The "Eglise Guillem" in the rocks of the left bank of the Vézère was no inheritance of the robber chief, but had been taken by him and occupied as a stronghold of his own, and none had dared to reclaim it and attempt to dislodge him, till the attack by the peasants that has been recorded. Jean felt that a painful obligation lay on him to see Noémi. Her father had met with a terrible death at the hands of his father, who had played with the wretched man as a cat with a mouse before he had cut the cord and precipitated him to his death. Le Gros Guillem had forfeited every right to command sympathy by his treatment of Ogier--in casting him down the _oubliette_ and then by his treacherous attempt to have him murdered by his two men-at-arms. Nevertheless, he was Noémi's father, and his mangled corpse lay between Jean and her, and across that and the terrible wrongs committed by the dead man and the revengeful execution the hands of Jean and Noémi could never meet. But the word of affiance had been spoken, and spoken solemnly, before many witnesses, and it had been sealed with the giving of a ring. Such a word could not be broken. In popular superstition it bound even beyond the grave. Release could be had only by mutual consent and the restoration of the pledge. Jean rode to La Roque, full of trouble at heart. He loved Noémi, he greatly esteemed her. He saw in her a noble soul struggling to its birth with aspirations after something better than what she had known--gladly would he have taken her to be his, and helped this uncertain, restless, eager spirit to unfold its wings, to break out of its shell, to look up and to soar into a pure atmosphere--but it might not be. The terrible shadow of Le Gros Guillem, the awful story of the past made this impossible. As he was nearing La Roque, he suddenly drew rein--he saw Noémi. She was seated on a mass of brown fallen leaves, and was plucking helebore flowers. Even that act struck Jean to the heart. "She plays with poison--seeks out the noxious, the deadly," he said. He leaped to the ground, and holding the rein of his horse came to her. "Noémi, what are you doing?" "I am making a chaplet for the grave of my father." "Of helebore?" "What else suits? Would you have it of the innocent flower of the field? On such he trampled. They call this the wolf's flower--enfin! It is a flower!" "Noémi, do you know why I have come?" She stood up, holding the half-finished wreath in her hands and looking down. She did not answer, tears filled her eyes and trickled over her cheeks. "Noémi," said he gravely, "you recall that incident by the charcoal-burner's lodge, that moment of terrible danger when the peasants, mad with revenge and success and the blood of the wolves they had killed, would have torn you----" She did not answer. As she raised her hand with the helebore wreath, he saw that the ring was on her finger where he had placed it.