All this had come and gone as it were in a dream, and it seemed to me that I yet panted from my long race. I had seen nothing, meanwhile, of the Black Abbé or of his painted pack. Spies, however, he had doubtless in plenty among those gaping onlookers; and his devilish work yet lighted me effectually on my way across the wet fields. The glow was like great patches of blood upon the apple-trees, where the masses of bloom fairly fronted the light. The hedgerow thickets took on a ruddy bronze, a sparkle here and there as a wet leaf set the unwonted rays rebounding. The shadows were sharply black, and strangely misleading when they found themselves at odds with those cast by the moon. The scene, as I hastened over the quiet back lots, was like the unreal phantasmagoria of a dream. I found myself playing with the idea that it all was a dream, from my meeting with old Mother Pêche here—yes, in this very field—the 106night before to the present breathless haste and wild surmising. Then the whole bitter reality seemed to topple over, and fall upon me and crush me down. Not only was Yvonne pledged to another, but through grossest over-confidence I had failed her in her need, and worst of all, the thought that made my heart beat shakingly, she believed me a traitor. It forced a groan to my lips, but I ran on, and presently emerged upon the lane a few paces from Father Fafard’s gate.
As I turned in the good priest came and stood in the doorway, peering down the lane with anxious eyes. Seeing me, he sprang forward and began to speak, but I interrupted him, crying:
“Are they here? I must see them.”
“They will not see you, Paul. They would curse you and shut their ears. They believe you did it.”
“But you, father, you,” I pleaded, “can undeceive them. Come with me.” And I grasped him vehemently by the arm.
But he shook me off, with a sort of anxious impatience.
“Of course, Paul, I know you did not do it. I know you, as she would, too, if she loved you,” he cried, in a voice made high and thin by excitement. “I will tell them you are true. But—where is Yvonne?” And he pushed past me to the gate, where he paused irresolutely.
107“Don’t tell me she is not with you!” I cried.
“She ran out a minute ago, not telling us what she was going to do,” he answered.
“But what for? What made her? She must have had some reason! What was it?” I demanded, becoming cold and stern as I noted how his nerves were shaken.
He collected himself with a visible effort, and then looked at me with a kind of slow pity.
“I had but now come in,” said he, “and thoughtlessly I told Madame a word just caught in the crowd. You know that evil savage, Etienne le Batard. Or you don’t, I see; but he’s the red right-hand of La Garne, and it was he executed yonder outrage. As he was leading his cut-throats away in haste, plainly upon another malignant enterprise, I heard him tell one of my parishioners what he would do. The man is suspected of a leaning to the English; and the savage said to him with significance:
“I go now to Kenneticook, to the yellow-haired English Anderson. Neither he nor his house will see another sun.
“I had thought perhaps you were right, Paul, and that Yvonne had promised herself to the Englishman more in esteem than love; but she cried out, with a piteous, shaken voice, that he must be warned—that some one must go to him and save him. With that she rushed from the 108house, and we have not seen her since. But stay—what have you said or done to her, Paul? Now that I see her face again, I see remorse in it. What have you done to her?”
I made no answer to this sharp question, it being irrelevant and my haste urgent. But I demanded:
“Where could she go for help?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, “unless, perhaps, to the landing.”
“The tide is pretty low,” said I, pondering, “but the wind serves well enough for the Piziquid mouth. Where do you suppose the savages left their canoes?”
“Oh,” said he positively, “well up on the Piziquid shore, without doubt. They came over on the upper trail, and they must be now hurrying back the same way. They c............