else,--a little human heart that is happy and innocent.

Bébée had only one sorrow that night. The pear-blossoms were all dead;
and no care could call them back even for an hour's blooming.

"He did not think when he struck them
down," she said to herself, regretfully.




CHAPTER VIII.


"Can I do any work for you, Bébée?" said black Jeannot in the daybreak,
pushing her gate open timidly with one hand.

"There is none to do, Jeannot. They want so little in this time of the
year--the flowers," said she, lifting her head from the sweet-peas she
was tying up to their sticks.

The woodman did not answer; he leaned over the half-open wicket, and
swayed it backwards and forwards under his bare arm. He was a good,
harmless, gentle fellow, swarthy as charcoal and simple as a child, and
quite ignorant, having spent all his days in the great Soignies forests
making fagots when he was a little lad, and hewing down trees or burning
charcoal as he grew to manhood.

"Who was that seigneur with you last night, Bébée?" he asked, after a
long silence, watching her as she moved.