iries'
protection being gone, the spring lost much of its freshness and
coldness, and more than two-thirds of its volume, and the banished
serpents and stinging insects returned, and multiplied, and became a
torment and have remained so to this day.

When that wise little child, Joan, got well, we realized how much her
illness had cost us; for we found that we had been right in believing
she could save the fairies. She burst into a great storm of anger, for
so little a creature, and went straight to Pere Fronte, and stood up
before him where he sat, and made reverence and said:

"The fairies were to go if they showed themselves to people again, is it
not so?"

"Yes, that was it, dear."

"If a man comes prying into a person's room at midnight when that person
is half-naked, will you be so unjust as to say that that person is
showing himself to that man?"

"Well--no." The good priest looked a little troubled and uneasy when he
said it.

"Is a sin a sin, anyway, even if one did not intend to commit it?"

Pere Fronte threw up his hands and cried out:

"Oh, my poor little child, I see all my fault," and he drew her to his
side and put an arm around her and tried to make his peace with her, but
her temper was up so high that she could not get it down right away, but
buried her head against his breast and broke out crying and said:

"Then the fairies committed no sin, for there was no intention to commit
one, they not knowing that any one was by; and because they were little
creatures and could not speak for themselves and say the law was against
the intention, not against the innocent act, because they had no friend
to think that simple thing for them and say it, they have been sent away
from their home forever, and it was wrong, wrong to do it!"

The good father hugged her yet closer to his side and said:

"Oh, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the heedless and
unthinking are condemned; would God I could bring the little creatures
back, for your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have been unjust.
There, there, don't cry--nobody could be sorrier than your poor old
friend--don't cry, dear."

"But I can't stop right away, I've got to. And it is no little matter,
this thing that you have done. Is being sorry penance enough for such an
act?"

Pere Fronte turned away his face, for it would have hurt her to see him
laugh, and said:

"Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not. I will put