keeper's little dog, no doubt."

"Here's your baby clothes," cried La Louve, snatching the bundle from
Mont Saint-Jean's grasp.

The handkerchief, already torn, was now rent to tatters, and a quantity
of fragments of stuff of all colours, and old pieces of linen half cut
out, flew around the yard, and were trampled under feet by the
prisoners, who holloaed and laughed louder than before.

"Here's your rags!"

"Why, it is a ragpicker's bag."

"Patterns from the ragman's."

"What a shop!"

"And to sew all that rubbish!"

"Why, there's more thread than stuff."

"What nice embroidery!"

"Here, pick up your rags and tatters, Mont Saint-Jean."

"Oh, how wicked! Oh, how cruel!" exclaimed the poor ill-used creature,
running in every direction after the pieces, which she endeavoured to
pick up in spite of pushes and blows. "I never did anybody any harm,"
she added, weeping. "I have offered, if they would let me alone, to do
anything I could for anybody, to give them half my allowance, although I
am always so hungry; but, no! no! it's always so. What can I do to be
left in peace? They haven't even pity of a poor woman in the family way.
They are more cruel than the beasts. Oh, the trouble I had to collect
these little bits of linen! How else can I make the clothes for my baby,
for I have no money to buy them with? What harm was there in picking up
what nobody else wanted when it was thrown away?" Then Mont Saint-Jean
exclaimed suddenly, with a ray of hope, "Oh, there you are, Goualeuse!
Now, then, I'm safe; do speak to them for me; they will listen to you, I
am sure, for they love you as much as they hate me."

La Goualeuse was the last of the prisoners who entered the enclosure.

Fleur-de-Marie wore the blue woollen gown and black skull-cap of the
prisoners; but even in this coarse costume she was still charming. Yet,
since her carrying off from the farm of Bouqueval (the consequences of
which circumstance we will explain hereafter), her features seemed
greatly altered; her pale cheeks, formerly tinged with a slight colour,
were as wan as the whiteness of alabaster; the expression, too, of her
countenance had changed, and was now imprinted with a kind of dignified
grief. Fleur-de-Marie felt that to bear courageously the painful
sacrifices of expiation is almost to attain restored position.

"Ask a favour for me, Goualeuse," said poor Mont Saint-Jean,
beseechingly, to the young girl; "see how they are flinging a