ld hawker looked at her thoughtfully. He had seen much of men and
women, and knew truth from counterfeit, and he was moved by the child's
agony.

He stooped and whispered in her ear,--

"Get up quick, and I will pass you. It is against the law, and I may go
to prison for it. Never mind; one must risk something in this world, or
else be a cur. My daughter has stayed behind in Marbais sweethearting;
her name is on my passport, and her age and face will do for yours. Get
up and follow me close, and I will get you through. Poor little soul!
Whatever your woe is it is real enough, and you are such a young and
pretty thing. Get up, the guards are in their house, they have not seen;
follow me, and you must not speak a word; they must take you for a
German, dumb as wood."

She got up and obeyed him, not comprehending, but only vaguely seeing
that he was friendly to her, and would pass her over into France.

The old man made a little comedy at the barrier, and scolded her as
though she were his daughter for losing her way as she came to meet him,
and then crying like a baby.

The guards looked at her carelessly, joked the hawker on her pretty face,
looked the papers over, and let her through, believing her the child of
the clock-maker of the Hartz. Some lies are blessed as truth.

"I have done wrong in the law, but not before God, I think, little one,"
said the pedler. "Nay, do not thank me, or go on like that; we are in
sight of the customs men still, and if they suspected, it would be the
four walls of a cell only that you and I should see to-night. And now
tell me your story, poor maiden: why are you on foot through a strange
country?"

But Bebee would not tell him her story: she was confused and dazed still.
She did not know rightly what had happened to her; but she could not talk
of herself, nor of why she travelled thus to Paris.

The old hawker got cross at her silence, and called her an unthankful
jade, and wished that he had left her to her fate, and parted company
with her at two cross-roads, saying his path did not lie with hers; and
then when he had done that, was sorry, and being a tenderhearted soul,
hobbled back, and would fain press a five-franc piece on her; and Bebee,
refusing it all the while, kissed his old brown hands and blessed him,
and broke away from him, and so went on again solitary towards St.
Quentin.

The country was very flat and poor, and yet the plains had a likeness in
them to her own