He had been shot through the lungs, and his blood, melting the snow, had gathered in a crimson pool beneath him. Here was one grim prophecy fulfilled. Carrying him into the house, I laid him gently on a bed. Then I turned away with a very sorrowful heart; for there was much to do, and the dead are not urgent. Even as I turned, my heart jumped with a new and sickening dread. Xavier stood before me--Xavier, with wild eyes, and face darkly clotted with blood. The next instant he threw himself at my feet. "The child!" he muttered, covering his face. "They have carried him away. They have carried Philip away!" "What do you mean?" I cried, in a voice which my fear made harsh, while at the same time I dragged him to his feet. "Who have carried him away? Who?" But I knew the answer ere he could speak it,--I knew my enemy had seized the chances of the battle and the night. "The Black Abbe," wailed the lad, in a voice of poignant sorrow. "He came in the night, with two Chepody Acadians dressed up like Indians, and seized me asleep, and bound me." "But Philip!" I cried. "Where have they taken him?" And even as I spoke I was planning swiftly. "The Abbe started westward with him," answered Xavier. "From what I heard say, he would go to Pereau; but which way after, I could not find out." "Come!" I ordered roughly, "we must follow them!" But as I spoke I saw the lad totter. I caught him by the arm and held him up, perceiving now for the first time how he was both wounded and utterly spent. "Let us go first to your father," I said more gently, leading him, and putting what curb I could upon the fierceness of my haste. "How did you get here?" I asked him presently. A gleam came into the lad's faint eyes. "The Chepody men stayed till morning," said he, "and then set out on the road toward Piziquid, taking me with them. They thought I was nothing but a boy. As we went, I got my hands loose, so,--and waited. At noon one man went into a house,--and--so!--I was free, and had the other dog by the throat. He make no noise; but he fight hard, and hurt me. I got away, and left him in the snow, and ran back all the way to tell you the Black Abbe--" But here the poor lad's voice failed, and he hung upon me with all his weight. He had fainted, indeed; and now that I thought of his wound, his hunger, his grief, and his prodigious exertions, I wondered not at his swooning. Picking him up in my arms, I carried him to the cottage where the kind damsel had so compassionately tended my own bruises.