now her devoted slave, came to her, all bathed in tears.

She had just heard the news, and she could scarcely speak, but she
folded the young girl, her dear pet lamb, in her arms, and rocking
herself to and fro she sobbed and eased her aching, motherly heart.

But Juliette did not cry. It was all so sudden, so awful. She, at
fourteen years of age, had never dreamed of death; and now there was
her brother, her Philippe, in whom she had so much joy, so much pride
--he was dead--and her father must be told...

The awfulness of this task seemed to Juliette like unto the last
Judgment Day; a thing so terrible, so appalling, so impossible, that
it would take a host of angels to proclaim its inevitableness.

The old cripple, with one foot in the grave, whose whole feeble mind,
whose pride, whose final flicker of hope was concentrated in his boy,
must be told that the lad had been brought home dead.

"Will you tell him, Petronelle?" she asked repeatedly, during the
brief intervals when the violence of the old nurse's grief subsided
somewhat.

"No--no--darling, I cannot--I cannot--" moaned Petronelle, amidst a
renewed shower of sobs.

Juliette's entire soul--a child's soul it was--rose in revolt at
thought of what was before her. She felt angered with God for having
put such a thing upon her. What right had He to demand a girl of her
years to endure so much mental agony?