Her voice had a pitiful break in it as she concluded.
"Let us pray the good God to protect him this night, wife," answered Baptiste, no longer pretending that he did not believe in this strange legend, in which nearly all his race in his station in life have faith.
While they were on their knees praying, the yellow-faced clock behind the stove struck the hour of midnight.
"Mon Dieu! twelve o'clock!"
The anxious mother sprang to her feet, ran to the door, opened it, and standing on the steps shaded her eyes with her hand, and looked earnestly down the long snow-clad road in the direction of the little village of St. Pascal. Behind her stood Baptiste, also shading his weak eyes and looking. Not a human being was in sight. The zinc-covered spire of the little village church, nearly half a mile away, glittered and shone in the fairy light like burnished silver. The quaint whitewashed cottages that dotted the road to the village looked far different from what they did in the daytime; somehow the charitable moon had forgotten to reveal the cracks and stains that time in its relentless march had made. The lines, too, that age and care had made on the two eager watching faces were also, by the great ruler of the night, tenderly smoothed out.
"I cannot see him, Baptiste," she said presently, lowering her hand from her eyes.
"Neither can I, wife; neither can I. Let us go into the house and wait." He laid his hand persuasively on her shoulder. As she turned the moon shone full in her face. She stopped and looked at it for a few moments like one fascinated, then slowly raised her hand and pointed at it.
"Baptiste," she said in an awed voice, with the superstitious light again in her eyes, "do you remember once before when it was as bright as this?"
He tried to draw her toward the door, but she resisted, and looking hurriedly up into his face, said:
"Ah; I see you, too, remember! It was the night Arsene Bolduc went out never to return. The devil is surely abroad this night, and our Pierre is not yet home."