she is awfully
strong; she soon got away from me.'

'Whom on earth is she talking about?' asked La Teuse, running in from
the kitchen with a dish of potatoes, across which lay a piece of bacon.

The girl sat down, and with the greatest caution drew from her skirt a
blackbird's nest in which three wee fledglings were slumbering. She
laid it on her plate. The moment the little birds felt the light, they
stretched out their feeble necks and opened their crimson beaks to ask
for food. Desiree clapped her hands, enchanted, seized with strange
emotion at the sight of these hitherto unknown creatures.

'It's that Paradou girl!' exclaimed the Abbe suddenly, remembering
everything.

La Teuse had gone to the window. 'So it is,' she said. 'I might have
known that grasshopper's voice---- Oh! the gipsy! Look, she's stopped
there to spy on us.'

Abbe Mouret drew near. He, too, thought that he could see Albine's
orange-coloured skirt behind a juniper bush. But Brother Archangias, in
a towering passion, raised himself on tiptoe behind him, and, stretching
out his fist and wagging his churlish head, thundered forth: 'May the
devil take you, you brigand's daughter! I will drag you right round the
church by your hair if ever I catch you coming and casting your evil
spells here!'

A peal of laughter, fresh as the breath of night, rang out from the
path, followed by light hasty footsteps and the swish of a dress
rustling through the grass like an adder. Abbe Mouret, standing at
the window, saw something golden glide through the pine trees like a
moonbeam. The breeze, wafted in from the open country, was now laden
with that penetrating perfume of verdure, that scent of wildflowers,
which Albine had scattered from her bare arms, unfettered bosom, and
streaming tresses at the Paradou.

'An accursed soul! a child of perdition!' growled Brother Archangias,
as he reseated himself at the dinner table. He fell greedily upon his
bacon, and swallowed his potatoes whole instead of bread. La Teuse,
however, could not persuade Desiree to finish her dinner. That big baby
was lost in ecstasy over the nestlings, asking questions, wanting to
know what food they ate, if they laid eggs, and how the cockbirds could
be known.

The old servant, however, was troubled by a suspicion, and taking her
stand on her sound leg, she looked the young cure in the face.

'So you know the Paradou people?' she said.

Thereupon he simply told the truth, relating