though neither said a word to the other. Marie had brought down the little boy, a brave-eyed, fair-haired child about three years old, and she was standing with us in the forge waiting with the child clinging to her skirt, when on a sudden she turned to Peter and began to thank him. A word and she broke down.

'Pooh, child!' Peter said kindly, patting her on the shoulder. 'It was little enough, and I am glad I did it. No thank's.'

She answered between her sobs that it was beyond thanks, and called on Heaven to reward him.

'If I had anything,' she continued, looking at him timidly, 'if I had anything I could give you to prove my gratitude, I would so gladly give it. But I am alone, and I have nothing worth your acceptance. I have nothing in the world, unless,' she added with an effort, 'you would like my rosary.'

'No,' Peter said almost roughly. I noticed that he avoided my eye. 'I do not want it. It is not a thing I use.'

She said she had nothing; and we knew she had that chain! Yet Heaven knows her face as she said it was fair enough to convert a Beza! She said she had nothing; we knew she had. Yet if ever genuine gratitude and thankfulness seemed to shine out of wet human eyes, they shone out of hers then.

What I could not stomach was the ingratitude. The fraud was too gross, too gratuitous, since she need have offered nothing. I turned away and went out of the forge without waiting for her to recover herself. I dreaded lest she should thank me in the same way.

I knew Peter, and knew he could have no motive for traducing her. He was old enough to be her grandfather, and a quiet good man. Therefore I was sure that she had the chain, three or four links of which should be worth his shop of old iron.

But besides I had the evidence of my own eyes. There was a crinkle, a crease in her kerchief, for which the presence of the necklace would account; it was such a crease as a necklace of that size would cause. I had marked it when she brought the child into the room in her arms. The boy's right arm had been round her neck, and I had seen him relax his hold of her hair and steady himself by placing his little palm on that wrinkle, as on a sure and certain and familiar stay. So I knew that she had the necklace, and that she had lied about it.

But after all it was nothing to me. The girl was a Papist, a Bavarian, the daughter of a roistering 

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