82 A DOG OF FLANDERS.

back. “Keep your money and the
portrait both, Baas Cogez,” he said
simply. “ You have been often good
to me.” Then he called Patrasche
to him, and walked away across the
fields,

“T could have seen them with that
franc,’ he murmured to Patrasche,
“but I could not sell her picture —
not even for them.”

Baas Cogez went into his mill-
house sore troubled in his mind.
“That lad must not be so much
with Alois,” he said to his wife that
night. “Trouble may come of it
hereafter: he is fifteen now, and she
is twelve ; and the boy is comely of
face and form.”

“ And he is a good lad, and a loyal,”