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"Ohher head on her knees, and it seeh her hoarse voice tore her chest as it passed from it, "do not show ravely

Nevertheless, this shock had, so to speak, awakened the recluse A long shiver traversed her frame from head to foot; her teeth chattered; she half raised her head and said, pressing her elbows against her hips, and clasping her feet in her hands as though to warm thereat compassion, "would you like a little fire?"

She shook her head in token of refusal

"Well," resuon; "here is soain she shook her head, looked at Oudarde fixedly and replied, "Water"

Oudarde persisted,--"No, sister, that is no beverage for January You must drink a little hippocras and eat this leavened cake of maize, which we have baked for you"

She refused the cake which Mahiette offered to her, and said, "Black bread"

"Come," said Gervaise, seized in her turn with an i her woolen cloak, "here is a cloak which is a little warmer than yours"

She refused the cloak as she had refused the flagon and the cake, and replied, "A sack"

"But," resuood Oudarde, "you must have perceived to some extent, that yesterday was a festival"

"I do perceive it," said the recluse; "'tis two days now since I have had any water in my crock"

She added, after a silence, "'Tis a festival, I aotten People do well Why should the world think of me, when I do not think of it? Cold charcoalsaid so ain The simple and charitable Oudarde, who fancied that she understood fro of the cold, replied innocently, "Then you would like a little fire?"

"Fire!" said the sacked nun, with a strange accent; "and will you also make a little for the poor little one who has been beneath the sod for these fifteen years?"

Every li, her voice quivered, her eyes flashed, she had raised herself upon her knees; suddenly she extended her thin, white hand towards the child, as regarding her with a look of astonishyptian woman is about to pass by"

Then she fell face doard on the earth, and her forehead struck the stone, with the sound of one stone against another stone The three woht her dead Aherself, on her knees and elbows, to the corner where the little shoe was Then they dared not look; they no longer saw her; but they heard a thousand kisses and a thousand sighs,cries, and dull blows like those of a head in contact with a wall Then, after one of these blows, so violent that all three of theered, they heard no more