keen brightness that told me he was yet unwearied. Nevertheless I cried:-- "Halt, and fall out for breakfast." And with the words I flung myself down by the brook, thrust my burning face into the babbling chill of it, and drank luxuriously. Tamin was beside me in an instant; but Marc slaked his thirst at more leisure, when he had well enjoyed watching our satisfaction. We lay for a little, till the sky was touched here and there with saffron and flying wisps of pink, and we began to see the colour of grass and leaves. Then we made our meal,--a morsel each of the salt hake which I had clung to through our flight, and some bits of Tamin's black bread. This bread was wholesome, as I well knew, and to our hunger it was not unsavoury; but it was of a hardness which the sea-water had scarce availed to mitigate. As we ground hastily upon the meagre fare, I felt, rather than heard, a presence come behind me. I turned my head with a start, and at the same instant heard a high, plangent voice, close beside us, crying slowly:-- "Woe, woe to Acadie the Fair, for the day of her desolation cometh." It was an astonishing figure upon which my eyes fell,--a figure which might have been grotesque, but was not. Instead of laughing, my heart thrilled with a kind of awe. The man was not old,--his frame was erect and strong with manhood; but the long hair hanging about his neck was white, the long beard streaming upon his half-naked breast was white. He wore leathern breeches, and the upper portion of his body was covered only by a cloak of coarse woollen stuff, woven in a staring pattern of black and yellow. On his head was a rimless cap of plaited straw, with a high, pointed crown; and this was stuck full of gaudy flowers and feathers. From the point of the crown rose the stump of what had been, belike, a spray of goldenrod, broken by a hasty journeying through the obstructions of the forest. The man's eyes, of a wild and flaming blue, fixed themselves on mine. In one hand he carried a white stick, with a grotesque carven head, dyed scarlet, which he pointed straight at me. "Do you lie down, like cows that chew the cud, when the wolves are on the trail?" demanded that plangent voice. "It's Grul!" cried Tamin, springing to his feet and thrusting a piece of black bread into the stranger's hand. But the offering was thrust aside, while those wide eyes flamed yet more wildly upon me. "They are on the trail, I tell you!" he repeated. "I hear their feet even now! Go! Run! Fly!" and he stooped, with an ear toward the ground. "But which way should we fly?" I asked, half in doubt whether his warning should be heeded or derided. I could see that neither Marc nor Tamin had any such doubts. They were on the strain to be off, and only awaited my word.