scholars--among the former his eldest son, among the latter two of his
daughters. Listening to his talk, we understood the intelligence of
expression in many faces and the large proportion of young men at the
service of the morning.

In our walks about the village after dinner the schoolmaster took us to
see an ancient woman who in her youth had been a catechumen of Felix
Neff. It is curious to find that term, which was applied by the early
Church to candidates for admission, in use now among the Protestants of
France and Italy. With tears in her eyes and an enthusiasm that made her
speech almost incoherent, the grandame talked of "Monsieur Neff," his
courage, his friendliness, how he went among his people like one of
themselves, and what good words he always spoke. As we left St. Laurent
our host and his wife bore us company to the brow of a little hill
whither we had sent on our chaise, and stood there to wave us an adieu
as we descended on the other side. Then we saw them turn back toward the
group of thatched and moss-grown cottages which was all their world.

That evening we reached Gap, the capital of the department of the High
Alps, and once an important Protestant centre. Farel, the French
Reformer of the sixteenth century, was born and for a time preached
here. But since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes until very
lately--during a period, that is, of nearly two hundred years--no
Protestant pastor has been tolerated in the town, and the once numerous
flock was long since dispersed. A Swiss society undertook two or three
years ago a Protestant mission at Gap, and a friend in Geneva had given
us the name of the present evangelist. A humbler or more thankless
charge could scarcely be imagined than such a work in such a place.
There is no nucleus of hereditary Protestants, as in the
mountain-parishes of the department, and at the same time the little