Father Robineau had stopped the mill because its noise might cover attacks. As the milder ungeared his primitive machinery, he had thought of saving water in the flume-chamber. There were wires and chains for shutting off its escape. He now opened a door in the humid wall and put his candle over the clear, dark water. The flume no longer furnished a supply, and he stared open-lipped, wondering if the enemy had meddled with his water-gate in the upland. The flume, at that time the most ambitious wooden channel on the north shore, supported on high stilts of timber, dripped all the way from a hill stream to the fourth story of Petit Cap mill. The miller had watched it escape burning thatches, yet something had happened at the dam. Shreds of moss, half floating and half moored, reminded him to close the reservoir, and he had just moved the chains when La Vigne startled him by speaking at his ear. The miller recoiled, but almost in the action his face recovered itself. He wore a gray wool night-cap, and its tassel hung down over one lifted eyebrow. "Pierre Sandeau, my friend," opened La Vigne with a whimper, "I followed you up here to weep with you." "You did well," replied the miller bluntly, "for I am a ruined man with the parish to feed, unless the Seminaire fathers take pity on me." "Yes, you have lost more than all of us," said La Vigne. "I am not the man to measure losses and exult over my neighbors," declared the miller; "but how many pigs would you give to your girl's dower now, Guillaume?" "None at all, my poor Pierre. At least she is not a widow." "Nor ever likely to be now, since she has no dower to make her a wife." "How could she be a wife without a husband? Taunt me no more about that pig. I tell you it is worse with you: you have no son." "What do you mean? I have half a dozen." "But Laurent is shot." "Laurent--shot?" whispered the miller, relaxing his flabby face, and letting the candle sink downward until it spread their shadows on the floor. "Yes, my friend," whimpered La Vigne. "I saw him through my window when the alarm was given. He was doubtless coming to save us all, for an officer was with him. Jules Martin's thatch was just fired. It was bright as sunrise against the hill, and the English saw our Laurent and his officer, no doubt, for they shot them down, and I saw it through my back window." The miller sunk to his knees, and set the candle on the floor; La Vigne approached and mingled night-cap tassels and groans with him. "Oh, my son! And I quarreled with thee, Guillaume, about a pig, and made the children unhappy." "But I was to blame for that, Pierre," wept La Vigne, "and now we have neither pig nor son!" "Perhaps Montgomery's men have scalped him;" the miller pulled the night-cap from his own head and threw it on the floor in helpless wretchedness.