As always the little village looked upward and listened, pausing in its humble duties as long as their little bell-mistress remained in her tower.
After the hymn she played "Myn hart is vol verlangen" and "Het Lied der Vlamingen," and ended with the delicate, bewitching little folk-song, "Myn Vryer," by Hasselt.
Then in the red glow of the setting sun the girl laid aside her wooden gloves, rose from the ancient keyboard, wound up the drum, and, her duty done for the evening, came down out of the tower among the transparent evening shadows of the tree-lined village street.
The sun hung over Nivelle hills, which had turned to amethyst. Sunbeams laced the little river in a red net through which old Courtray's quill stemmed the ripples. He still clutched his fishing pole, but his eyes were closed, his chin resting on his chest.
Maryette came silently into the garden and looked at her father—looked at the blond Karl[pg 270] seated on the river wall beside the dozing angler. The blond youth had a box on his knees into which he was intently peering.
The girl came to the river wall and seated herself at her father's feet. The Belgian refugee student had already risen to attention, his heels together, but Maryette signed him to be seated again.
"What have you found now, Karl?" she inquired in a cautiously modulated voice.
"Ah, mademoiselle, fancy! I haff by chance with my cultivator among your potatoes already twenty pupæ of the magnificent moth, Sphinx Atropos, upturned! See! Regard them, mademoiselle! What lucky chance! What fortune for me, an entomologist, this wonderful sphinx moth to discover encased within its chrysalis!"
The girl smiled at his enthusiasm:
"But, Karl, those funny, smooth brown things which resemble little polished evergreen-cones are not rare in my garden. Often, when spading or hoeing among the potato vines, I uncover them."