acken near to the solitary farmsteads
where he made his visitations.

He had learnt it was useless: all attempt of Mother Church to scold
out of this sea and moor-girt flock their pagan superstitions. He
would leave it to time. Later, perhaps opportunity might occur to
place the child in some convent, where she would learn to forget, and
grow into a good Catholic. Meanwhile, one had to take pity on the
little lonely creature. Not entirely for her own sake maybe; a dear
affectionate little soul strangely wise; so she seemed to Father Jean.
Under the shade of trees or sharing warm shelter with the soft-eyed
cows, he would teach her from his small stock of knowledge. Every now
and then she would startle him with an intuition, a comment strangely
unchildlike. It was as if she had known all about it, long ago.
Father Jean would steal a swift glance at her from under his shaggy
eyebrows and fall into a silence. It was curious also how the wild
things of the field and wood seemed unafraid of her. At times,
returning to where he had left her hidden, he would pause, wondering
to whom she was talking, and then as he drew nearer would hear the
stealing away of little feet, the startled flutter of wings. She had
elfish ways, of which it seemed impossible to cure her. Often the good
man, returning from some late visit of mercy with his lantern and his
stout oak cudgel, would pause and listen to a wandering voice. It was
never near enough for him to hear the words, and the voice was strange
to him, though he knew it could be no one else. Madame Lavigne would
shrug her shoulders. How could she help it? It was not for her to
cross the "child," even supposing bolts and bars likely to be of any
use. Father Jean gave it up in despair. Neither was it for him either
to be too often forbidding and lecturing. Maybe the cunning tender
ways had wove their web about the childless old gentleman's heart,
making him also somewhat afraid. Perhaps other distractions! For
Madame Lavigne would never allow her to do anything but the lightest of
work. He would teach her to read. So quickly she learnt that it
seemed to Father Jean she must be making believe not to have known it
already. But he had his reward in watching the joy with which she
would devour, for preference, the quaint printed volumes of romance and
history that he would bring home to her from his rare journeyings to
the distant town.

It was when she was about t