He has no leave of absence. He is a deserter."

Then Madame Sosthene saw two things at once: that the guess was a good
one, and that Zosephine had bidden childhood a final "adjieu."

The daughter felt Bonaventure's eyes upon her. He was standing only a
step or two away. She gave him a quick, tender look that thrilled him
from head to foot, then lifted her brows and made a grimace of
pretended weariness. She was growing prettier almost from day to day.

And Bonaventure, he had no playmates--no comrades--no amusements. This
one thing, which no one knew but the cure, had taken possession of
him. The priest sometimes seemed to himself cruel, so well did it
please him to observe the magnitude Bonaventure plainly attributed to
the matter. The boy seemed almost physically to bow under the burden
of his sense of guilt.

"It is quickening all his faculties," said the cure to himself.
Zosephine had hardly yet learned to read without stammering, when
Bonaventure was already devouring the few French works of the cure's
small bookshelf. Silent on other subjects, on one he would talk till
a pink spot glowed on either cheek-bone and his blue eyes shone like a
hot noon sky;--casuistry. He would debate the right and wrong of any
thing, every thing, and the rights and wrongs of men in every relation
of life.

Blessed was it for him then that the tactful cure was his father and
mother in one, and the surgeon and ph