Gaspard had never been hard to Rénée—never. He had been to Turin learning his trade, a carpenter he was, and the best carpenter, as Rénée proudly said, in all the commune. He was away for years, for such delicate work as his is not learned in a hurry, and on his return he found the child Rénée grown into a fair and gracious maiden, the realisation of the dreams which had haunted his young manhood.

And so he loved her, and wooed her, and won her; learning from her gentleness to unbend his sternness, teaching her girlish heart to be staunch and earnest.

They had built and plenished their future home in the simple fashion of the valley folk. Rénée was already stitching at the wedding gear, and Madeleine Botta had proudly piled the homespun linen which was to be her marriage gift to the girl who was already as her dear daughter.

And then—

But the tale is dark in the telling. One must go back some way in Europe’s history to understand how such deeds came to be done, how such devastation fell ever and again on the devoted people of the Vaudois valleys.

RORA.

CHAPTER II.

THERE are sad pages in all histories: there are tales in every land the telling of which must awaken deep feelings of horror. Man’s inhumanity to man has always been the dark stain upon God’s earth.

But no cruelties of the ancient days—not even the ghastly enormities of Nero or the evil deeds of the ‘dark ages’—can exceed the terror and trouble, the fiendish works, the rage and oppression which have reigned in the Vaudois valleys.

From primitive times those valleys in the Savoy Alps have been the refuge of Christians who only asked to be allowed to live, harmless and insignificant, tending their mulberry trees, their vineyards and their corn; with liberty to serve God according to the simple faith which had been handed down to them from their fathers. They had books which they greatly prized,—portions of God’s Word, poems, commentaries, and their own Noble Lesson. This celebrated book was written or compiled about the year 1100, in the Romance language,—and in this language they also possessed the text of the Psalms and several books of the Old and New Testaments.

They themselves declared that it was the persecutions of the Roman emperors which had driven the first Christian settlers to the valleys; and if it were so the little Church, born of persecution and nourished by martyrdom, had learned from the first to endure all things as good soldiers of its Master, Christ.

From the earliest times there have always been faithful hearts humbly following the steps of the Lord, seeking, above earthly wealth and weal, to know and to do God’s will. And such there will ever be until the Master comes again. Evil may seem triumphant, and pride and arrogance lift prosperous fronts, but the Lord knoweth them that are His, and there shall never lack a remnant to watch and wait for Him.

It is not needful to trace in this story the growth of the pomp and power of the Bishop of Rome, nor to tell at length how the ‘successor’ of St. Peter ceased to be either humble or faithful. The Empire of the West had crumbled away, the ancient seat of the Cæsars was empty, and gradually the bishop became the most important person in the city, claiming one thread of power after another until the ‘Sovereign Pontiff’ asserted rule and right over the length and breadth of Christendom.

It was strange that such pretensions could be based on the Gospel of Him who took on Himself the form of a servant, and whose first words of teaching were a blessing on the ‘poor in spirit.’ Perhaps it was partly a dim consciousness of this that made pope and cardinals wish the people not to read the writings of the apostles and the words of the Lord.

But reading in those days was no easy matter.

Books were scarce and costly. Learning was difficult. The bulk of the people only heard God’s Word through the mouths of those whose gain it was to suppress and distort its simple teaching. Men and women lived and died believing that pope and priest could forgive sins and wipe off all offences, and that a handful of gold pieces could purchase their entrance into paradise.

It was through these dark days that the Light of the Truth burned clear in the hearts and homes of the simple race dwelling on the confines of Savoy, where the frontier lines of Switzerland and France met on the white-hill peaks. And this race it was, this ‘nest of heretics,’ that the Roman power resolved to crush and kill.

The first persecution that was regularly organised to destroy them root and branch took place at the end of the twelfth century. In addition to those slain outright, the number of those carried into captivity was so great that the Archbishop of Avignon declared that he had ‘so many prisoners it is impossible not only to defray the charge of their nourishment, but to get enough lime and stone to build prisons for them.’

From this time onwards the history of valleys is one long tale of persecution. The intervals when ‘the churches had rest, and were edified,’ were so short that the accounts of suffering and martyrdom must have been handed down verbally from father to son. Thirty-two invasions were endured, invasions of troops filled with the remorseless rage of religious fanaticism.

But it was in the year 1650 that the bitterest storm broke over them. It was a time of extraordinary ‘religious’ feeling, and councils were established in Turin and other cities, having for their object the spread of the Romish faith and the utter extirpation of heretics. The plan on which they worked was just the old barbarous way of force and fire, and the worst weapon of all, treachery.

Once again the Vaudois fled before the soldiers hired to butcher them. The caves and dens of the rocks, the mountain passes filled with snows that April suns had no power to melt, the natural fastnesses and citadels of the hills—these were the places to which the villagers escaped. And as they went they were lighted by the blaze of their burning homesteads, and followed by the shrieks and groans of the weak and their helpless defenders, whom the ruthless murderers overtook, tortured and slew.

It was then that Janavel of Rora came to the front. He had but six men with him when he first made a stand on the heights above Villaro, where the mountain track leads over the Collina di Rabbi to Rora. He lay in ambush, resolved to do what he could to stop the foreign soldiers from ravaging his home, and in his desperate mood he had no thought save to sell his life as dearly as he could: what could seven men do against hundreds?

But in that narrow place seven men could do much. The simultaneous discharge of their muskets threw the soldiers into confusion. No enemy was to be seen; the troops could not be sure that those rocks and trees did not shelter scores of Vaudois. They faltered, then fell back.

Again the musket-balls came crashing from the hill-side. It was more than hired courage could stand! The troops of Savoy turned and fled, leaving sixty or seventy of their number dead on the ground.

They fled only to return. The next day six hundred picked men ascended the mountain by the Cassutee, a wider, more practicable path. But here also Janavel was ready for them. He had now gathered eighteen herdsmen, some