and the nursing ewes certainly
dead of thirst. Where have you been all these three days?"

"The Abbe John--the little D'Albret!" cried Jean-aux-Choux, thoroughly
surprised for once in his life; "how do you come here?"

"I have been on my master's business," answered the Abbe John
carelessly, "and now I am waiting to do a little on my own account. But
there have been so many suspicious gentry about, that I hesitated to go
down till I had seen you. Now tell me all that has happened. That SHE is
safe, I know; I have seen her every day--from a distance!"

"She--who?" asked Jean, though he knew very well.

"Who--why Claire, of course," said the cousin of the Bearnais; "you do
not suppose I came so far to see the little old woman in the blue
pinafore, who walks nodding her head and rattling her keys? Or you, you
great, thick-skulled oaf of Geneva, or the Sorbonnist with the bald head
and the eyes that look and see nothing? What should a young man come so
far for, and risk his life to see, if not a fair young girl? Answer me.
What did John Calvin teach you as to that?"

"Only this," said Jean-aux-Choux solemnly; "'From the lust of the flesh,
from the lust of the eye, from the pride of life, good Lord deliver
me!'"

The young man looked up from his nail-polishing, sharply and keenly.

"Aye--so," he said. "Well--and did He?"

For a moment, but only for a moment, Jean-aux-Choux stood nonplussed.
Then he found his answer, and this time it was John Stirling, armiger,
scholar in divinity, who spoke.

"The God of John Calvin has delivered me from all thought of self in the
matter of this maid, my master's daughter. What might have grown up in
my heart, or even what may once have been in my heart, had I been aught
but a battered masque of humanity, an offence to the beauty of God's
creation--that is not your business, nor that of any man!"

The young fellow dropped his knife, and rising, clasped Jean-aux-Choux
frankly about the neck.

"Jean--Jean--old friend," he cried, "wherefore should I hurt you? Why
should you think it of me? Not for the world--you know that well.
Forgive an idle word."

But Jean-aux-Choux was moved, and having the large heart, when once the
waves tossed it, the calm returned but slowly.

"Sir," he said, "it is only a few months since you first saw Claire
Agnew. Yet you have, as I judge from your light words, admired her after
your kind. But I--I have loved her as my own maid--my sole thought, my