nce for sacred things.

[Illustration: {AT PRAYERS.}]

In one of these walks they were shown a place where a French boy did a
noble act at the end of the last war.

An order had been issued to shoot all persons found with arms in their
hands in the streets. A captain with his company on duty came upon a
French boy with a musket.

"I must order your execution," he said.

"Let me return a watch I have borrowed," said the boy.

"When will you return?"

"At once, upon my word."

The boy went away, and the captain never expected to see him again.
But he presently came back, and taking a heroic attitude said,--

"_I am ready. Fire!_"

He was pardoned.

"The young French people," said Master Lewis, "are very patriotic.
History abounds with noble acts of French boys. I will relate an
incident or two to the point:--

"Joseph Barra lived in the interior of France at the beginning of the
French Revolution. He was a generous-hearted boy, who loved truth, his
mother, and his country. He was a Republican at heart; a boy of his
impulses could have been nothing else.

"Wishing to serve his country in the great struggle for liberty, he
entered the Republican army at the age of twelve, as a drummer boy.
His whole soul entered into the cause; he was ready to endure any
hardship and to make any sacrifice, that the country he loved might be
free. He allowed himself no luxuries, but he sent the whole of his pay
as a musician to his mother.

"His regiment was ordered to La Vendee to encounter a body of
Royalists. One day he found himself cut off from the troops, and
surrounded by a party of Royalists. Twenty bayonets were pointed
towards his breast. He stood, calm and unflinching, before the
glittering steel.

"'Shout,' cried the leader of the Royalists, 'shout, "Long live Louis
XVII!" or die!'

"The twenty bayonets were pushed forward within an inch of his body.

"He bent upon his captors a steady eye, kindling with the lofty
purpose of his soul. He took off his hat. He gazed for a moment on
the blue sky and the green earth. Then, waving his hand aloft, he
exclaimed, '_Vive la Republique!_'

"The twenty bayonets did their cruel work, and the boy died, a martyr
to his convictions of right and of liberty.

"Joseph Agricole Vialla, a boy thirteen years of age, connected
himself with a party of French Republican soldiers stationed on the
Danube. One day an army of insurgent Royalists were discovered on the
opposite sid