"_Au revoir_, Monsieur. Until to-morrow or the day after." *CHAPTER XXI* *LOVE AND WAR* It was early morning; and Jean Baptiste, before beginning the day’s work, was walking slowly along the path where he had met Gabrielle and Pamphile, thinking of the beauty and joy that he had lost, and trying to reconstruct the pattern of his life out of the broken fragments that were left. His conversation with Michel Gamache had given him renewed hope and courage; but now that his friend and confessor was away, his thoughts went back to the day of calamity, and his feet turned to the path of disappointment and vain regret. It was a lovely path; winding along through the woods in a little glen where the ground was all covered with ferns, the rocks with moss, and the trees with lichen; while a clear stream descended in a series of cascades, filling the air with the sound of falling water--a mournful accompaniment to the sad thoughts of Jean Baptiste. Had Gabrielle been there the music of the stream would have been gay as the morning song of love; but now it was like a dirge; and the lonely glen was as the valley of the shadow of death. Few flowers were there: some white orchids; the green, rank arum with its bitter root; and the pale, dejected Indian pipe, the corpse-plant, smoked in ghostly pow-wows by Indians long since dead. In the spring the baneberry had been in flower; but now only the blood-red berries were left; and where the trillium had bloomed were only withered leaves, and a poisonous, purple fruit. The springtime of love was gone; and the fruition of summer brought nothing but disappointment and despair.