The child went. He heard her light feet scampering upstairs, clattering merrily about on the boards overhead. He sat very still. The glow in the east deepened, spreading a lurid glory over the dark velvety stillness of the woods. Crickets sang and curlews cried in the meadow, and the long ghostly hoot of an owl trembled through the motionless air. Joseph de la Marinière leaned his elbows on the table, his chin resting on his hands, and gazed up thus into the wild autumnal sky.
"What would become of her!" he said to himself.
He was not long alone. Angelot and his dog came lightly up through the shadows, and while the dog strayed off to join his favourites among the dark guards who lay round the house, the young man sat down beside his uncle.
Though with a mind full of his own matters, Angelot was sympathetic enough to feel and to wonder at the little uncle's depression. After a word or two on indifferent things—the storm, the marvellous sky—he said to him, "Has anything happened to worry you?"
Monsieur Joseph did not answer at once, and this was very unlike him.
"It is the thunder, perhaps?" said Angelot, cheerfully. "A tree was struck near us. My mother is spending the evening in church."
"And your father?"
"He is at Lancilly, playing boston."
"Why are you not with him?"
"Why should I be? I—I prefer a talk with my dear uncle."