ak to them all."

Wondering, M. Loisel added his voice to the Notary's, and the word went
round. Slowly they all made their way to a spot the Cure indicated.

Charley stood on the embankment above the road, the notables of the
parish round him.

Rosalie had been taken to the Cure's house. In that wild moment in the
church when she had fallen insensible in Charley's arms, a new feeling
had sprung up in her. She loved him in every fibre, but she had a
strange instinct, a prescience, that she was lying on his breast for
the last time. She had wound her arms round his neck, and, as his lips
closed on hers, she had cried: "We shall die together--together."

As she lay in the Cure's house, she thought only of that moment.

"What are they cheering for?" she asked, as a great noise came to her
through the window.

"Run and see," said the Cure's sister to Mrs. Flynn, and the fat woman
hurried away.

Rosalie raised herself so that she could look out of the window. "I can
see him," she cried.

"See whom?" asked the Cure's sister.

"Monsieur," she answered, with a changed voice. "He is speaking. They
are cheering him."

Ten minutes later, the Cure and the Notary entered the room. M. Loisel
came forward to Rosalie, and took her hands in his.

"You should not have done it," he said.

"I wanted to do something," she replied. "To get the cross for you
seemed the only payment I could make for all your goodness to me."

"It nearly cost you your life--and the life of another," he said,
shaking his head reproachfully.

Cheering came again from the burning church. "Why do they cheer?" she
asked.

"Why do they cheer? Because the man we have feared, Monsieur Mallard--"

"I never feared him," said Rosalie, scarcely above her breath.

"Because he has taught them the way to a new church again--and at once,
at once, my child."

"A remarkable man!" said Narcisse Dauphin. "There never was such a
speech. Never in any courtroom was there such an appeal."

"What did he do?" asked Mademoiselle Loisel, her hand in Rosalie's.

"Everything," answered the Cure. "There he stood in his tattered
clothes, the beard burnt to his chin, his hands scorched, his eyes
bloodshot, and he spoke--"

"'With the tongues of men and of angels,'" said M. Dauphin
enthusiastically.

The Cure frowned and continued: "'You look on yonder burning walls,' he
said, 'and wonder when they will rise again on this hill made sacred
by the burial of your belov