ount Peira by the
Huguenot prophet, De Serre.

Good Dame Rochelle was not without a feeling that at times the spiritual
gift she had received when a girl made itself manifest by intuitions
of the future, which were, after all, perhaps only emanations of her
natural good sense and clear intellect--the foresight of a pure mind.

The wasting persecutions of the Calvinists in the mountains of the
Cevennes drove men and women wild with desperate fanaticism. De Serre
had an immense following. He assumed to impart the Holy Spirit and the
gift of tongues by breathing upon the believers. The refugees carried
his doctrines to England, and handed down their singular ideas to modern
times; and a sect may still be found which believes in the gift of
tongues and practises the power of prophesying, as taught originally in
the Cevennes.

The good dame was not reading this morning, although the volume before
her lay open. Her glasses lay upon the page, and she sat musing by the
open window, seldom looking out, however, for her thoughts were chiefly
inward. The return of Pierre Philibert, her foster child, had filled her
with joy and thankfulness, and she was pondering in her mind the details
of a festival which the Bourgeois intended to give in honor of the
return of his only son.

The Bourgeois had finished the reading of his packet of letters, and sat
musing in silence. He too was intently thinking of his son. His face
was filled with the satisfaction of old Simeon when he cried, out of the
fulness of his heart, "Domine! nunc dimittis!"

"Dame Rochelle," said he. She turned promptly to the voice of her
master, as she ever insisted on calling him. "Were I superstitious, I
should fear that my great joy at Pierre's return might be the prelude to
some great sorrow."

"God's blessing on Pierre!" said she, "he can only bring joy to this
house. Thank the Lord for what He gives and what He takes! He took
Pierre, a stripling from his home, and returns him a great man, fit to
ride at the King's right hand and to be over his host like Benaiah, the
son of Jehoiada, over the host of Solomon."

"Grand merci for the comparison, dame!" said the Bourgeois, smiling,
as he leaned back in his chair. "But Pierre is a Frenchman, and would
prefer commanding a brigade in the army of the Marshal de Saxe to
being over the host of King Solomom. But," continued he, gravely, "I am
strangely happy to-day, Deborah,"--he was wont to call her Deborah
when ve