Halfway between the mill and the town stood a picturesque and scattered
hamlet, and to this hamlet was attached a church, of which a pious
ecclesiastic, by name Father Anselm, had charge. He was a man of much
personal piety, and was greatly beloved through all the countryside,
where he was known in every hut and house for leagues around the doors
of his humble home. He was, as was so frequently the case in those
times, the doctor and the scribe, as well as the spiritual adviser, of
his entire flock; and he was so much trusted and esteemed that all men
told him their affairs and asked advice, not in the confessional alone,
but as one man speaking to another in whom he has strong personal
confidence.

The twin brothers knew that during the years when their dead mother had
resided at the mill with honest Jean and Margot (they began greatly to
wonder now why she had so lived in hiding and obscurity), she had been
constantly visited by the holy Father, and that she had told him things
about herself and her history which were probably known to no other
human being beside. Brought up as the youths had been, and trained in a
measure beneath the kindly eye of the priest, they would in any case
have asked his counsel and blessing before taking any overt step in
life; but all the more did they feel that they must speak to him now,
since he was probably the only person within their reach who could tell
them anything as to their own parentage and history that they did not
know already.

"We will go to him upon the morrow," said Gaston with flashing eyes. "We
will rise with the sun -- or before it -- and go to him ere his day's
work is begun. He will surely find time to talk with us when he hears
the errand upon which we come. I trow now that when he has sat at our