At this instant François caught sight of Lendert standing at the entrance of the path to the woods. He gnashed his teeth and shouted. “Again, villain! At last on equal grounds, face to face and foe to foe. Take him, you there, Ricard!”
Like a flash Alaine ran from her little hillock and stood before her lover, who laid about him valiantly while the girl cried, “Again, monsieur, I am a shield!” But this time the supple body was no defence, for a dozen hands tore him from her, and he was marched off in triumph. Then shot after shot came ringing from the fort as well as from the little company hidden in the woods. The air seemed full of flying bullets. François was struck down at Alaine’s feet, his hold upon her gone, so that she was free to run to Ricard, crying, “Save him, save him, your prisoner there! I beg, I entreat, Ricard, Henri, you who know me, I fall upon my knees to implore you to spare him and take me instead! Where is Jeanne? Where is Jeanne?”
Her friend was not far off. “I will do what I can,” she whispered, as she dragged the distracted girl with her to a place of retreat behind a huge tree. “Do you not see that you must save yourself? I will do what I can, I promise you. For yourself, if you would escape, pretend to have fallen; assume death, now, at once.” Alaine staggered and fell. Jeanne bent over her and wrung her hands. “Remain here,” she whispered. “Lie perfectly still and you shall not be harmed.”
Lying flat on the ground behind the big tree, the bullets flying around her, Alaine, faint with suspense, waited, putting her trust in Jeanne, who, she believed, would find a way to set Lendert at liberty and would then return to her.
The moments passed, and at last the sound of firing ceased. The Indians, believing that those in the fort had received re-enforcements on account of the furious firing from the party in the woods, and finding their number was fast decreasing, began a retreat. They were followed so closely by a sortie from the fort that with yells and howls they took themselves off, leaving their leader for dead and taking with them their one unhappy prisoner.
At last Alaine ventured to raise her head. The glory of the May morning showed the woods gold-green; the rill, which formed the outlet of the spring, went tinkling on its way as merrily as if its waters, were unstained by the life-blood of those who lay dead at its banks. Overhead the birds, startled into stillness by the din of battle, now began a timid warbling. Under Alaine’s hand frail anemones peeped, and around her the springing grasses grew. So had it been spring after spring. Nature, impassive and lovely, smiles upon the agony of earth’s children and will not tell them the secret of her peace. Alaine sat up and pushed back the hair from her eyes. Beyond her lay the bodies of the fallen foe, among them François Dupont. She turned her head and shuddered. “Lendert,” she said, piteously, “Lendert, where are you? Jeanne, you said you would come.”
She looked around and listened. There was no answer to her call. Then she wailed, “He is gone, gone, and I am here!” She stood up and stretched her hands toward the sky. “Thou God, whom I implored to let us die together, I am here and he is not. Thou hast forsaken me!”
A kind hand was laid upon her shoulder. “My child,” said Joachim van der Deen, “why are you here alone? God has not forsaken you.”
Alaine dropped her head on the good man’s arm. “I am desolate, desolate,” she moaned. “If we had but died together; but now, this moment, he may be enduring tortures such as I never dreamed of. Ah-h!” she shrieked in her despair and fell to the ground, hiding her face, as if she would shut out the frightful possibilities that her misery suggested to her.
Joachim knelt beside her. “God does not despise the affliction of the afflicted, my child,” he said, gently. “Trust thou in him, and thou shalt yet praise him.”