on sackcloth and ashes; there--are you satisfied?"

Joan's sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the old
man through her tears, and said, in her simple way:

"Yes, that will do--if it will clear you."

Pere Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he had not
remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a very agreeable
one. It must be fulfilled. So he got up and went to the fireplace, Joan
watching him with deep interest, and took a shovelful of cold ashes, and
was going to empty them on his old gray head when a better idea came to
him, and he said:

"Would you mind helping me, dear?"

"How, father?"

He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said:

"Take the ashes and put them on my head for me."

The matter ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest. One
can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike Joan or any
other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon her knees by his
side and said:

"Oh, it is dreadful. I didn't know that that was what one meant by
sackcloth and ashes--do please get up, father."

"But I can't until I am forgiven. Do you forgive me?"

"I? Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that must
forgive yourself for wronging those poor things. Please get up, father,
won't you?"

"But I am worse off now than I was before. I thought I was earning
your forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can't be lenient; it would not
become me. Now what can I do? Find me some way out of this with your
wise little head."

The Pere would not stir, for all Joan's pleadings. She was about to cry
again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged her
own head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings and
suffocations:

"There--now it is done. Oh, please get up, father."

The old man, both touched and amused, gathered her to his breast and
said:

"Oh, you incomparable child! It's a humble martyrdom, and not of a sort
presentable in a picture, but the right and true spirit is in it; that I
testify."

Then he brushed the ashes out of her hair, and helped her scour her face
and neck and properly tidy herself up. He was in fine spirits now, and
ready for further argument, so he took his seat and drew Joan to his
side again, and said:

"Joan, you were used to make wreaths there at the Fairy Tree with the
other children; is it not so?"

That was the way he always started out when he wa