stamina of his seemingly frail body. Tollemache, who affected gray tweed, a French gray silk tie, gray woolen stockings, and brown brogues, looked what he was, a healthy young athlete who would be equally at home on springy heather whether carrying an easel or a gun.

Tollemache had caught Mère Pitou's arm when she announced the message of the bell.

"One more outburst like that, my fairy, and we'll have to carry you up the remainder of the hill," he grinned.

"Mon Dieu! but I'm glad I made the best part of the pilgrimage in a train and a carriage!" twittered Madame. "Yet, though I dropped, I had to warn the little ones that the dear saint knew they were coming to her shrine."

"Is that what it means?"

"What else? A pity you are not a good Catholic, Monsieur Tollemache, or you might be granted a favor today."

"Oh, come now! That's no way to convert a black Presbyterian. Tell me that Sainte Barbe will get my next picture crowned by the Academy, and I'll fall on my knees with fervor."

"Tcha! Even a saint cannot obtain what Heaven does not allow."

Ingersoll laughed. "Mère Pitou may lose her breath; but she never loses her wit," he said. "Now I put forward a much more modest request. Most excellent Sainte Barbe, send me some mad dealer who will empty my studio at a thousand francs a canvas!"

Yvonne heard these words; yet, be it noted, she asked the saint to make her father happy, not prosperous. It was then that the bell rang a second time.

"Tiens!" exclaimed Madame Pitou. "The saint replies!"

"Like every magician, you achieve your effect by the simplest of contrivances—when one peeps behind the scenes," said Ingersoll. "Old Père Jean, custodian of the chapel, who will meet us at the summit, keeps a boy on guard, so that all good pilgrims may be put in the right frame of mind by hearing the bell accidentally. The boy saw our girls first, and then spied us. Hence the double tolling. Now, Madame, crush me! I can see lightning in your eye."

"Mark my words, Monsieur Ingersoll, the saint will send that dealer, and he will certainly be mad, since none but a lunatic would pay a thousand francs for any picture of yours."

Ingersoll seized her free arm. "Run her up, for Heaven's sake, Tollemache!" he cried in English. "Her tongue has scarified me every day for eighteen years, and age cannot wither, nor custom stale, its infinite variety."

Laughing, struggling, crying brokenly that ces Américains would be the death of her, and tripping along the while with surprising lightness of foot,—for Mère Pitou had been noted as the best dancer of the gavotte at any pardon held within a radius of ten miles of Pont Aven,—she was hurried to the waiting girls.

"Ah, that rascal of a father of yours!" she wheezed to Yvonne, relapsing into the Breton language, as was her invariable habit when excited, either in anger or mirth. "And this other overgrown imp! When they're beaten in argument they try to kill me. Gars! A nice lot I'm bringing to the holy chapel!"

"Never mind, chère maman," said the girl, taking her father's place, and clasping the plump arm affectionately. "When we descend the other side of the hill you'll have them at your mercy. Then you can tell them what you really think of them."

"They know now. Artists, indeed! Acrobats, I call them! Making sport of a poor old woman! Not that I'm astonished at anything Monsieur Ingersoll does. Everybody admits that he is touched here," and she dabbed a fat finger at her glistening forehead, "or he wouldn't bury himself alive in a Brittany village, because he really has talent. But that hulking Monsieur Tollemache ought to be showing off his agility before you girls instead of lugging me up