"Oh! It is old, very, very old--my mother used to tell me. It has been sung in Gaul for over five or six hundred years." "And what is its name?" "The chant of Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen." "The chant of Hena!" cried the Vagre and the hermit simultaneously with a tremor of delight. Both grew immediately silent, while Odille, astonished at their visible emotion, looked from the one to the other, and asked: "You also seem to know the chant of Hena?" "Sing it, my child," answered Ronan in a tremulous voice. More and more astonished, little Odille was hardly able to recognize her friend. The dare-devil and merry Vagre had become pensive and grave. "Yes, yes, my child! Recite that chant to us with your sweet voice of fifteen years," put in the hermit. "But not here--the dance and yonder wild carousal, although far enough away, would drown your voice--" "The hermit is right. Come with us, little Odille, to yonder large oak. It will be far enough away from the dancers. It is surrounded by a soft moss carpet. You will be able to sleep there. I shall cover you up with my cloak to protect you from the damp." From the foot of the oak tree where the girl took her seat between Ronan and the hermit, only the dim noise was heard of the giddy dance and songs of Ronan's companions, the Vagres and Vagresses. The moon, now on her decline, shed her silvery rays under the somber verdure of the leaves and lighted the hermit, Ronan and the young slave as if the sun shone through the trees. The child-like voice of Odille was soon heard striking up the first couplet of the chant: "She was young, she was fair, and holy was she; Hena her name, Hena the maid of the Island of Sen." At these words both the hermit and the Vagre lowered their heads, and without noticing the tears that the other was shedding, both wept. Odille sang the second couplet, but broken with the fatigue of the last twenty-four hours, and yielding to the influence of the chant's melancholy rhythm, that so often had lulled and rocked her to sleep on her mother's knees, the little slave's voice became fainter and fainter, while, at the distance the Vagres suddenly struck up in chorus and with resonant voices the refrain of another ancient chant of Gaul. These latter accents sent a new thrill through the frames of Ronan and the hermit. Without wholly drowning Odille's voice, the words reached their ears: "Flow, flow, thou blood of the captive! Drop, drop, thou dew of gore! Germinate, sprout up, thou avenging harvest!"