Hand in hand, they stood for a time gazing down at the brave, liberty-loving runner of the woods, whose clean-cut, handsome face had kept its firm, symmetrical outlines through the agony of sudden death.
“Give me back again my dagger, sweetheart,” said de Sancerre, turning sadly away from a grim picture of manly vigor cut down in its youthful prime. “I did Jacques Barbier a cruel wrong! He was too brave a man to do a coward’s deed!”
“HE FELT A LIGHT HAND UPON HIS ARM, AND GAZED DOWN INTO THE
DARK EYES OF THE MAIDEN”
“They’re manning a boat to come to us!” exclaimed the Frenchman a moment later, as he and Doña Julia turned again to gaze at the great carack, rising and falling upon the early morning tide. “It is a Spanish vessel, sweetheart!”
“Si, señor. There is no doubt of that! I cannot read the flag she flies, but ’tis some Spanish merchant-man bound west for Mexico.”
De Sancerre slipped an arm, covered with velvet rags, around the slender waist of the girl, whose sweet face had gained new beauty from the mighty miracle which the saints had wrought in her behalf.
“They heard our guns at dawn across the sea, and saw my canvas flapping in the breeze,” he said, musingly. “At last, by chance, the King of France has done me a good turn! He owed me one, señora. My sword has served him well, but when it made a slip, which love itself forgave, he turned his face away, and left me, sweetheart, with no land to call my own!”
Doña Julia looked up at her lover with a bright smile upon her curving lips, and her eloquent eyes told of a joyful heart, as she said:
“If so my countrymen in yonder boat are kind enough to take us, señor, to the West, we’ll find a province which belongs to me. If you will deign to make my realm the land of your adoption, I pledge my word to be a gracious queen.”