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No longer did the groups of weary fishermen gather on the store steps for an evening pipe and chat or the young bloods chuck horseshoes at the foot of the chapel hill. It was a village of women.

In all this Abe was a foremost worker, toiling early and late, and asking any one and every one to come to their help, by which means they got many of the wild young men of the village to assist in the work.

If people did not obey his summons, we rowed up to them, and the missionary gratified them with his tracts in dozens, and went his way rejoicing, in anticipation of the good which he did not doubt they would effect. Whenever we arrived at a village, however, matters reached even a higher pitch.

"I want to behave toward Miss Melody just as you wish me to. It looks to us all, of course, as if she were Miss Upton's friend and not yours." Mrs. Barry's cheeks flamed. This dreadful youngster was forcing her, hurrying her, and she would be spokesman to the village. Ben's infatuation left her no choice. "Oh, quite in ours, quite, I judge," she said graciously. "Ben thinks her quite exceptional."

But she looked mischievously away, and do what I would I could not get her to promise. Just then the striking of the village clock awoke within me another clamorous timepiece, reminding me of mid-day mutton a good half-mile away, and of penalties and curtailments attaching to a late appearance.

I have no money; but I am going to pawn this watch that Onkel Ernst gave me." "That is all simple, my Karen. I have money. I took with me the money for my tour; I was on a walking-tour, do you see, and reached Falmouth last night and had but started now to pay my respects at Les Solitudes. I wished to see you, Karen, and to see if you were well. But it is very far to your village.

Then all the people of the village, without distinction of age or sex, presented themselves to him, and he had to sting them all with the ants on their faces, thighs, and other parts of their bodies.

They said, one to the other, "If we are really sons of Satan we will justify these taunts," and collecting all the vicious boys of their village they robbed farmers, ruined churches, killed men who resisted plunder, and were about to murder their father when they were warned in a vision of the eternal punishment they would endure in blazing sulphur pits if they did not repent.

Trot! trot! away the hardy little creatures go; never stopping, never hesitating. Our "superior intelligence," perfectly useless in the emergency, wonders how it will end. Our guide, in front of us, answers that it will end in the ponies finding their way certainly to the nearest village or the nearest house. "Let the bridles be," is his one warning to us.

The friars, Membre and Ribourde, were not in the village, but at a hut a league distant, whither they had gone to make a "retreat," for prayer and meditation. Their missionary labors had not been fruitful. They had made no converts, and were in despair at the intractable character of the objects of their zeal.