Petit Marc lifted his head. He was chafing the hands of the old man over whom he was bending. “Olivier Herault!” he exclaimed. “And what of him?”
“I am he,” said Antoine, faintly. He gently pushed away the hand with which Jeanne would have arrested the words.
Father Bisset opened his eyes and smiled. “Olivier Antoine Crepin Herault, Jeanne’s husband,” he said.
Petit Marc stood up, his giant form towering above them all. “Olivier Herault? then an innocent man,” he said, slowly.
“And why? Why?” Jeanne turned her rugged face toward him, and Antoine essayed to stagger to his feet.
Petit Marc looked toward the other men grouped together by the door. “Here, my friends, this one, Antoine here, I know him to be innocent of any crime. Among us here in the woods it matters little what a man has been, but there are some of us who carry about with us the poison of an unjust charge. Most of us make the best of it; we care but little; we would rather be more free here than less free there, and we would not go back to the old life, but we do not tell of what is behind us; the present is enough for us to live for. Yet when one may clear a man, one may as well do it. More than ten years ago one of my comrades, hurt by a falling tree, died in my arms. He wished to confess his sins before he departed, and he told me that he had fled from France because of having murdered a man in a quarrel. ‘For this crime,’ he said, ‘one Olivier Herault is accused. I have heard that he escaped on the eve of his arrest, and that there was a hue-and-cry raised because of it. If you ever find him give him my confession; write it out as I tell you.’ And I did; here it is.” He drew forth a torn, stained bit of paper. “I sent word to France, but I have never heard whether the message reached there. I thought some day to find out, for I, too, Marc Lenoir, know what it is to be falsely accused. The law is not always so sure nor so just. Your innocence is proved, Olivier Herault; no one believes in mine.” He spoke simply, as one who long ago had accepted a fact and made the best of it.
“Antoine! Antoine! do your hear?” cried Jeanne. “Jacques, my brother Jacques, you, who believed in him, who let him escape and said nothing, do you not hear? You have saved him for this great moment, my Jacques.”
There was a far-away look in the old man’s eyes; he seemed not to know what was going on; he gasped painfully. “Little Alaine,” he murmured, “come here, little Alaine, and say your prayers before I go. The angelus is ringing and it will soon be your bedtime.”
Alaine with clasped hands and streaming eyes crept to his knees and bowed there as a child before its mother. He held her warm hands in his nerveless ones, now growing so sadly cold. “Pater Noster,” he began faintly, and Alaine sobbingly repeated, “Pater Noster.”
“Qui es in cœlis.”