on the night of the storm, from Gabriel
himself.

The young man pined and changed so that
even Rose hardly knew him again, under
this cruel system of domestic excommunication;
under the wearing influence of the
one unchanging doubt which never left him;
and, more than all, under the incessant reproaches
of his own conscience, aroused by
the sense that he was evading a responsibility
which it was his solemn, his immediate duty
to undertake. But no sting of conscience,
no ill-treatment at home, and no self-reproaches
for failing in his duty of confession,
as a good Catholic, were powerful enough in
their influence over Gabriel to make him
disclose the secret, under the oppression of
which his very life was wasting away. He
knew that if he once revealed it, whether
his father was ultimately proved to be guilty
or innocent, there would remain a slur and a
suspicion on the family, and on Rose besides
from her approaching connection with it,
which in their time and in their generation
could never be removed. The reproach of
the world is terrible even in the crowded
city, where many of the dwellers in our
abiding-place are strangers to us—but it
is far more terrible in the country, where
none near us are strangers, where all talk of
us and know of us, where nothing intervenes
between us and the tyranny of the evil tongue.
Gabriel had not courage to face this, and dare
the fearful chance of life-long ignominy—no,
not even to serve the sacred interests of
justice, of atonement, and of truth.

While he still remained prostrated under
the affliction that was wasting his energies of
body and mind, Brittany was visited by a
great public calamity in which all private
misfortunes were overwhelmed for a while.
It was now the time when the ever-gathering
storm of the French Revolution had risen to
its hurricane climax. Those chiefs of the
new republic were now in power, whose last,
worst madness it was to decree the extinction
of religion and the overthrow of everything
that outwardly symbolized it, throughout
the whole of the country that they governed.
Already this decree had been executed to the
letter in and around Paris; and now the
soldiers of the republic were on their way to
Brittany, headed by commanders whose commission
was to root out the Christian religion
in the last and the surest of the strongholds
still left to it in France.

These men began their work in a spirit
worthy of the worst of their superiors who
had sent them to do it. They gutted churches,
they demolished chapels, they overthrew road-side
crosses wherever they found them. The
terrible guillotine devoured human lives in the
villages of Brittany, as it had devoured them
in the streets of Paris; the musket and the
sword, in highway and byeway, wreaked havoc
on the people—even on women and children
kneeling in the act of prayer; the priests
were tracked night and day from one hiding
place where they still offered up worship to
another, and were killed as soon as overtaken
—every atrocity was committed in every
district; but the Christian religion still
spread wider than the widest bloodshed; still
sprang up with ever-renewed vitality from
under the very feet of the men whose vain
fury was powerless to trample it down. Everywhere
the people remained true to their
Faith; everywhere the priests stood firm by
them in their sorest need. The executioners
of the republic had been sent to make
Brittany a country of apostates: they did
their worst, and left it a country of martyrs.

One evening while this frightful persecution
was still raging, Gabriel happened to be
detained unusually late at the cottage of
Rose's father. He had lately spent much of
his time at the farm-house: it was his only
refuge now from that place of suffering, of
silence, and of secret shame, which he had
once called home! Just as he had taken leave
of Rose for the night, and was about to open
the farm-house door, her father stopped him,
and pointed to a chair in the chimney corner.
"Leave us alone, my dear," said the old man
to his daughter; " I want to speak to Gabriel.
You can go to your mother, in the next
room."

The words which Père Bonan—as he was
called by the neighbours—had now to say in
private, were destined to lead to very unexpected
events. After referring to the alteration
which had appeared of late in Gabriel's
manner, the old man began by asking him,
sorrowfully but not suspiciously, whether he
still preserved his old affection for Rose. On
receiving an eager answer in the affirmative,
Père Bonan then referred to the persecution
still raging through the country, and to the
consequent possibility that he, like others of
his countrymen, might yet be called to suffer
and perhaps to die for the cause of his religion.
If this last act of self-sacrifice were
required of him, Rose would be left unprotected,
unless her affianced husband performed
his promise to her, and assumed,
without delay, the position of her lawful
guardian. "Let me know that you will do
this," concluded the old man. "I shall be
resigned to all that may be required of me,
if I can only know that I shall not die
leaving Rose unprotected." Gabriel gave the
promise—gave it with his whole heart. As
he took leave of Père Bonan, the old man
said to him:—

"Come here to-morrow; I shall know
more then, than I know now— I shall be
able to fix with certainty the day for the
fulfilment of your engagement with Rose."

Why did Gabriel hesitate at the farm-house
door, looking back on Père Bonan as though
he would fain say something, and yet not
speaking a word? Why, after he had gone
out and had walked onward several paces,
did he suddenly stop, return quickly to the