But it is a recorded fact--one vouched for by many eye-witnesses, and who, indeed, would care to doubt it?--that at the very moment that poor Jean Front was put to torment, the pigeons, which up to now had been seen hovering above the trees, gliding through the summer air, their wings outspread, their feathers gleaming in the sunshine--suddenly fell, as if turned back to stone, with vertiginous rapidity into the silent pool which lies hidden in the woods of La Frontenay. And it is equally a fact, vouched for by equally reliable witnesses, that at the precise moment when poor Jean Front's soul fled from his martyred body, a snow-white pigeon flew out of his mouth, and spreading its wings, it, too, flew above the woods of La Frontenay and then fell straight into the pool. So true is this, that the great Abbot and his monks returned to their monastery greatly perturbed, and that within the year the Abbot lay dying, his soul tortured with remorse at the wrong which he had done. So true is it, that ere he died that same holy man made a pilgrimage to Rome, and laid before His Holiness the Pope his testimony of the miracle performed by Jean Front, the sculptor of Villemor; so true, in fact, that the humble artificer became a canonized saint and performed many miracles every whit as marvellous as that of making pigeons which took unto themselves wings on that memorable day in June. But ever after it was averred that all those who were threatened by some dire calamity, by grief or by death, would hear beside the silent pool of La Frontenay the pigeons of St. Front cooing softly from out the depths. It is also averred that if God, in His goodness, purposed to send lasting happiness to tread on the heels of sorrow, the white pigeon would rise from out the pool; it would spread its wings until they gleamed in the sunshine ere it took flight to the empyrean above. CHAPTER VII THE SILENT POOL I The woods were unusually still. Not a sound broke the delicious hush which lay over this summer's morning, when Fernande de Courson made her way stealthily through the tangled undergrowth, avoiding the trodden paths and the clearings, flitting in and out among the trees like some young elf at play. The mischievous light which was scarcely ever wholly absent from her eyes was more apparent to-day than it had ever been before. She was wearing a white dress; her arms and shoulders were bare, and on her way she had gathered an armful of bluebells, there where they grew thickest with long stalks and giant bells, on the fringe of the wood.