“François Dupont it is.”
“He is here? He lives! But for him——” She turned her head from side to side as if to deny any possibility of forgiveness.
“He wishes to see you when you are stronger. He has a confession to make to you.”
“I cannot hear it; not now,” returned Alaine, “not now.”
“Then we will not urge it. Very long his time cannot be. Far beyond what we looked for he has endured. But I hoped——”
“Hush, hush, mother,” Trynje broke in. “She is not to be troubled by such things. She her strength must get, and worry her you must not.” And Trynje looked as severe as she was capable of doing. “I must go in now, my mother, and I leave you here; very cheerful you must be; of dying and such things you must not speak. Good stories you must tell of when you were a little girl, and laugh you must.” She shook her finger at her mother and ran in.
Alaine sat mournfully gazing around her. Yonder was the woodland path along which Madam De Vries had approached; there the little spring to which Jeanne had gone for water; there—— She shuddered and hid her eyes, as if still before her shrieked and yelled the horde of bloodthirsty Indians. “I want to go home,” she murmured. “I want to see Michelle and Papa Louis and Gerard. I am so tired of being away from home. Will you not take me there?”
“In a little while; as soon as you are able,” Madam van der Deen told her, gently. And, indeed, it seemed while in the midst of scenes connected with such terrible memories that she was not likely to entirely recover. Therefore, to Trynje’s disappointment it was decided that the invalid should be taken as far as Fort Orange, and, if she were able to stand the journey, to go from there to New York, still known as New Amsterdam by these good people.
“And must I remain?” said François, when he was told. “I cannot be left here to trouble you. Prisoner I am, but I shall be free soon, and I would die among my own people. I, too, must go.”
Madam van der Deen looked puzzled. It was part of the plan that Alaine should be removed from his neighborhood, for the mere mention of him caused the girl such distress that the goede vrouw had determined to give up a scheme for the meeting of these two, resolved that if one must be considered that Alaine should be the one. Yet she made a final effort in François’s behalf and drew a pitiful picture of the man’s helplessness, his longing for forgiveness, his desire to make his peace with the world before he left it, so that Alaine, moved to pity, no longer protested, but faintly said, “Could he be taken away safely? Does he so desire it?”