Stooping toward the foot of the hill, Mr. Roquevillard followed this struggle. And all at once his whole being started. With the darkness the shades were mounting, all the shades. They had left La Vigie, they were coming. Just now he had seen them gathered there in the valley’s depths. They were bringing him their presences, their help and testimony. There were some of them on all the hillsides. It was as if an army were rallying round their chief as he stood there at the foot of the old oak. And when all the army was assembled, he could hear it heralding a victory for him. “We who have loved and laboured, fought and suffered, strove not for our own selfish ends, not for a personal result achieved or missed by any one of us, but for an end more permanent than that, an end beyond ourselves, encompassing all the family. What we have saved thus for the common fund we have given into your care to be handed on. It is not La Vigie. Land can be gained by the sweat of one’s brow, bought with money. The soul of our race you bear within you. We are confident that you will defend it. What are you saying, in your despair, of solitude and death? Will you render us your account and tell us whence you came? From Death? But the family is the very negation of death. While you live we all live. And when you shall join us in your turn, you will live again, you must live again, in those that have been born of you. See: at this deciding moment, we are all here. Put off your sorrow as we have lifted up the stones from above our graves. For you, do you hear, is reserved the honour of defending and saving the last of the Roquevillards. You will speak in our name. Afterwards, when your tasks are done, you can rejoin us here in the peace of God.” Mr. Roquevillard put out his hand and supported himself against the oak. The darkness was storming Le Nivolet, its last terrace, with a cross upon it, flaming once more before it should go out. A great calm settled on his soul, and he accepted in good faith this mission laid upon him by the past. “Maurice, your defender shall be no one but myself.... And I’ll not mention the name of Mrs. Frasne.” He moved away from the spot where the tree stood, noting the situation as he left the place. “I’ll rebuild here,” he thought, “I, or my son.” V MARGARET’S BETROTHAL HUBERT’S death had completely upset Maurice, breaking at last the pride that separated him from his family. Margaret, on her way home from bearing the sad news to him in prison, walked through the streets seeing nothing, shut up in her grief. At her own door she asked the servant: “Has Mr. Roquevillard come in yet?” She was hastening to her father’s comfort now as she had gone to Maurice’s, with that power of bearing up in moral sorrow which is less exceptional in a woman than in a man, and permitted her to be of comfort instead of breaking down. “Not yet, Miss Margaret,” was the answer.