word of comfort to the poor wife. Gabord looked at the soldiers,
looked at the wife, at the priest, then spread out his legs and
stuck his hands down into his pockets, while his horse rubbed its
nose against his shoulder. He fixed his eyes on the grave, and
nodded once or twice musingly.

"Well," he said at last, as if he had found a perfect virtue,
and the one or only thing that could be said, "well, he never
eat his words, that Jean."

A moment afterwards he came into the house with Babette, leaving
one of the soldiers holding his horse. After the old man had gone,
I heard him say, "Were you at mass to-day? And did you see all?"

And when she had answered yes, he continued: "It was a mating as
birds mate, but mating was it, and holy fathers and Master Devil
Doltaire can't change it till cock-pheasant Moray come rocketing to
's grave. They would have hanged me for my part in it, but I repent
not, for they have wickedly hunted this little lady."

"I weep with her," said Jean's wife.

"Ay, ay, weep on, Babette," he answered.

"Has she asked help of you?" said the wife.

"Truly; but I know not what says she, for I read not, but I know
her pecking. Here it is. But you must be secret."

Looking through a crack in the floor, I could plainly see them.