hbours in the day that followed; and though no serious charge was
ever preferred against the lad, it got bruited about that Nello had been
seen in the mill-yard after dark on some unspoken errand, and that he
bore Baas Cogez a grudge for forbidding his intercourse with little
Alois; and so the hamlet, which followed the sayings of its richest
landowner servilely, and whose families all hoped to secure the riches
of Alois in some future time for their sons, took the hint to give grave
looks and cold words to old Jehan Daas's grandson. No one said anything
to him openly, but all the village agreed together to humour the
miller's prejudice, and at the cottages and farms where Nello and
Patrasche called every morning for the milk for Antwerp, downcast
glances and brief phrases replaced to them the broad smiles and cheerful
greetings to which they had been always used. No one really credited the
miller's absurd suspicions, nor the outrageous accusations born of them;
but the people were all very poor and very ignorant, and the one rich
man of the place had pronounced against him. Nello, in his innocence and
his friendlessness, had no strength to stem the popular tide.

"Thou art very cruel to the lad," the miller's wife dared to say,
weeping, to her lord. "Sure, he is an innocent lad and a faithful, and
would never dream of any such wickedness, however sore his heart might
be."

But Baas Cogez being an obstinate man, having once said a thing, held
to it doggedly, though in his innermost soul he knew well the injustice
that he was committing.

Meanwhile, Nello endured the injury done against him with a certain
proud patience that disdained to complain; he only gave way a little
when he was quite alone with old Patrasche. Besides, he thought, "If it
should win! They will be sorry then, perhaps."

Still, to a boy not quite sixteen, and who had dwelt in one little world
all his short life, and in his childhood had been caressed and applauded
on all sides, it was a hard trial to have the whole of that little world
turn against him for naught. Especially hard in that bleak, snow-bound,
famine-stricken winter-time, when the only light and warmth there could
be found abode beside the village hearths and in the kindly greetings
of neighbours. In the winter-time all drew nearer to each other, all
to all, except to Nello and Patrasche, with whom none now would have
anything to do, and who were left to fare as they might with the old