------------------

She had washing to do that morning. Very early she climbed up into the
ancient belfry, wound the drum so that the bells would play a few bars at
the quarters and before each hour struck; and also in order that the
carillon might ring mechanically at noon in case she had not returned to
take her place at the keyboard with her wooden gloves.

There was a light west wind rippling through the tree tops; and everywhere
sunshine lay brilliant on pasture and meadow under the purest of cobalt
skies.

In the garden her crippled father, swathed in shawls, dozed in his deep
chair beside the river-wall, waking now and then to watch the quill on his
long bamboo fish-pole, stemming the sparkling current of the little river
Lesse.

Sticky Smith, off duty and having filled himself to repletion with
cafe-au-lait at the inn, volunteered to act as nurse, attendant, remover
of fish and baiter of hook, while Maryette was absent at the stone-rimmed
pool where the washing of all Sainte Lesse laundry had been accomplished
for hundreds of years.

"You promise not to go away?" she cautioned him in the simple, first-aid
French she employed in speaking to him, and pausing with both arms raised
to balance the loaded clothes-basket on her head.

"Wee--wee!" he assured her with dignity. "Je fume mong peep! Je regard le
vieux pecher. Voo poovay allay, Mademoiselle Maryette."

She hesitated, then removed the basket from her head and set it on the
grass.

"You are very kind, Monsieur Steek-Smeet. I shall wash your underwear the
very first garments I take out of my basket. Thank you a thousand times."
She bent over with sweet solicitude and pressed her lips to her father's
withered cheek:

"Au revoir, my father _cheri_. An hour or two at the meadow-_lavoir_ and I
shall return to find thee. _Bonne chance, mon pere!_ Thou shalt surely
catch a large and beautiful fish for luncheon before I return with my
wash."

She swung the basket of wash to her head again without effort, and went
her way, following the deeply trodden sheep-path behind the White Doe Inn.

The path wound down through a sloping pasture, across a footbridge
spanning an arm of the Lesse which washed the base of the garden wall,
then ascended a gentle aclivity among hazel thicket and tall sycamores,
becoming for a little distance a shaded wood-path where thrushes sang
ceaselessly in the sun-flecked undergrowth.

But at the eastern