“We all deserve punishment,” said Pierre, solemnly.
“That may be,” returned Alaine, “but for me, I do not wish to say why one should suffer for his good deeds. No doubt the good God knows, but still I say if M. Verplanck suffers it may be for his good, but not because he deserves punishment. For what should he, Pierre, when he has but defended me?”
Pierre shook his head. “I cannot say, Alaine.”
“And you, Gerard, is it punishment, think you?”
Gerard laughed. “To stop here in the forest to discuss a theological question when two suffering men are to be removed to a more comfortable place seems unnecessary. If you and Pierre must debate let it be on the way home. If your friend there can ride let him mount his horse, and I will take the other steed and bear the more injured one upon it. You and Pierre can walk, unless Pierre would prefer to be guard for M. Dupont.”
But here Lendert interposed. “Why cannot Mlle. Mercier travel with me the same as before, on my horse?”
Alaine looked at Lendert and then at Pierre. “I will walk till I am tired,” she gave her decision, “and then, M. Verplanck, I will ride.”
The tedious journey came to an end when the little hamlet of New Rochelle was reached that afternoon. Papa Louis was overtaken before they had come to the edge of the woods. “A pretty plot for a romance,” he exclaimed, after clasping Alaine and kissing her on each cheek; “a lost ward returning with four attendant knights, and some of them wounded in the fray? Who are these, my daughter?”
“These, Papa Louis? Ah, it is a long story! I will walk with you and tell you my romance, as you call it; a strange one, indeed. Captured by Indians, rescued by yonder gentleman, wrested from him by the other, so sorely hurt. Am I not the heroine of a romance? Yet it has been a sad time for me, and I would rather the humdrum of every day so I be safe with you and Mère Michelle.”
“And for what was it all?” asked Papa Louis, knitting his brows as Alaine went into the particulars of her experience.