I am thy lord, the Earl of Flanders; but at this moment I must hide myself, for my enemies are in pursuit of me; and I will handsomely reward thee for the favor thou showest me." The poor woman knew him well, for she had frequently received alms at his door; and had often seen him pass and repass, when he was going to some amusement, or hunting. She was ready with her answers, in which God assisted the earl: for had she delayed it ever so little they would have found him in conversation with her by the fireside. "My lord, mount this ladder, and get under the bed in which my children sleep." This he did while she employed herself by the fireside with another child in a cradle.

"The Earl of Flanders mounted the ladder as quickly as he could, and, getting between the straw and the coverlid, hid himself, and contracted his body into as little space as possible. He had scarcely done so, when some of the mob of Ghent entered the house; for one of them had said he had seen a man go in there. They found this woman sitting by the fire, nursing her child, of whom they demanded, "Woman, where is the man we saw enter this house, and shut the door after him?" "By my troth," replied she, "I have not seen any one enter here this night; but I have just been at the door to throw out some water, which I then shut after me; besides, I have not any place to hide him in, for you see the whole of this house; here is my bed, and my children sleep overhead." Upon this one of them took a candle, and mounted the ladder, and, thrusting his head into the place, saw nothing but the wretched bed in which the children were asleep. He looked all about him, above and below, and then said to his companions, "Come, come, let us go, we only lose our time here; the poor woman speaks truth: there is not a soul but herself and

her children."

On saying this, they left the house and went into another quarter; and no one afterwards entered it who had bad intentions.

"The Earl of Flanders, hearing all this conversation as he lay hid, you may easily imagine was in the greatest fear of his life. In the morning he could have said he was one of the most powerful princes in Christendom, and that same night he felt himself one of the smallest. One may truly say that the fortunes. of this world are not stable. It was fortunate for him to save his life; and this miraculous escape ought to be to him a remembrance his whole lifetime.""

"Well," said Nathan, rather scornfully, "I don't think much of that earl's courage. A pretty figure he cuts hiding under the poor woman's bed, and changing clothes with his servant. I should think he exposed his servant to all the danger he escaped."

"But what became of the starving people in Ghent?" asked Lucy.

"On the Monday morning,'" Mrs. Bodley read further, "the happy news of the defeat of the earl and his army was brought to Ghent; that their men had not only conquered them, but also the town of Bruges, of which they were now masters. You may guess the joy the people felt who had been so lately in the greatest tribulation; they made many processions to the church to return thanksgivings to God for the mercy he had shown them, and for the victory he had given to their army. Philip van Artevelde and Peter

du Bois considered that when they had quitted Ghent they had left it destitute of all provision, for there was neither corn nor wine in the town; they instantly detached a large party to Damme and Sluys to gain those towns and the provisions which were in them,

in order to supply their fellow-citizens in Ghent. On the detachment arriving at Damme the gates were thrown open, and the town with all in it surrendered. They ordered out of the fine cellars the wines of Poitou, Gascony, and La Rochelle, and from other distant countries, to the amount of six thousand tuns, which they loaded on carriages and sent by land to Ghent, and also by boats on the river Lis. They then marched on to Sluys, which instantly submitted to them and opened its gates. They found there great quantities of casks of corn and flour, in ships and in the storehouses of foreign merchants, and having paid for the whole sent it by land and water to Ghent. Thus was Ghent delivered from famine, through the mercy of God. It could not have happened otherwise, and well ought the Ghent men to remember it; for that God assisted them is very clear, when five thousand famished men defeated forty thousand even before their own doors.'

"I've been waiting patiently," said Phippy, "to hear about great Artevelde scaling the Golden Dragon's nest.'

"The Golden Dragon's nest was the top of the spire upon the Belfry of Bruges. Tradition said that the great copper-gilt dragon, as big as a bull, which surmounted the spire, had been brought from Constantinople in 1204. I don't suppose Philip climbed up."

"Shinned up, mother."

"Scaled, we'll say, the spire to get it down, but it really was carried off to Ghent as a trophy and perched upon the top of their own belfry, where it still is, I believe."

"There was one more time of fighting that the Bruges belfry witnessed," said Ned.

"Yes, in the sixteenth century Charles V. of Spain took the country, and he cut out the tongue of great Roland, the bell which hung

in the Ghent belfry, and cast it to the ground, to humble the Ghentese. Roland had an inscription upon it in Flemish, like this in English.

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"I am Roland; sound I low, there is fire at hand,

But sound I loudly, it means foes in Flemish land.' "'

Well, Aunt Sarah," said Ned, as Froissart was closed and put away, "we might get up a copy of The Belfry of Bruges with footnotes and illustrations."

"I wish we could all some day make foot-notes there," said Nathan," on the spot."

"Nathan, if you make puns," said Ned, "I shall illustrate your remarks with wood-cuts from this rule in my hand."

CHAPTER VI.

IN THE HIGH COUNTRY.

As the summer drew near its end it seemed to gather its heat and send it out more steadily. The grasshoppers hopped up and down as if the earth burned them when they touched it. The Bodleys had ice-cream nearly every day, and would have had it oftener if it had not been necessary to turn the crank of the freezer. Nurse Young seemed to be the only cool person. She went about her work, washing laces and laying them upon the grass to bleach, and would stand out there in the sun looking at them, and turning them as if they were cakes on a griddle iron.

"Aren't you ever hot, Nurse Young?" asked Lucy disconsolately, as she sat on the step of the woodshed.

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Well, no, my dear, except when I sit down and think about it. You see in Newfun'land we never had it very hot, and I suppose I got my bones frozen, like, when I was a little gell, and the sun does them good now."

"Then you were always hearing about Greenland and those cold places. I suppose that cooled you off. I should like to be at the North Pole for just about five minutes."

"You'd want to warm yourself at the Northern Lights," said Nurse Young, good-naturedly. "I rather think the poor men that go wandering round trying to find the Pole would like to warm their hands on the Equator. We always want to be somewhere else, but thanks be to praise, I'm contented. I know a good home when I get it." Lucy got up and walked slowly back into the house, where she got into her little rocking-chair and rocked slowly back and forth. Mrs. Bodley, walking in and out on some household errands, saw her.

"Run and help Nathan string peach-pits," she said, and Lucy rose and walked off to the piazza. Nathan and Phippy had been cracking peach-stones and were stringing the pits on thread. It was quite a little business with the Bodleys; they saved all the peachstones, cracked them, strung the pits, and sold them strung for five cents a hundred, while Mrs. Bodley used them for flavoring blancmange. Her mother watched Lucy as she went out, and fell to thinking. At breakfast the next day her thoughts came out.

"Do you think," she asked, " that we could get packed to-day for a week among the mountains?" The children shouted, and Lucy's eyes brightened. "We will try, at any rate," she went on, " and if we can we will take the train for Alton Bay to-morrow." The rest of the day was a lively one. The children seemed to forget the