At any rate he came before they were tired, and with him came a man who was a stranger to them all, except to Jacques Chapeau.  This man was but little, if anything, better dressed than themselves; he looked like one of their own farmers of the better days; certainly from his dress and manner he had no pretensions to be called a gentleman, and yet he walked and talked with Father Jerome as though he were his equal.

“God bless you, my children, God bless you,” said the Cure, in answer to the various greetings he received from his flock.  “Follow me, my children, and we will worship God beneath the canopy of his holy throne,” and then turning to the stranger, he added:  “the next time you visit me at St. Laud’s, M. d’Elbee, we shall, I doubt not, have our church again.  I could now desire the people to force the doors for me, and no one would dare to hinder them; but I have been thrust from my altar and pulpit by a self-constituted vain authority—­but yet by authority; and I will not resume them till I do so by the order of the King or of his servants.”

“I reverence the house of God,” replied M. d’Elbee, “because his spirit has sanctified it; but walls and pillars are not necessary to my worship; a cross beneath a rock is as perfect a church to them who have the will to worship, as though they had above them the towers of Notre Dame, or the dome of St. Peter’s.”

“You are right, my son; it is the heart that God regards; and where that is in earnest, his mercy will dispense with the outward symbols of our religion; but still it is our especial duty to preserve to his use everything which the piety of former ages has sanctified; to part willingly with nothing which appertains in any. way to His church.  The best we have is too little for His glory.  It should be our greatest honour to give to Him; it is through His great mercy that He receives our unworthy offerings.  Come, my children, follow me; our altar is prepared above.”

The priest led the way through a little shaded path at the back of the church; behind a farmhouse and up a slight acclivity, on the side of which the rocks in different places appeared through the green turf, and the crowd followed him at a respectful distance.

“And who is that with Father Jerome—­who is the stranger, M. Chapeau?” said one and another of them, crowding round Jacques—­for it soon got abroad among them, that Jacques Chapeau had seen the stranger in some of his former military movements in La Vendee.  Chapeau was walking beside his mistress, and was not at all sorry of the opportunity of shewing off.

“Who is he, indeed?” said Jacques.  “Can it be that none of you know M. d’Elbee?”

“D’Elbee!—­d’Elbee!—­indeed; no, then, I never heard the name till this moment,” said one.

“Nor I,” said another; “but he must be a good man, or Father Jerome would not walk with him just before performing mass.”

“You are right there, Jean,” said Jacques, “M. d’Elbee is a good man; he has as much religion as though he were a priest himself.”