"Keep your pity for yourself, Archibald de Lochiel. The family fool has no need of your pity! Keep your pity for yourself and for your friends! Keep it for yourself on that day when, forced to execute a cruel order, you shall tear with your nails that breast that hides a noble and generous heart! Keep it for your friends, Archibald de Lochiel, on that day when you shall set the torch to their peaceful dwellings, that day when the old and feeble, the women and the children, shall flee before you as sheep before the wolf! Keep your pity! You will need it all when you carry in your arms the bleeding body of him you call your brother! I have but one grief at this hour, Archibald de Lochiel, it is that I have no curse to utter against you. Woe! Woe! Woe!" And she disappeared into the forest. "May I be choked by an Englishman," said Uncle Raoul, "if poor silly Marie has not shown herself tonight a sorceress of the approved type, the type which has been celebrated by poets ancient and modern. I wonder what mad weed she has been rubbing against, she who is always so polite and gentle with us." All agreed that they had never heard anything like it before. The rest of the drive was passed in silence; for, though attaching no credence to the witch's words, they could not at once throw off their ominous influence. On their arrival at the manor house, however, where they found a number of friends awaiting them, this little cloud was soon scattered. The joyous laughter of the party could be heard even to the highway, and the echoes of the bluff were kept busy repeating the refrain: "Ramenez vos moutons, bergère, Belle bergère, vos moutons." The dancers had broken one of the chains of their dance, and were running everywhere, one behind the other, around the vast court-yard. They surrounded the chevalier's carriage, the chain reunited, and they began dancing round and round, crying to Mademoiselle D'Haberville, "Descend, fair shepherdess." Blanche sprang lightly out of the carriage. The leader of the dance at once whisked her off, and began to sing: "Hail to the fairest in the land! (Hail to the fairest in the land!) "Now I take you by the hand. (Now I take you by the hand.) I lead you here, I lead you there; Bring back your sheep, O shepherdess fair. Bring back your sheep and with care them keep, Shepherdess fair, bring back your sheep. Bring back, bring back, bring back with care, Bring back your sheep, O shepherdess fair!" After making several more rounds, with the chevalier's carriage in the middle, and all the time singing: "Ramenez, ramenez, ramenez donc, Belle bergère, vos moutons." They at length broke up the chain, and all danced merrily into the house. Uncle Raoul, at last set at liberty by the inexorable dancers, descended as he could from the carriage and hastened to join the party at the supper-table. CHAPTER IX. "THE GOOD GENTLEMAN."