“I am going into the city,” she said to him:  “and if I am not back to-night, will you feed the starling and the hens, and water the flowers for me?”

Old Jehan put his head out of his lattice:  it was seven in the evening, and he was going to bed.

“What are you after, little one?” he asked:  going to show the fine buckles at a students’ ball?  Nay, fie; that is not like you.”

“I am going to—­pray—­dear Jehan,” she answered, with a sob in her throat and the first falsehood she ever had told.  “Do what I ask you—­do for your dead daughter’s sake—­or the birds and the flowers will die of hunger and thirst.  Take the key and promise me.”

He took the key, and promised.

“Do not let them see those buckles shine; they will rob you,” he added.

Bebee ran from him fast; every moment that was lost was so precious and so terrible.  To pause a second for fear’s sake never occurred to her.  She went forth as fearlessly as a young swallow, born in northern April days, flies forth on instinct to new lands and over unknown seas when autumn falls.

Necessity and action breathed new life into her.  The hardy and brave peasant ways of her were awoke once more.  She had been strong to wait silently with the young life in her dying out drop by drop in the heart-sickness of long delay.  She was strong now to throw herself into strange countries and dim perils and immeasurable miseries, on the sole chance that she might be of service to him.

A few human souls here and there can love like dogs.  Bebee’s was one.

CHAPTER XXVII.

It was dark.  The May days are short in the north lands of the Scheldt.

She had her little winter cloak of frieze and her wooden shoes and her little white cap with the sunny curls rippling out of it in their pretty rebellion.  She had her little lantern too; and her bundle, and she had put a few fresh eggs in her basket, with some sweet herbs and the palm-sheaf that Father Francis had blessed last Easter; for who could tell, she thought, how ill he might not be, or how poor?

She hardly gave a look to the hut as she ran by its garden gate; all her heart was on in front, in the vague far-off country where he lay sick unto death.

She ran fast through the familiar lanes into the city.  She was not very sure where Paris was, but she had the name clear and firm, and she knew that people were always coming and going thence and thither, so that she had no fear she should not find it.

She went straight to the big, busy, bewildering place in the Leopold quarter where the iron horses fumed every day and night along the iron ways.  She had never been there before, but she knew it was by that great highway that the traffic to Paris was carried on, and she knew that it would carry people also as well.

There were bells clanging, lights flashing, and crowds pushing and shouting, as she ran up—­a little gray figure, with the lantern-spark glimmering like any tiny glow-worm astray in a gas-lit city.