e-work and her heart aching with that new and deadly pain which
never left her now, she would read--read--read--read, and try and store
her brain with knowledge, and try and grasp these vast new meanings of
life that the books opened to her, and try and grow less ignorant against
he should return.

There was much she could not understand,
bait there was also much she could.

Her mind was delicate and quick, her intelligence swift and strong; she
bought old books at bookstalls with pence that she saved by going without
her dinner. The keeper of the stall, a shrewd old soul, explained some
hard points to her, and chose good volumes for her, and lent others to
this solitary little student in her wooden shoes and with her pale
child's face.

So she toiled hard and learned much, and grew taller and very thin, and
got a look in her eyes like a lost dog's, and yet never lost heart or
wandered in the task that he had set her, or in her faith in his return.

"Burn the books, Bebee," whispered the children again and again, clinging
to her skirts. "Burn the wicked, silent things. Since you have had them
you never sing, or romp, or laugh, and you look so white--so white."

Bebee kissed them, but kept to her books.

Jeannot going by from the forest night after night saw the light
twinkling in the hut window, and sometimes crept softly up and looked
through the chinks of the wooden shutter, and saw her leaning over some
big old volume with her pretty brows drawn together, and her mouth shut
close in earnest effort, and he would curse the man who had changed her
so and go away with rage in his breast and tears in his eyes, not daring
to say anything, but knowing that never would Bebee's little brown hand
lie in love within his own.

Nor even in friendship, for he had rashly spoken rough words against the
stranger from Rubes' land, and Bebee ever since then had passed him by
with a grave, simple greeting, and when he had brought her in timid gifts
a barrow-load of fagots, had thanked him, but had bidden him take the
wood home to his mother.

"You think evil things of me, Bebee?" good Jeannot had pleaded, with a
sob in his voice; and she had answered gently,--

"No; but do not speak to me, that is all."

Then he had cursed her absent lover, and Bebee gone within and closed her
door.

She had no idea that the people thought ill of her. They were cold to
her, and such coldness made her heart ache a little more. But the one
g