h had frightened her at first, but which she now began to recognize.
Germain looked at the hedge and saw something that he took for a lamb in
the ditch, under the branches of an oak still thick and green.

"It's a stray lamb," he said, "or a dead one, for it doesn't move.
Perhaps some one is looking for it; we must see."

"It isn't a lamb," cried little Marie; "it's a child asleep; it's your
Petit-Pierre."

"Upon my word!" exclaimed Germain, dismounting; "just see the little imp
lying there asleep, so far from home, and in a ditch, where a snake
might find him!"

He raised the child, who opened his eyes and smiled at him, saying, as
he threw his arms around his neck:

"Little father, you're going to take me with you!"

"Oh, yes! still the same song! what were you doing there, naughty
Pierre?"

"I was waiting for my little father to pass; I was looking out on the
road, and I looked so hard I went to sleep."

"And if I had passed without seeing you, you would have stayed out all
night and the wolf would have eaten you!"

"Oh! I knew you'd see me!" rejoined Petit-Pierre confidently.

"Well, kiss me now, Pierre, bid me good-by, and run back to the house if
you don't want them to have supper without you."

"Why, ain't you going to take me with you?" cried the child, beginning
to rub his eyes to show that he proposed to weep.

"You know grandpa and grandma don't approve of it," said Germain, taking
refuge behind the authority of the old people, like one who places but
slight reliance on his own.

But the child heard nothing. He began to cry in good earnest, saying
that as long as his father took little Marie, he could take him too. He
was told that they would have to go through great forests, that there
were many wicked animals there that ate little children, that Grise
would not carry three, that she said so when they started, and that in
the country they were going to there was no bed or supper for little
monkeys. All these excellent reasons did not convince Petit-Pierre; he
threw himself on the grass and rolled about, crying that his father did
not love him, and that, if he refused to take him with him, he would not
go back to the house day or night.

Germain's fatherly heart was as soft and weak as a woman's. His wife's
death, the care he had been compelled to bestow upon his little ones,
together with the thought that the poor motherless children needed to be
dearly loved, had combined to make it so, and