Whither? Who could tell? As well hunt for the proverbial needle amongst a bundle of hay as seek two women of the valleys amongst their native wilds. They might carry news to Arnaud—true, but Arnaud might have the news and welcome! He was not likely to profit much by it.
So the soldiers hung their camp-kettles over their fires and pushed chestnuts into the edges of the ashes and made ready their morning meal, blythe as the birds in the copse of birches below them. And yonder where the mighty mountains sloped northward and eastward towards Prali, Madeleine and her foster-child sped through the forest paths with pale looks and quickened breathings. They had lived through so much, escaped so much, but perhaps the fiercest danger was this last—the Savoy guard on the Giuliano Pass.
Madeleine’s quick ear had caught the sound of voices, and a very little investigation had shown her the nest of hornets amidst which she and Rénée had lain down to rest. They were well used to see danger staring them in the face, but even Madeleine’s heart grew sick with fear as they threaded the stony ways in that gleaming midsummer dawn. A false step might betray them, and how have cool caution sufficient to plant each step silently down those difficult paths?
CHAPTER XIV.
ONCE clear of the defile, with its perils, the two women hurried onwards, each turn of the hills revealing some well-remembered scene to Madeleine. There, below, was Prali, where she had lived when a girl; those tall poplars by the waters seemed to be unchanged since the days when she had driven her cows into their shadow; and there away to the right was the gleam of water where the thirteen lakes lay in the snowy mountain spurs like dew-drops in the bosom of a rose; and surely no rose could be lovelier than was the snow at that moment, as the sun broke through the level mists that veiled his dawning.
‘It was my father’s home, Rénée,’ the woman murmured wistfully, ‘my home, where I played with my brothers, where I sat spinning at my mother’s side, where Henri Botta came and taught me how to love him. Long ago—ah, yes, so long ago! There is the church, look, Rénée; there was a bell in the wooden tower that used to ring for prayer. The papists say often that we Vaudois do not pray; had they lived in Prali they had learned better things of us. Rénée, child, tell me canst thou see the tower? thine eyes are clearer than mine, canst thou see it, the little red tower with its painted bell-cage? It was Henri, my brave Henri, that reared it, it was that building-task that brought him to Prali. Ah, how long ago!’
‘And I shall never see him on earth again!’ she went on more to herself than to Rénée.
‘I shall never hear his voice, as when evening brought him home to me at Prali and at Rora; but he is in higher hands than ours, ah, yes. And I know that in the land of light I shall see him and hear him, when these turmoils and troubles are past. Only a little while more, a very short while, and our Master will call me too.’