family; it was only in talking to Annot that he was the same
hot-tempered old man as ever. The two young men themselves were hardly
at their ease; but they eat their breakfast, and made the best they
could of it.

"Smothered fire burns longest, neighbour Gobelin," said Rouel, as he
left the house. "Take my word, Michael will never forgive those two boys
of his the longest day he has to live."

After breakfast, Michael Stein and his whole party went to mass, as did
all the soldier peasants, who had returned from Saumur; and the old Cure
of the parish, who had now recovered possession of his own church, with
much solemnity returned thanks to God for the great victory which the
Vendeans had gained, and sung a requiem for the souls of the royalists
who had fallen in the battle. When they left the church, the peasants
all formed themselves into a procession, the girls going first, and the
men following them; and in this manner they paraded round the green,
carrying a huge white flag, which had been embroidered in the village,
and which bore in its centre, in conspicuous letters of gold, those
three words, the loyal Shibboleth of La Vendee, "Vive le Roi!"

This flag they fixed on a pole erected in the centre of the green, and
then they set to work to amuse themselves with twenty different games.
The games, however, did not flourish--the men were too eager to talk of
what they had done, and the girls were too willing to listen--they
divided themselves into fifty little parties, in which fifty different
accounts were given of the taking of Saumur, and in each party three or
four different warriors were named as having been the most conspicuous
heroes of the siege. Each narrator had some especially esteemed leader
or chief, who in his eyes greatly exceeded the other leaders, and the