lage balls; but, unlike all the maidens of the village, she would accept no lover.
There were those who said that her smiles were all cold smiles, and that her heart was icy. But these were disappointed ones; and had never known of the tears she shed when she thought of her mother, who was gone.
The father, plain peasant that he was, mourned in his heart when he thought how Clothilde was the only maiden of the village who had no lover; and he feared greatly, as the years flew swiftly over him, for the days that were to come, when Clothilde would have none to watch over her, and none to share her cottage home.
But the pensive-eyed Clothilde put on gaiety when she found this mood creeping over her father's thought, and cheered him with the light songs she had learned from the village girls.
Yet her heart was not in the light songs; for she loved to revel in the wild and mysterious tales belonging to the mountain life. Deeper things, and things more dread than came near to the talk or to the thought of the fellow-villagers, wakened the fancy of the pensive-eyed Clothilde. Whether it was some dreamy memory of the lost mother, or daily companionship with the mountains and the glaciers, which she saw from her father's door, certain it was, that her thought went farther and wider than the thoughts of those around her.
Even the doctrines she learned from the humble curé of the village, blended with the wilder action of her fancy; and though she kneeled, as did the father and the good curé, before the image at the altar of the village church, she seemed to see Him plainer in the mountains: and there was a sacredness in the pine woods upon the slope of the hill, and in the voice of the avalanches which fell in the time of spring, which called to her mind a quicker sense of the Divine presence and power, than the church chalices or the rosary.
Now, the father of Clothilde had large flocks, for a village peasant. Fifty of his kids fed upon the herbage which grew on the mountain ledges; and half a score of dun cows came every night to his châlet, from the pasture-grounds which were watered by the spray of the Dust-Fall.
Many of the young villagers would have gladly won Clothilde to
