down. He turned to me, looked at me, and said, "It is lucky for you that I caught you up. Otherwise you would have been brought back to the farm between two gensdarmes." As I didn't answer, he said again, "Perhaps you don't know that there are gensdarmes who bring little girls back, when they run away." I said, "I want to go and see Sister Marie-Aimee." "Are you unhappy with us?" he asked. I said again, "I want to go and see Sister Marie-Aimee." He looked as though he didn't understand, and went on asking me questions, going over the names of everybody on the farm, and asking me if they were kind to me. I made the same answer every time. At last he lost patience with me, sat straight up, and said, "What an obstinate child." I looked up at him and said that I should run away again if he would not take me to Sister Marie-Aimee. I went on looking at him, waiting for an answer, and I could see quite well that he didn't know what to say. He kept still, and thought for several minutes. Then he put his hand on my knee and said, "Listen to me, child, and try and understand what I am going to tell you." And when he had finished speaking I understood that he had promised to keep me until I was eighteen without ever letting me go to the town. I understood, too, that the Mother Superior could do what she liked with me, and that if I ran away again she would have me locked up, because I ran about the woods during the night. Then the farmer said that he hoped I should forget the convent and that I should grow fond of him, and of his wife, because they wished me to be happy with them. I was very miserable, and it was all I could do not to cry. "Come," said the farmer holding out his hand. "Let us be good friends, shall we?" I put my hand into his, and he held it rather tight. I said I should like to be friends. He cracked his whip, and we soon got through the wood. Rain was still falling in a fine shower like a fog, and the ploughed fields looked drearier than ever. In a field by the road a man came towards us waving his arms. I thought he was threatening me at first, but when he was quite close to us I saw that he was holding something in his left arm, and that his right arm was moving up and down as though he were working a scythe. I was so puzzled that I looked at Master Silvain. As though he were answering a question, he said, "It is Gaboret, sowing." A few minutes afterwards we got to the farm. The farmer's wife was waiting for us in the doorway. When she saw me she opened her mouth wide as though she had been a long time without breathing, and her serious face looked a little less anxious for a moment. I ran past her, went into the room to fetch my cloak, and went straight out to the pens. The sheep rushed out, tumbling over one another. They ought to have been in the fields a long time before. All day long I thought over what the farmer had said to me. I could not understand why the Mother Superior wanted to prevent me from seeing Sister Marie-Aimee. I understood that Sister Marie-Aimee could do nothing though, and I made my mind up to wait, thinking that a day would come when nobody could prevent me from seeing her again. At