Poor soul! My own trouble seemed then as a speck among the stars to hers. I took her hand and held it, saying again, "Do you not know me? Think, Mathilde!" I was not sure that she had ever seen me, to know me, but I thought it possible; for, as a hostage, I had been much noticed in Quebec, and Voban had, no doubt, pointed me out to her. Light leapt from her black eye, and then she said, putting her finger on her lips, "Tell all the lovers to hide. I have seen a hundred Francois Bigots." I looked at her, saying nothing--I knew not what to say. Presently her eye steadied to mine, and her intellect rallied. "You are a prisoner, too," she said; "but they will not kill you: they will keep you till the ring of fire grows in your head, and then you will make your scarlet robe, and go out, but you will never find It--never. God hid first, and then It hides.... It hides, that which you lost--It hides, and you can not find It again. You go hunting, hunting, but you can not find It." My heart was pinched with pain. I understood her. She did not know her lover now at all. If Alixe and her mother at the Manor could but care for her, I thought. But alas! what could I do? It were useless to ask her to go to the Manor; she would not understand. Perhaps there come to the disordered mind flashes of insight, illuminations and divinations, greater than are given to the sane, for she suddenly said in a whisper, touching me with a nervous finger, "I will go and tell her where to hide. They shall not find her. I know the woodpath to the Manor. Hush! she shall own all I have--except the scarlet robe. She showed me where the May-apples grew. Go,"--she pushed me gently away--"go to your prison, and pray to God. But you can not kill Francois Bigot, he is a devil." Then she thrust into my hands a little wooden cross, which she took from many others at her girdle. "If you wear that, the ring of fire will not grow," she said. "I will go by the woodpath, and give her one, too. She shall live with me: I will spread the cedar branches and stir the fire. She shall be safe. Hush! Go, go softly, for their wicked eyes are everywhere, the were-wolves!" She put her fingers on my lips for an instant, and then, turning, stole softly away towards the St. Charles River. Doltaire's mockery brought me back to myself. "So much for the beads of the addled; now for the bowls of sinful man," said he. III THE WAGER AND THE SWORD