plunged into the Viorne, six miles away.

'Brother Archangias!' softly called the priest, as if to appease the
fearful man.

The Brother, however, did not release the boy's ear.

'Oh, it's you, Monsieur le Cure?' he growled. 'Just fancy, this rascal
is always poking his nose into the graveyard. I don't know what he can
be up to here. I ought to let go of him and let him smash his skull down
there. It would be what he deserves.'

The lad remained dumb, with his cunning eyes tight shut as he clung to
the bushes.

'Take care, Brother Archangias,' continued the priest, 'he might slip.'

And he himself helped Vincent to scramble up again.

'Come, my young friend, what were you doing there?' he asked. 'You must
not go playing in graveyards.'

The lad had opened his eyes, and crept away, fearfully, from the
Brother, to place himself under the priest's protection.

'I'll tell you,' he said in a low voice, as he raised his bushy head.
'There is a tomtit's nest in the brambles there, under that rock.
For over ten days I've been watching it, and now the little ones are
hatched, so I came this morning after serving your mass.'

'A tomtit's nest!' exclaimed Brother Archangias. 'Wait a bit! wait a
bit!'

Thereupon he stepped aside, picked a clod of earth off a grave and flung
it into the brambles. But he missed the nest. Another clod, however,
more skilfully thrown upset the frail cradle, and precipitated the
fledglings into the torrent below.

'Now, perhaps,' he continued, clapping his hands to shake off the earth
that soiled them, 'you won't come roaming here any more, like a heathen;
the dead will pull your feet at night if you go walking over them
again.'

Vincent, who had laughed at seeing the nest dive into the stream, looked
round him and shrugged his shoulders like one of strong mind.

'Oh, I'm not afraid,' he said. 'Dead folk don't stir.'

The graveyard, in truth, was not a place to inspire fear. It was a
barren piece of ground whose narrow paths were smothered by rank weeds.
Here and there the soil was bossy with mounds. A single tombstone, that
of Abbe Caffin, brand-new and upright, could be perceived in the centre
of the ground. Save this, all around there were only broken fragments
of crosses, withered tufts of box, and old slabs split and moss-eaten.
There were not two burials a year. Death seemed to make no dwelling in
that waste spot, whither La Teuse came every evening to fill her apron
with grass