ll, the gendarmes."

"The gendarmes?"

"No; you could never have been guilty, madame! Never! Whatever it was
they charged you with----"

"Charged? Sainte Marie be praised, I never committed any crime in my
life,--unless it was a crime to be thoughtless and happy."

"I was sure of that!" cried Fouchette, much relieved nevertheless.

"Why, I never was charged with any!" protested the astonished Sister
Agnes.

"Then they imprisoned you without trial, as they have me. Ah! mon
Dieu! madame, I see it all now! And forty years! Oh!"

"Well, blessed be the saints in heaven!" exclaimed the enlightened
religieuse. "What do you think this place is, Fouchette?"

"It is"--she hesitated and changed the form of speech--"is it a--a
prison?"

"Why, no! Holy Mother, no!--not a prison, child! You thought it----"

"Yes, madame," faltered Fouchette.

"You poor child! Not so bad as that; yet----"

"I see,--a house of correction?"

"No, not that. At least, not--ah! if Sister Angelique had heard you
call 'Le Bon Pasteur' a house of correction it would have been worth
three days of bread and water!"

"'Le Bon Pasteur?'" repeated Fouchette.

"Yes, my child. Didn't you really know----"

"No, madame."

Sister Agnes pondered.

"Then why should you remain here?" pursued the curious child. "Can't
you go away if you want to?"

"But I do not wish to go now,--not now."

"But if you had wished it at any time."

Sister Agnes was silent.

"Then what is this place, madame?"

"A retreat for the poor,--an orphan asylum,--where little girls who
have neither father nor mother, and no home, are sent. And where they
are brought up to be good and industrious young women."

"D-don't they ever get out again?" asked Fouchette, somewhat
doubtfully.

"Oh, yes. They are set free at twenty-one years of age if they wish to
go, and even sooner if their friends come for them. If they don't wish
to go, they can remain and become members of the order, if they are
suitable. I was brought here at ten years of age by my aunt and left
temporarily, but my uncle died and she was too poor, or else did not
want me, so I was compelled to remain. When I became twenty-one I owed
the institution so much from failure to do my tasks and fines, and
what my aunt had promised to pay and didn't pay, that I had to stay a
long time and work it out, and by that time I had become so accustomed
to living here that I was afraid to leave the institution and begged
th