“Thank you very much indeed!” she said, in an undertone. “I don’t know how I should have managed but for your kindness. But really it is very wrong of you to take such trouble about _me_; for I see these other poor things have had to wade through the mud, and their skirts are terrible.” The big red-coat stood gazing at her in open-mouthed adoration, speechless; but a comrade, busy in the boat stowing baggage, answered for him. “That’s all right, miss,” said he. “Don’t you worry about Eph. He’s been carryin’ children all day long, an’ some few women because they was sick. He’s arned the right to carry one woman jest fer her beauty.” In some confusion Yvonne turned away, very fearful of being recognized. She hurriedly squeezed herself down in the stern by Mother Pêche. The old dame’s hand sought hers, furtively, under the cloak. “I went to look for you, mother,” she whispered into the red shawl. “I knew you’d come, poor heart, dear heart!” muttered the old woman, with a swift peering of her strange eyes into the shadow of the girl’s hood. “I waited for you till they _dragged_ me away. But I knew you’d come.” “How did you know that, mother?” whispered Yvonne, delighted to find that this momentous act of hers had seemed to some one just the expected and inevitable thing. “Why, I didn’t know it myself till half an hour ago.” Mother Pêche looked wise and mysterious. “I knew it,” she reiterated. “Why, dear heart, I knew all along you loved him.” And at last, strange as it may appear, this seemed to Yvonne de Lamourie, penniless, going into exile with the companionship of misery, an all-sufficient and all-explicative answer. Chapter XXXI Young Will and Old Wisdom Mother Pêche lived to do good deeds, and loved to think she did them from an ill motive. Her witchcraft, devoutly believed in by herself, and by a good half of Grand Pré as well, was never known to curse, but ever to bless; yet its white magic she called black art. There was no one sick, there was no one sorrowful, there was no child in all Grand Pré, but loved her; yet it was her whim to believe herself feared, and in hourly peril of anathema. Even Father Fafard, whom she affected to deride, but in truth vastly reverenced, found it hard to maintain a proper show of austerity toward this incomprehensible old woman.