I saw my uncle’s face darken, but he drew on his gauntlets and turned to the door, saying never a word. He found her before him. For a moment he stood looking into her eyes with a gaze that brought the sweat to my forehead. I protest I am no coward, but I could not look in his face--no, not even now--with such calm as hers. But the moment passed. With a swift movement of his hand, he swept her from his path and strode from the house. We heard him leap to saddle and then the clatter of hoofs down the road. The girl stood silent, listening, until the distance swallowed up the sound. “He will not come back,” she said at last, with the air of a prophetess. “The Virgin told me so this morning. He will never come back, and he goes to his death unshriven.” Then she went from the room, while terror still held her hearers palsied. Even yet can I remember the agony of those days, the prayers on our knees before the cross, the straining of eyes down the road. And then, at last, in the gray dawn of the fourth day, came the rush of a single horse’s hoofs, and a rude clatter at the door. I, peeping out my window, saw a man sitting on his horse--such a man!--mud-stained, blood-stained, unkempt, breathless, with livid fear still on his face and in his eyes. I could hear my aunt fumbling at the bar with trembling hands and then the door opened. “Le Moyne is dead,” said the man abruptly, in a terrible voice. “So are all the others but one or two. It was an ambush. We thought we had the coach and good plunder, when out they spurred from front and rear, left and right. We had no chance, curse them! but they paid two for one--aye, four for le Moyne. There was a man!” and with a horrible choking in his throat, he struck spur to flank and pushed on. Well, we lived on in a way--the wood gave us fagots--the earth a little grain--sometimes my snares brought game to table. But what a life for a lusty youth of nineteen, hot with impatience to see the world, yet bound to three women! I loved them, I would not have left them, but how I gnawed my heart out with longing to be gone! We were well off the highway, hidden deep in the woods along the river, else we must have fallen prey to violence ere we did, for that sister of mine had grown into a woman fit to make men mad to look at. But it came at last. I was staggering home one day under a load of fagots from the wood--what disgrace for a le Moyne to gather fagots! Mordieu, it makes me warm even yet to think of! Well, I was staggering home, and cursing my unhappy fate, when of a sudden I heard a woman scream, and knew the voice for my sister’s. I dropped the fagots and ran forward, stooping low to avoid the branches. In a moment I was at the house. Before it were three horses, one of them bestrode by the finest gentleman I had ever seen, the others riderless. Through the open door came the sounds of a struggle. “What is it?” I demanded roughly. “What do you here, Monsieur?” He scarcely deigned me a glance.