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"At the bishop's orders," resumed the first slave, "the feet of the Vagre and of the hermit-laborer were dipped into boiling oil they confessed a second time." "And thereupon they were both carried back to the ergastula, because they could not walk." "And to-morrow they will be taken out for execution.

Help one another, children of one God, sons of one country! Disunited, you can do nothing; united you will be stronger than your oppressors. The day of deliverance may be nigh! Love, unity, patience!" "Aye! Aye! These are the precepts that the hermit-laborer teaches us!" "And these precepts, brothers, you must remember and act upon at this hour," replied the monk-laborer.

"Our little children always have a smile for the hermit-laborer." "Oh! From the moment they see him they run to him and take hold of his robe." "As poor as any of ourselves, he loves to make little presents to the children. He always has some fruit for them that he gathered in the woods, a piece of wild honey-comb, or some little bird that has fallen out of its nest." "Love one another!

Wildly they tumbled about, and started a giddy reel upon the sward by the pale illumination of the moon. Wrapped in silence the hermit-laborer had listened to the conversation of the Vagres. Seated beside little Odille, he seemed to shield her with a paternal protection. The child seemed a stranger to what happened around her.

Ronan, Loysik the hermit-laborer, the handsome bishopess, little Odille and several other Vagres, all who had not died of their wounds since their capture, have for the last month been imprisoned in the ergastula, the jail of the burg, being thrown there immediately after the combat in the passage of Allange, where most of the Vagres lost their lives. The rest fled into the woods.

Their fathers were off on the fields since dawn; their mothers, as wan-looking and thin as the children, sat at the entrance of their hovels upon bunches of decaying straw; they were clad in rags and busily plied their distaffs for the benefit of the bishop; their long and unkempt hair tumbled over their foreheads upon their bony shoulders; their eyes were hollow, their cheeks sunburnt and sunken; the aspect that they presented was at once so repulsive and painful that the hermit-laborer could not refrain from pointing them out to the bishop, saying: "Look at those unhappy creatures!"

Despite the remonstrances of the hermit-laborer, he dashed in among the startled slaves, and fulminated his anathemas. "Oh! We shall touch nothing of all that is offered us, holy bishop!" answered the mothers with a shudder. "We shall not touch any of the goods of the Church." "My Vagres!" cried Ronan, "Hang the bishop on the nearest tree! We shall not lack for a cook."

The outskirt of the forest was reached at the peep of dawn a flitting moment in the month of June. At the distance a ruddy glamour was seen struggling against the approaching light of day it was the conflagration that still raged over the ruins of the burg. Ronan and the hermit-laborer were laid upon the grass, with little Odille seated beside them.

"A priest!" suddenly cried the count in accents of anguish. "I do not wish to die without the assistance of a priest! Will you assist me, hermit-laborer?" "Father," cried Loysik, "do not kill this man in that manner!" "I do not ask you for my life, Gallic dogs! Slaves! But I do not wish to go to hell! I ask the absolution of a priest!"

He will not consent to let the fellow free." "Cautin will console himself over the Vagre's escape by seeing the bishopess roast, and the hermit-laborer hang." "But suppose the Vagre promises to commit the murder but fails in carrying out his part of the bargain?" "And the twenty gold sous that he will surely expect to receive after the murder is committed?"