“Oh! Oh!” cried the little Odette, the tears rolling down her cheeks, “the Holy Mother is in pain,” and stooping down, she timidly kissed the sobbing woman at her feet. Then as the woman uncovered her face with her hands, Odette sprang back with a startled scream. There, on the grass, amongst the pale-hued daisies, lay a woman with painted cheeks and flaming hair; a terrible expression was in her eyes. [Illustration: BOIS-FLEUR] “Who are you? What do you want?” she asked Odette brutally; and Odette, afraid and trembling, began to sob, hiding her face in her hands so as not to see the dreadful eyes of the woman at her feet. She felt the woman staring at her, though she did not dare look, then suddenly she heard a laugh, a laugh that froze her blood. “Why, you have no shoes or stockings,” said the woman, in a frenzy of mad laughter. “What are you doing here in your nightgown on the high roads? You’ve begun early, my dear!” And she rocked herself to and fro, laughing, laughing, laughing, and then suddenly her laughter turned to tears. All her poor thin body shook with terrible sobs; it seemed as if her very heart was breaking. Odette uncovered her eyes and looked at this shattered wreck of a human soul, and an immense unaccountable pity seized her, for suddenly she bent down and kissed the woman on her burning lips. The woman’s sobs grew quieter, as she felt Odette’s pure cool mouth upon her fevered face. “Who are you?” she kept asking her, “Who are you?” And Odette in her baby voice whispered back, “The Holy Virgin has sent me, in order to make you well!” Presently the woman calmed herself, and sat staring at the shining river, as though she had quite forgotten that Odette was beside her. “Tell me what is the matter,” Odette said at length, “and I will try to help you.” The woman looked at her kindly: “How should you understand what is the matter?” she said, “You, who have lived always with good people, far away from the temptations of the world, what have you to do with the likes of us?” “I do not understand,” said Odette, looking at the woman with great questioning eyes. “And may you never understand, little one,” said the woman, kissing her. “When I was but a wee mite I heard the preaching folk tell of God and the Angels. You must be one of them, I think?” “Oh! no, Oh! no,” said Odette, “I am not an angel, but I have been sent by the Queen of Heaven to save you here to-night.” The woman looked at her curiously. “You came only just in time,” she said, and again her eyes strayed towards the river. “Let me give you this silver cross,” Odette said, changing it from her own neck to the woman’s. “Keep it always, for it is holy, and is a sign that Jesus came into the world to die for us.” The woman took the cross into her hands, and seemed to weigh it. “Is it really silver?” she asked.