Dian had told Marie Josephine that the good Yorkshire farmer had saved Rosanne from men who had tried to abduct her. He had told her at once that Lisle was safe in the hidden cellar and that her mother was in the house of Great-aunt Hortense, but more than this she did not know. She had taken for granted, in her fatigue and excitement, that her mother was quite safe, being in the house of her great-aunt, and as Lisle sat before her alive and well she could not but see that it was all right with him. “When I knew that Jean had really come, had followed me all the way, I was so glad! I can’t tell you how I felt, but it was like flying. We ran on and on through the woods, and we did not seem to be tired at all. We would rest now and then, and once I told a story, but I didn’t dare to stay still for very long, for fear Jean would fall asleep.” Jean blushed at this, and Marie Josephine added hastily: “It was hard for me to keep awake, too, for everything was asleep, even the owls, I think. It was wonderful, wasn’t it, Jean, there in the still night? I’d always wanted to be out in the woods in the middle of the night, not just evening. When early morning came we were at the edge of the forest, and we went right up to the old green mill-inn!” Marie Josephine leaned forward eagerly as she went on, one hand stretched across the table: “The minute I saw the dark woman, I recognized her as the one who waited on us at lunch last summer, but of course I wasn’t a bit frightened because she thought we were just little tramp children. She was just going to tell us to be off when—what do you think?” She paused impressively. “What!” exclaimed Lisle. He was listening eagerly, a bit of color in his cheeks. Dian watched him, wondering if the first Lisle Saint Frère had been like him. Dian, too, was listening with all his heart to everything that Marie Josephine was saying. “Why, all of a sudden, who should appear at the edge of the forest and come running to us but Flambeau!” They all laughed at this statement, but their laughter sounded so odd, echoing through the long, low hollows and arches of the ancient place that they stopped almost as soon as they began, and Marie Josephine went on with her story. She told how the woman suddenly became very friendly and ushered them inside, how she became suspicious of the woman, and how Jean tried the door and found it bolted. “I couldn’t be really sure it was the same woman I’d seen under our oak at Les Vignes, but I was almost sure, and I knew when we found that we were locked in.” They listened breathlessly while she told of the eave’s trough and their escape. “You talk for a while, Jean. Tell them the rest. Jean was so splendid. It was all his idea about the trough and the tree.” Marie Josephine sat back and rubbed her eyes, which smarted a little from the smoke of the fast-dying fire.