Watching an opportunity, a stalwart youth seized her from behind and pinned her arms.  The next moment he himself was seized as if he were a dog, and hurled into the water.  The new combatant, whose arrival had so effectually changed the aspect of affairs, was the hermit, who followed up his first stroke by another still more decisive.  Springing into the pirate craft, wrenching a weapon from the grasp of the chief of the assailants, he drove before him the three remaining men, terror-struck at his sudden and inexplicable appearance, his superhuman size and strength.  One by one he swept them overboard; then grasping a huge stone, which formed part of the ballast, he dashed it with the full force of his gigantic strength through the planks of the boat, which at once began to fill.  All this was the work of a few moments.  He then leaped into the skiff, which sank as he swiftly transferred to his own vessel its two occupants.

Before another hour was over, Jean, stretched on a pallet, was receiving the attention of loving hands in a cell of the Lihou monastery.

CHAPTER V.

Affliction.

    “The race of Thor and Odin
    Held their battles by my side,
    And the blood of man was mingling
    Warmly with my chilly tide.”

    Danube and the Euxine.—­AYTOUN.

Father Austin received his pupil’s companion with the courtesy due to her distress, but with much misgiving.  After tending his patient, whose situation was critical, he paced thoughtfully towards the cell in which he had placed her, revolving in his mind the difficulties of the case.  His amazement was intense when he slowly opened the door.  The maiden was kneeling, her back towards him; before her was the little picture of the Madonna; she was praying aloud; her words were simple but passionately pathetic; she threw herself and her lover upon the mercy of the Holy Mother with a trust so absolute, a confidence so infinite, that the monk could hardly refrain from tears.  How had he been blinded! as he looked and listened the scales fell from his eyes:  he humbly owned his error.

The noise of his step startled her; she rose and looked at him inquiringly.  “Maiden,” he said, answering her appealing look, “his fate is in the hands of God, whose ears are ever open to the prayers of those that fear Him.”

Often and often had Jean spoken to her of Father Austin; she loved him already, but she had yet to fathom the nobleness of his soul.  His single-heartedness and abnegation of self, his tenderness and quick sympathy (virtues tempering his fierce abhorrence of Paganism), his stern reprobation of the evil, and his yearning for the good, in the untutored barbarians among whom he laboured, were gradually revealed in the discourses which they held daily while Jean lay between life and death.  Reaping and garnering what Jean had sown, he scattered fresh seed, opening out to her the great