The steps came close to me, moved away, and were still. A sick man’s curiosity soon works, and here, surely, were incalculable matters for me to find out. I turned over suddenly.

It was a fantastic figure that faced me, sitting on a billet of wood not far from the door. Withered herbs were in the high, peaked cap. The black-and-yellow mantle was drawn forward to cover the folded arms. The steely eyes were at my inmost thought.

There is no doubt I was still a sick man. I was unspeakably disappointed. Looking back upon it now, I verily believe that I expected to see Yvonne, as in a fairy tale.

“Why did you come in,” I asked peevishly, twisting under those eyes, “without proclaiming—

“Woe, woe to Acadie the Fair, for the hour of her desolation cometh?”

“It has come,” said he quietly.

143I sat up as if a spring had moved me. My eyes alone questioned.

“Beauséjour has fallen. France is driven back on Louisbourg. The men of Acadie are in chains. The women await what fate they know not. Their homes await the flame.”

Here was no madman speaking.

“And—Yvonne?” I whispered.

“They all are safe, under shelter of the governor—and of Anderson,” he added icily.

I had no more words for a moment. Then I asked—“And the Black Abbé?”

His sane calm disappeared. His face worked; his hands came out from under his cloak, darting like serpents; his eyes veered like pale flame. As suddenly he was calm again.

“He is at Louisbourg,” said he, “at Isle St. Jean—here—there—anywhere; free, busy, still heaping and heating the fires which shall burn his soul alive.”

I like a man who is in earnest; but I could think of nothing appropriate to say. After a pause I changed the subject.

“I am thirsty,” said I, “and hungry too, I think, though I have eaten all the barley bread. And I’m sorry, but I’ve broken the jar.”

From a niche in the wall he at once brought me more barley cake, with butter, and fresh milk, and some dried beef. The wholesome, homely taste 144of them comes back to me now. Having eaten, I felt that nothing could be quite so good as sleep; and with grateful mutterings, half spoken, I slept.

When I woke it was the cold light of early morning that came in at the cave-mouth; and I was alone. I felt so much better that I got up at once; but ere I could reach the door a dizziness came over me, and I staggered back to my place, feeling that my hour was not yet. As I lay fretting my heart with a thousand hot conjectures, my host came in. He looked at me, but said not a word; nor could I get his tongue loosened all through our light breakfast. At last, to my obstinate repetition of the inquiry: “When shall I be strong enough to go down into Grand Pré?” he suddenly awoke and answered:

“A little way to-morrow, perhaps; and the next day, further; and within the week, if you are fortunate, you should be strong enough for anything. You will need to be, if you are going down into Grand Pré!” he added grimly.

Upon this direct telling I think I became in all ways my sane self—weak, indeed, but no longer whimsical. I felt that Gr?l’s promise was much better than I could have hoped. I knew there would be need of all my strength. I was a man again, no more a sick child. And I would wait.

Gr?l busied himself a few minutes about the 145cave, in a practical, every-day fashion that consorted most oddly with his guise and fame. I could not but think of a mad king playing scullion. But there was none of the changing light of madness in his eyes.

Soon he seated himself at the cave-mouth, and said, pointing to a roughly shaped ledge with a wolfskin upon it:

“Come hither, now, and take this good air. It will medicine your thin veins.”

Obeying gladly, I was soon stretched on the wolfskin at the v............