“Where is my Uncle Gaspard? Tell me at once! Where is he? Where is he?” the child cried imperiously.
Mère Lunde let her knitting fall and stared with wild eyes. “He!” she exclaimed tremulously. “He! Have you not met him? He set out almost at once for you. Oh, the good God and all the angels be praised! Now we will be happy again. Oh, child, my heart has broken for you! How did you escape?”
All the color left Renée’s eager face. She stretched out her hands as if to clasp something. The eyes seemed dulled by some far, desperate gaze.
“Uncle Gaspard! Gone!” she faltered.
“Oh, did you not meet him? Child, he would not rest until he had set out. Is it thy pretty prank, little one? Is he staying behind to tell some one the story and then surprise us?”
“He did not come!” she wailed, her heart throbbing with passionate grief. “We have not seen him. Oh, mère, mère, the cruel Indians have captured him! And I was so sure.”
She sank in a little heap at the woman’s feet. After all the dangers and alternations of hope and fear, the fatigues, the last blow had been too much for her. Mère Lunde gathered the limp form in her arms, then laid her on the rustic settle, chafing the small hands and bathing the face with a fragrant concoction of her French skill. She drew slow breaths presently, but did not open her eyes.
François Marchand gazed on his wife, speechless with a curious doubt, as one in a dream. Then he came nearer. She was thinner, the rose bloom had faded from her cheeks and there were dark shadows about her eyes. But oh, surely it was no ghost come to mock him!
He took her in his arms, and if the shape had melted into vague nothingness he would not have felt surprised. But it did not. It was soft flesh. He rained kisses on brow and cheek and lips; her sigh was a breath of perfume. Was it moments or hours?
“Thanks be to God and our good friend Gaspard!” he said presently. “Oh, my sweet blossom of northern wilds, my treasure, my queen, how I have feared and wept for thee! What lonely days! What sleepless nights! And I bound to the bed by wounds and fever and a broken limb, knowing thou wert in the hands of cruel enemies and I helpless to succor thee. And that brave soul came to thy rescue! How can we ever thank him enough?”