"Yes, yes," replied Thérence, hastily. "They have both gone to the upper country. Say what you were going to say." "I don't know if you will comprehend it, you two," resumed Joseph, addressing the girls, "but Tiennet will. When I saw Huriel fight so resolutely my knees gave way under me, and, feeling weaker than any woman, I came near losing consciousness; but at the very moment when my body was giving way my heart grew hot within me, and my eyes never ceased to look at the fight. When Huriel struck the fellow down and remained standing himself, I could have shouted 'Victory!' like a drunken man, if I had not restrained myself; I would have rushed if I could to embrace him. But the impulse was soon gone, and when I got back here I felt as though I had received and given every blow, and as if all the bones in my body were broken." "Don't think any more about it," said Thérence; "it was a horrid thing to see and recollect. I dare say it gave you bad dreams last night." "I did not dream at all," said Joseph; "I lay thinking, and little by little I felt my mind awakened and my body healed, as if the time had come to take up my bed and walk, like the paralytic of the Gospels. I saw Huriel before me, shining with light; he blamed my illness, and declared it was a cowardice of the mind. He seemed to say: 'I am a man, you are a child; you shake with fever while my blood is fire. You are good for nothing, but I am good in all ways, for others and for myself. Come, listen to this music.' And I heard an air muttering like a storm, which raised me in my bed as the wind lifts the fallen leaves. Ah, Brulette, I think I have done with being ill and cowardly; I can go now to my own country and kiss my mother, and make my plans to start,--for start I must, upon a journey; I must see and learn, and make myself what I should be." "You wish to travel?" said Thérence, her face, so lately lighted like a star with pleasure, growing white and cloudy as an autumn moon. "You think to find a better teacher than my father, and better friends than people here? Go and see your mother; that is right, if you are strong enough to go,--unless, indeed, you are deceiving us and longing to die in distant parts--" Grief and displeasure choked her voice. Joseph, who watched her, suddenly changed both his language and his manner. "Never mind what I have been dreaming this morning, Thérence," he said; "I shall never find a better master or better friends. You asked me to tell my dreams, and I did tell them, that is all. When I am cured I shall ask advice of all three of you, and of your father also. Till then pay no attention to what comes into my head; let us be happy for the time that we are together."