and whose families all hoped to secure the riches of Alois in some future
time for their sons, took the hint to give grave looks and cold words to
old Jehan Daas's grandson. No one said anything to him openly, but all the
village agreed together to humor the miller's prejudice, and at the
cottages and farms where Nello and Patrasche called every morning for the
milk for Antwerp, downcast glances and brief phrases replaced to them the
broad smiles and cheerful greetings to which they had been always used. No
one really credited the miller's absurd suspicion, nor the outrageous
accusations born of them, but the people were all very poor and very
ignorant, and the one rich man of the place had pronounced against him.
Nello, in his innocence and his friendlessness, had no strength to stem
the popular tide.

"Thou art very cruel to the lad," the miller's wife dared to say, weeping,
to her lord. "Sure he is an innocent lad and a faithful, and would never
dream of any such wickedness, however sore his heart might be."

But Baas Cogez being an obstinate man, having once said a thing held to it
doggedly, though in his innermost soul he knew well the injustice that he
was committing.

Meanwhile, Nello endured the injury done against him with a certain proud
patience that disdained to complain: he only gave way a little when he was
quite alone with old Patrasche. Besides, he thought, "If it should win!
They will be sorry then, perhaps."

Still, to a boy not quite sixteen, and who had dwelt in one little world
all his short life, and in his childhood had been caressed and applauded
on all sides, it was a hard trial to have the whole of that little world
turn against him for naught. Especially hard in that bleak, snow-bound,