There was only one other beside Patrasche to whom Nello could talk at all
of his daring fantasies. This other was little Alois, who lived at the old
red mill on the grassy mound, and whose father, the miller, was the
best-to-do husbandman in all the village. Little Alois was only a pretty
baby with soft round, rosy features, made lovely by those sweet dark eyes
that the Spanish rule has left in so many a Flemish face, in testimony of
the Alvan dominion, as Spanish art has left broadsown throughout the
country majestic palaces and stately courts, gilded house-fronts and
sculptured lintels--histories in blazonry and poems in stone.

Little Alois was often with Nello and Patrasche. They played in the
fields, they ran in the snow, they gathered the daisies and bilberries,
they went up to the old gray church together, and they often sat together
by the broad wood-fire in the mill-house. Little Alois, indeed, was the
richest child in the hamlet. She had neither brother nor sister; her blue
serge dress had never a hole in it; at Kermesse she had as many gilded
nuts and Agni Dei in sugar as her hands could hold; and when she went up
for her first communion her flaxen curls were covered with a cap of
richest Mechlin lace, which had been her mother's and her grandmother's
before it came to her. Men spoke already, though she had but twelve years,
of the good wife she would be for their sons to woo and win; but she
herself was a little gay, simple child, in nowise conscious of her
heritage, and she loved no playfellows so well as Jehan Daas's grandson
and his dog.

[Illustration: child]
[Illustration: NELLO DREW THEIR LIKENESS WITH A STICK OF CHARCOAL]
[Illustration: couple walking]

One day her father, Baas Cogez, a good man, but somewhat stern, came on a