"Alas for the poor monks!" said the boatman, with an unaffected sigh: "if they did not do much good, they did not do any harm; and we might have had worse people amongst us. That abbey has stood wellnigh four hundred years, they tell me; and it was never touched by lightning until now,--doubtless because they have given it to a lay abbot, and he turns all the revenues to the works of man which were devoted to the works of God. Well, we cannot help the poor souls." And, without further thought of the burning edifice, he plied his oars again, and the boat cut her way smoothly through the glassy waters, leaving long, fiery ripples behind her. Two miles more of hard rowing brought the party to a small farm, where two or three of the same huts of mud, bushes, and reeds appeared close together on the bank; and the rower paused before the largest of the humble edifices, calling, in a loud voice, to persons who might not be without ear-shot but who were certainly not within sight, to inform them that he would not be home till daybreak. "The rain is falling," he said, as if speaking to himself, "but the whole abbey will be down: that is clear." He then rowed on, pursuing for some three hundred yards the larger canal; but at the end of that distance he turned into a very narrow and sinuous channel, where he laid down his oars and propelled the boat solely with the pole. The labor seemed hard, and the progress slow, and Edward took the occasion to ask quietly whither they were going. "To La Caponnière, to-be-sure," replied the man. "Did you not know that?" "No," replied the youth: "Monsieur Brin merely told me that he would procure me a boat at two o'clock to carry us to a place of safety." "Well, here is the boat," answered the man, "and La Caponnière is a place of safety. There are no better people in the world than old Madame Brin and her sons and daughters. They are cousins of his, you know, and by this time they are ready to receive you. She was his cousin before her marriage, you know, and then she married his first-cousin, who left Niort in the time of the troubles; and so they are doubly cousins, you know." But, as Edward did not know any thing about it, he thought it better not to show his ignorance, and resumed his English conversation with Lucette. The voyage--for we cannot call that a journey which was performed at night upon the water--was somewhat long and fatiguing to the boatman; but at length,--it must have been at least four o'clock in the morning,--after turning and twisting, and sometimes grating against the banks, the boat reached a spot where suddenly appeared a small, star-like light from what seemed the window of a better house than any they had yet passed, which, skipping over various indistinct objects, rested more fully on a small skiff at the shore. Some one started up as they approached: their boatman threw him a rope, and they were speedily drawn up to the bank and moored.