‘Ah,’ Rénée’s hand clutched her mother’s convulsively as the cry left her lips, ‘they are all about us; see!’
Dark forms were climbing the hill-side on either hand. Below them was that marching troop. Behind them was the guard of the Giuliano Pass. Was there then any hope in flight?
They shrank back into the shadow of the birch, a flickering and slight shadow at best, but any movement might betray them if they crossed the bare slope; sunlight so strong as that which bathed the grass would reveal them only too sharply. Madeleine hid her face in her hands, and lifted her heart in prayer. Rénée watched the approaching figures with wide-open defiant eyes, her beautiful head held back like a stag at bay; she threw her black cloak over the white coif and kerchief of her foster-mother, and flung her own scarlet capucin into the shadow; it came naturally to her to protect her mother—Madeleine, but even as she covered and sheltered her the thought came flashing through her brain that it was now for the last time. Surely the end had come.
There could be no escape. The troops were advancing rapidly, led by those who apparently knew every feature of the ground. The scouts were close upon them now, the sound of their feet crashing through the underwood could be distinctly heard, even the hoarse tones of their voices and the clank of their accoutrements. Madeleine cowered yet lower, and a whispered word of prayer came like a groan from her lips.
And then, starting forwards with a jerk as of a bow released from its tension, Rénée snatched her hands from her mother’s hold, and held them out with a ringing cry.
‘Gaspard!’ she called, ‘Gaspard!’
The hill above her echoed it, the dear, long-unuttered word; and Madeleine, bewildered, repeated it in her turn, as if speaking in a dream. ‘Gaspard! Gaspard!’
And there were hurrying steps bounding over the brake, and a voice loud and strong calling across the distance. And then....
But neither Rénée nor Madeleine could remember very clearly what happened then. They knew that, instead of danger, help had come, instead of death a newer and dearer life, instead of the faces of their foes the sight of their best-beloved.
And there on the hill-slopes where he had first beheld her Henri Botta met his wife again. Safe after perils unspeakable; together after bitterest separation. Was it strange that for the moment they forgot that there was still trouble and trial in God’s fair world, and that while the golden sunshine lay bright upon the grass they should, for those brief minutes at least, forget that the Vaudois had yet to win the valleys?