the humble comfort of the place.

"Look now, Susie," said Miss Bettina, "isn't this just the sort of vicarage you hoped it would be?"

"And the abbé also, if he will allow me to say so," said Madame Scott. "For what did I say in the train this morning, Bettina, and only a little while ago in the carriage?"

"My sister said to me, M. le Curé," said Miss Percival, "that she desired, above all things, that the abbé should not be young, nor melancholy, nor severe, but that he should be white-haired and gentle and good."

"And that is you exactly, M. le Curé," said Madame Scott brightly. "I find you just as I had hoped, and I trust you may be as well pleased with your new parishioners."

"Parishioners!" exclaimed the abbé. "But then you are Catholics?"

"Certainly we are Catholics!" And noting the surprise of the old abbé, she went on to say, "Ah, I understand! Our name and our country made you expect we should be Protestants and unfriendly to you and your people. But our mother was a Canadian and a Catholic, of French origin, and that is why my sister and I speak French with just a little foreign accent. My husband is a Protestant, but he leaves me full liberty, and so my two children are being educated in my own faith. And that is why we have come to see you the first day we have arrived."

The good old priest was overwhelmed by the news, but his joy almost brought tears to his eyes when the ladies each presented him with a thousand francs, and promised five hundred francs a month for the poor. He had never handled so much money in all his life before.

"Why, there will be no poor left in all the district!" he stammered.

"And we should be glad if that were so," said Madame Scott, "for we have plenty, and we could not do better with it."

Then followed the happiest little dinner party that had ever taken place beneath the abbé's roof. Madame Scott explained how her husband had bought the château as a surprise for her, and that neither she nor her sister had seen it until that morning.

"Now, tell me," she suggested, "what they said about the new owner." The old priest blushed, and was at a loss to answer. "Well, you are a soldier," she continued, turning to Lieutenant Reynaud, "and you will tell me. Did they say that I had been a beggar?"

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