The woman’s eyes were fixed upon the trinkets, but she raised them and allowed them to travel up and down the girl’s dress, and presently the brown finger pointed to a silver clasp in the shape of a dove which fastened Alaine’s kerchief.
“That, too? Yes, yes; you shall have all if you will but help me away, early, so early, before it is day. Can you? Will you?”
Marie lifted the chain and dropped it from one hand to the other, as she considered the subject. After a few moments she nodded.
“I take you. No Long Point; ozzer place where is some one will show you ze way.”
“Is it far? Can we walk, or do we have to go by water?”
“We walk. Early I come for you. I sleep here. François Dupont say meet him. I meet him.” She nodded her head emphatically. “Before ze sun, he is arise, we go.”
Comforted by this hope of escape Alaine fell asleep, to be awakened before the first indications of dawn had begun to tinge the sky. The gray shadows were just giving place to a streak of light in the east when the two women stole from the house, hurried across the wet grass and into the deep woods. The birds were chirping sleepily in their nests in the trees above them, though it was still dark in the forest. Save for a fox bounding along, a rabbit leaping from the underbrush, or a mole scuttling to his mound, there were no signs of wild creatures. A walk of two or three miles brought the two women to another clearing. Here Marie paused and pointed to a house from the chimney of which a wreath of blue smoke was beginning to curl. “It is there you find friend,” Alaine was told by her companion. “I go to meet François Dupont.”
Alaine caught her hand. “Adieu, Marie! The good God bless you for helping me.”
Marie held up the chain with a grim smile. “I am well pay, mam’selle.” Then she turned and disappeared into the sombre shadows of the woods.
Across the fields Alaine took her way and presented herself before the door of a house. Some one came clattering through the hall as the girl’s knock was heard,—a sturdy Dutchwoman, who gazed at this early visitor in stolid surprise. “May I come in?” asked Alaine.