their way to him, and beguiled the monotony of his confinement by their talk. One had to tell of a wedding, another of a market, another of a day's hunting. No one came empty handed; so that Franz and Suzette never had so great a variety in their larder. One brought a piece of bear's flesh, another a bag of chestnut flour, another a basket of grapes, or a goat's-milk cheese, or a fowl, or a few eggs. Franz meanwhile, when he had come in from his day's work, wove at his loom, or carved wood, or read a chapter in the Bible; and Claude took to woodcarving, too, and helped to make up his store of toys for the spring fair. He also gave the children lessons in reading and writing; and towards the end of winter, when he was pretty nearly well, he had quite a little school of adults and young girls and lads, whom he gladly instructed gratuitously. In short, so happily and swiftly did this winter pass, that all were sorry when it broke up, and Claude was well enough to prepare to recommence his wanderings. He started, in the first place, for La Tour; little foreseeing what dangers and tribulations there awaited him.

CHAPTER XVI.

CLAUDE IN PRISON.

ETTER come back in the autumn, Claude,

"BETT

and take a Swiss wife," cried Suzette, as she stood at her cottage door with her infant in her arms, watching him depart.

I don't know that any one would have me,” replied he, cheerfully.

"Oh, nonsense! Any one would have you! Louison, Marguerite, Victorine . . . .

For shame, for shame, Suzette! I won't hear another word more! Good bye!"

-" Well, don't walk too fast, especially uphill, for fear of consequences; remember, you're not very strong yet!-He doesn't hear me, I do believe," added she, lowering her voice, after shouting after him; "what a pace he is going at!"

Claude cheerily walked on to Bobbio, where he bade farewell to various friends, and then he proceeded to La Tour, keenly alive to the beauty of the budding spring and the long withheld delight of exercise in the open air. But he was not very strong yet; and he found it necessary to slacken his pace, before he reached the end of his sixmile stage. His mind was full of thick-coming memories of the stirring scenes that had occurred in that valley in the old persecuting times, and he prayed to God in his heart that they might never be revived.

Having reached La Tour, he went to the Moderator's house, to bid him adieu; and not finding him at home, he left a message for him, and then crossed the little street to a shop immediately opposite, to buy a new handkerchief. While he was choosing one, the woman of the shop suddenly plucked off his hat; he looked up at her with surprise, and seeing no advantage to himself to be derived from the arrangement, coolly put it on again. The woman, who was a Roman Catholic, bluntly remarked-" You'd better have submitted, and may get into trouble for this. Why could not you pull off your hat, for manners, if for nothing

better, when the Host was being carried by? The priest saw you, I am sure, out of the corner of his eye, and you know the laws require heretics as well as Catholics within thirty yards distance, to uncover."

"I was not aware the Host was passing,” said Claude, "nor did I remember the law." And looking out of the shop-door, he saw a priest and two or three little boys, forming rather a poor apology for a procession, going down the street. He concluded his purchase, and left La Tour without any further delay; and had proceeded about half-a-mile on his road, when he heard himself called to from behind, and, the next minute, a couple of gens d'armes came up and roughly collared him, He mildly inquired the reason of their apprehending him. They replied, "You will soon learn that of the magistrate... our business is only to take you before him. However, we know very well that you are the profane fellow who kept your hat on just now before the Host."

Well-my journey will only be an hour delayed,” said Claude.

"Don't be too sure of that," said the other

gendarme, "our magistrate may put a spoke in your wheel that shall hinder it from rolling on for some time to come. However, it is not our business to speak to you."

And they walked on in silence, a few boys and idlers gradually collecting into a little body-guard around them.

When Claude entered the presence of the magistrate, he found himself confronted by the shop-woman of La Tour, and by two of the youths who had made up the procession. These all bore witness against him that he had kept on his hat; and the shop-woman alleged in addition, that when she, out of humanity, removed it for him, he immediately replaced it, and expressed no contrition for his disrespect, intentional or otherwise. The magistrate demanded his name, birth-place, and occupation; and finding that he hawked Bibles from house to house,-"This is evidently a malignant fellow," said he to his clerk, "and I don't think it any honour to La Tour to have been his birth-place, nor to Bobbio to have supplied his education; therefore my opinion is, that we shall do the community at large good service by committing Mr. Claude Malan to the prison