"I have told all to Monsieur le Cure," I said.

"_Bon!_" ejaculated Jean. Monsieur le Cure is gone to England; it is necessary to wait till his return, Monsieur Englishman."

"Fool!" said Richard in a passion, "she is my wife, I tell you."

"_Bon!_" he replied phlegmatically, "but it is my affair to protect madame. There is no resource but to wait till Monsieur le Cure returns from his voyage. If madame does not say, 'This is my husband,' how can I believe you? She says, 'He is my enemy.' I cannot confide madame to a stranger."

"I will not leave her," he exclaimed with an oath, spoken in English, which Jean could not understand.

"Good! very good! Pardon, monsieur," responded Jean, laying his iron fingers upon the hand that held me, and loosening its grip as easily as if it had been the hand of a child.--"_Voila_! madame, you are free.

Leave Monsieur the Englishman to me, and go away into the house, if you please."

I did not wait to hear any further altercation, but fled as quickly as I could into the presbytery. Up into my own chamber I ran, drew a heavy chest against the door, and fell down trembling and nerveless upon the floor beside it.

But there was no time to lose in womanish terrors; my difficulty and danger were too great. The cure was gone, and would be away at least a fortnight. How did I know what French law might do with me, in that time? I dragged myself to the window, and, with my face just above the sill, looked down the street, to see if my husband were in sight. He was nowhere to be seen, but loitering at one of the doors was the letter-carrier, whose daily work it was to meet the afternoon omnibus returning from Noireau to Granville. Why should I not write to Tardif?

He had promised to come to my help whenever and wherever I might summon him. I ran down to Mademoiselle Therese for the materials for a letter, and in a few minutes it was written, and on the way to Sark.

I was still watching intently from my own casement, when I saw Richard Foster come round the corner of the church, and turn down the street.

Many of the women were at their doors, and he stopped to speak to first one and then another. I guessed what he wanted. There was no inn in the valley, and he was trying to hire a lodging for the night. But Jean was following him closely, and from every house he was turned away, baffled and disappointed. He looked weary and bent, and he leaned heavily upon the strong stick he carried. At last he passed slowly out of sight, and once more I could breathe freely.

But I could not bring myself to venture downstairs, where the uncurtained windows were level with the court, and the unfastened door opened to my hand. The night fell while I was still alone, unnerved by the terror I had undergone. Here and there a light glimmered in a lattice-window, but a deep silence reigned, with no other sound than the brilliant song of a nightingale amid the trees which girdled the village. Suddenly there was the noisy rattle of wheels over the rough pavement--the baying of dogs--an indistinct shout from the few men who were still smoking their pipes under the broad eaves of their houses. A horrible dread took hold of me. Was it possible that he returned, with some force--I knew not what--which should drag me away from my refuge, and give me up to him? What would Jean and the villagers do? What could they do against a body of _gendarmes_?

I gazed shrinkingly into the darkness. The conveyance looked, as far as I could make out of its shape, very like the _char-a-banc_, which was not to return from Noireau till the next day. But there was only the gleam of the lantern it carried on a pole rising above its roof, and throwing crossbeams of light upon the walls and windows on each side of the street. It came on rapidly, and passed quickly out of my sight round the angle of the presbytery. My heart scarcely beat, and my ear was strained to catch every sound in the house below.

I heard hurried footsteps and joyous voices. A minute or two afterward, Minima beat against my barricaded door, and shouted gleefully through the key-hole:

"Come down in a minute, Aunt Nelly," she cried; "Monsieur Laurentie is come home again!"

CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.

PIERRE'S SECRET.

I felt as if some strong hand had lifted me out of a whirl of troubled waters, and set me safely upon a rock. I ran down into the _salon_, where Monsieur Laurentie was seated, as tranquilly as if he had never been away, in his high-backed arm-chair, smiling quietly at Minima's gambols of delight, which ended in her sitting down on a _tabouret_ at his feet. Jean stood just within the door, his hands behind his back, holding his white cotton cap in them: he had been making his report of the day's events. Monsieur held out his hand to me, and I ran to him, caught it in both of mine, bent down my face upon it, and burst into a passion of weeping, in spite of myself.

"Come, come, madame!" he said, his own voice faltering a little, "I am here, my child; behold me! There is no place for fear now. I am king in Ville-en-bois.--Is it not so, my good Jean?"

"Monsieur le Cure, you are emperor," replied Jean.

"If that is the case," he continued, "madame is perfectly secure in my castle. You do not ask me what brings me back again so soon. But I will tell you, madame. At Noireau, the proprietor of the omnibus to Granville told me that an Englishman had gone that morning to visit my little parish. Good! We do not have that honor every day. I ask him to have the goodness to tell me the Englishman's name. It is written in the book at the bureau. Monsieur Fostere. I remember that name well, very well. That is the name of the husband of my little English daughter. Fostere! I see in a moment it will not do to proceed, on my voyage. But I find that my good Jacques has taken on the _char-a-banc_ a league or two beyond Noireau, and I am compelled to await his return. There is the reason that I return so late."

"O monsieur!" I exclaimed, "how good you are--"

"Pardon, madame," he interrupted, "let me hear the end of Jean's history."

Jean continued his report in his usual phlegmatic tone, and concluded with the assurance that he had seen the Englishman safe out of the village, and returning by the road he came.

"I could have wished," said the cure, regretfully, "that we might have shown him some hospitality in Ville-en-bois; but you did what was very good, Jean. Yet we did not encounter any stranger along the route."

"Not possible, monsieur," replied Jean; "it was four o'clock when he returned on his steps, and it is now after nine. He would pass the Calvary before six. After that, Monsieur le Cure, he might take any route which pleased him."

"That is true, Jean," he said, mildly; "you have done well. You may go now. Where is Monsieur the Vicaire?"

"He sleeps, monsieur, in the guest's chamber, as usual."

"_Bien_! Good-evening, Jean, and a good-night."

"Good-night, Monsieur le Cure, and all the company," said Jean.

"And you also, my child," continued Monsieur Laurentie, when Jean was gone, "you have great need of rest. So has this baby, who is very sleepy."

"I am not sleepy," protested Minima, "and I am not a baby."

"You are a baby," said the cure, laughing, "to make such rejoicing over an old papa like me. But go now, my children. There is no danger for you. Sleep well and have pleasant dreams."

I slept well, but I had no pleasant dreams, for I did not dream at all.

The cure's return, and his presence under the same roof, gave me such a sense of security as was favorable to profound, unbroken slumber. When the chirping of the birds awoke me in the morning, I could not at first believe that the events of the day before were not themselves a dream.

The bell rang for matins at five o'clock now, to give the laborers the cool of the morning for their work in the fields, after they were over.

I could not sleep again, for the coming hours must be full of suspense and agitation to me. So at the first toll of the deep-toned bell, I dressed myself, and went out into the dewy freshness of the new day.

Matins were ended, and the villagers were scattered about their farms and households, when I noticed Pierre loitering stealthily about the presbytery, as if anxious not to be seen. He made me a sign as soon as he caught my eye, to follow him out of sight, round the corner of the church. It was a mysterious sign, and I obeyed it quickly.

"I know a secret, madame," he said, in a troubled tone, and with an apprehensive air--"that monsieur who came yesterday has not left the valley. My father bade me stay in the church, at my work; but I could not, madame, I could not. Not possible, you know. I wished to see your enemy again. I shall have to confess it to Monsieur le Cure, and he will give me a penance, perhaps a very great penance. But it was not possible to rest tranquil, not at all. I followed monsieur, your enemy, _a la derobee_. He did not go far away."

"But where is he, then?" I asked, looking down the street, with a thrill of fear.

"Madame," whispered Pierre, "he is a stranger to this place, and the people would not receive him into their houses--not one of them. My father only said, 'He is an enemy to our dear English madame,' and all the women turned the back upon him. I stole after him, you know, behind the trees and the hedges. He marched very slowly, like a man very weary, down the road, till he came in sight of the factory of the late Pineaux.

He turned aside into the court there. I saw him knock at the door of the house, try to lift the latch, and peep through the windows. Bien! After that, he goes into the factory; there is a door from it into the house.

He passed through. I dared not follow him, but in one short half-hour I saw smoke coming out of the chimney. Bon! The smoke is there again this morning. The Englishman has sojourned there all the night."

"But, Pierre," I said, shivering, though the sun was already shining hotly--"Pierre, the house is like a lazaretto. No one has been in it since Mademoiselle Pineau died. Monsieur le Cure locked it up, and brought away the key."

"That is true, madame," answered the boy; "no one in the village would go near the accursed place; but I never thought of that. Perhaps monsieur your enemy will take the fever, and perish."

"Run, Pierre, run," I cried; "Monsieur Laurentie is in the sacristy, with the strange vicaire. Tell him I must speak to him this very moment.

There is no time to be lost."

I dragged myself to the seat under the sycamore-tree, and hid my face in my hands, while shudder after shudder quivered through me. I seemed to be watching him again, as he strode weariedly down the street, leaning, with bent shoulders, on his stick, and turned away from every door at which he asked for rest and shelter for the night. Oh! that the time could but come back again, that I might send Jean to find some safe place for him where he could sleep! Back to my memory rushed the old days, when he screened me from the unkindness of my step-mother, and when he seemed to love me. For the sake of those times, would to God the evening that was gone, and the sultry, breathless night, could only come back again!

CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH.

SUSPENSE.