"Good night, Monsieur," she said softly, and disappeared. Then going down to the water's side, I threw off my clothes, and took a swift plunge which steadied and refreshed me mightily. Swimming in the misty and murmurous darkness, my venture and my strange fellowship seemed more like a dream to me than ever, and I could scarce believe myself awake. But I was awake enough to feel it when, in stumbling ashore, I scraped my foot painfully on a jagged shell. However, that hurt was soon eased and staunched by holding it for a little under the chill gushing of the brook; after which I dressed myself, gathered a handful of ferns for a pillow, and laid myself down across the opening which led into the thicket. Chapter XIV My Comrade Shoots Excellently Well From a medley of dreams, in which I saw Mizpah binding the Black Abbe with cords of her own hair--tight, tighter, till they ate into his flesh, and I trembled at the look of shaking horror in his face; in which then I saw the child chasing butterflies before the door of the Forge in the Forest, and heard Babin's hammer beating musically on his anvil, till the sound became the chiming of the Angelus over the roofs and walls of Quebec, where Mizpah and I walked hand fast together on the topmost bastion,--from such a fleeting and blending confusion as this, I woke to feel a hand laid softly on my face in the dark. I needed no seeing to tell me whose was the hand, so slim, so cool, so softly firm; and I had much ado to keep my lips from reverently kissing it. "Monsieur, Monsieur," came the whisper, "what is that noise, that voice?" "Pardon me, comrade, for sleeping so soundly," I murmured, sitting up, and taking her hand in mine with a rough freedom of goodwill, as merely to reassure her. "What is it you hear?" But before she could reply, I heard it myself, a strange, chanting cry, slow and plangent, from far out upon the water. Presently I caught the words, and knew the voice. "Woe, woe to Acadie the fair," it came solemnly, "for the day of her desolation draws nigh!" "It is Grul," said I, "passing in his canoe, on some strange errand of his." "Grul? Who is Grul?" she questioned, clinging a little to my hand, and then dropping it suddenly. "A quaint madman of these parts," said I; "and yet I think his madness is in some degree a feigning. He has twice done me inestimable service--once warning us of an immediate peril, and again yesterday, in leading us to the spot where you were held captive. For some reason unknown to me, he has a marvellous kindness for me and mine. But the Black Abbe he hates in deadly fashion--for some ancient and ineffaceable wrong, if the tale tell true." "And he brought you to us?" she murmured, with a sort of stillness in her voice, which caught me strangely. "Yes, Grul did!" said I.