"Never mind explanations! Come along, all three!" cried Dominique, and led the way. They passed out by the postern unobserved—for the garrison was assembled in the lunette under the river wall—and hurried toward the shade of the forest.
How well Diane remembered the old childish make-believe! How many scores of times had they played it together, these three, in the woods around Boisveyrac!—when Dominique and Bateese were bold huntsmen, and she kept house for them, cooking their imaginary spoils of the chase.
"We must have a fire!" she exclaimed, and hurried off to gather sticks. But when she returned with the lap of her gown well filled, a fire was already lit and blazing.
"How have you managed it so quickly?" she asked, and with that her eyes fell on a scrap of ashes. "Where did you get this? You have been lighting with paper, Bateese—and that is not playing fair!"
Bateese, very red in the face, stooped in the smoke and crammed another handful upon the blaze.
"They were papers, ma'amzelle, upon which Dominique and I for a long time could not agree. But now "—he turned to Dominique—"there is no longer any quarrel between us. Eh, brother?"
"None, Bateese; none, if you forgive."
"What did I tell you?" cried Bateese triumphantly. "Did I not always tell you that your heart would be lighter, with this shadow gone? And there was never any shadow but this; none—none!"
"That is all very well," Diane remonstrated; "but you two have no business to hide a secret from me to-day, even though it make you happier."
"We have burnt it for a propitiation, ma'amzelle; it no longer exists." Bateese cast himself on his back at full length in the herbage and gazed up through the drifting smoke into the tree-tops and sky. "A-ah!" said he with a long sigh, "how good God has been to me! How beautiful He has made all my life!" He propped himself on one elbow and continued with shining eyes: "What things we were going to do, in those days! What wonders we looked forward to! And all the while we were doing the most wonderful thing in the world, for we loved one another." He stretched out a hand and pointed. "There, by the bend, the English boats will come in sight. Suppose, Dominique, that as they come you launched out against them, and fought and sank the fleet single-handed, like the men in the old tales—"