“Bravo; we’ve got it!” exclaimed Pere Theotime.

“Bravo!” repeated the young people, as much exhilarated with the open air as with the two or three glasses of white wine they had drunk.  Lads and lasses joined hands and leaped impetuously around the furnace.

“A song, Reine!  Sing us a song!” cried the young girls.

She stood at the foot of the ladder, and, without further solicitation, intoned, in her clear and sympathetic voice, a popular song, with a rhythmical refrain: 

          My father bid me
          Go sell my wheat. 
          To the market we drove
          “Good-morrow, my sweet! 
          How much, can you say,
          Will its value prove?”

          The embroidered rose
          Lies on my glove.

          “A hundred francs
          Will its value prove.” 
          “When you sell your wheat,
          Do you sell your love?”

          The embroidered rose
          Lies on my glove!

          “My heart, Monsieur,
          Will never rove,
          I have promised it
          To my own true love.”

          The embroidered rose
          Lies on my glove.

          “For me he braves
          The wind and the rain;
          For me he weaves
          A silver chain.”

          On my ’broidered glove. 
          Lies the rose again.

Repeating the refrain in chorus, boys and girls danced and leaped in the sunlight.  Julien leaned against the trunk of a tree, listening to the sonorous voice of Reine, and could not take his eyes off the singer.  When she had ended her song, Reine turned in another direction; but the dancers had got into the spirit of it and could not stand still; one of the men came forward, and started another popular air, which all the rest repeated in unison: 

          Up in the woods
          Sleeps the fairy to-day: 
          The king, her lover,
          Has strolled that way! 
          Will those who are young
          Be married or nay? 
          Yea, yea!

Carried away by the rhythm, and the pleasure of treading the soft grass under their feet, the dancers quickened their pace.  The chain of young folks disconnected for a moment, was reformed, and twisted in and out among the trees; sometimes in light, sometimes in shadow, until they disappeared, singing, into the very heart of the forest.  With the exception of Pere Theotime and his wife, who had gone to superintend the furnace, all the guests, including Claudet, had joined the gay throng.  Reine and Julien, the only ones remaining behind, stood in the shade near the borderline of the forest.  It was high noon, and the sun’s rays, shooting perpendicularly down, made the shade desirable.  Reine proposed to her companion to enter the hut and rest, while waiting for the return of the dancers.  Julien accepted readily; but not