72 A DOG OF FLANDERS.

rosy rising of the dawn; and felt
many and many a time the tears of
a strange, nameless pain and joy,
mingled together, fall hotly from the .
bright young eyes upon his own
wrinkled, yellow forehead.

“T should go to my grave quite
content if I thought, Nello, that
when thou growest a man _ thou
couldst own this hut and the little
plot of ground, and labor for thyself,
and be called Baas by thy neighbors,” -
- said the old man Jehan many an hour »
from his bed. For to own a bit of -
soil, and to be called Baas— master .
—by the hamlet round, is to have
achieved the highest ideal of a Flem-
ish peasant ; and the old soldier, who
had wandered over all the earth in