"To make you appear—you, Father!—a sanguinary character!" But the other's laugh rang false.
"Alas, such wickedness! But I was too content; the rose-covered cottage too comfortable; its garden, an Eden! It was more meet I should be driven forth; go out into the highways, where I found—such misery! I reproached myself I had not sought it sooner—voluntarily. From north to south peasants dying, women and children starving, no one to administer the last rites—on every side, work, work for the outcast priest! For ten years it has occupied him—a blessed privilege—"
"And then," the young man, who had seemed absorbed in other thoughts, hardly listening, looked mechanically up, "you came back?"
"A weakness of age! To see the old place once more! The little church; God's acre at its side; to stand on the hill at Verranch and look out a last time over the beautiful vale toward the Mount!" Briefly he paused. "Yet I am glad I yielded to the temptation; otherwise should I not have met your old servant, Sanchez; who told me all—how you had long been looking for me, and arranged our meeting for that day—on the island of Casque!"
"But not," the young man's demeanor at once became intent; his eyes gleamed with sudden fierce lights, "for what followed!"
The priest sighed. "Shall I ever forget it? The terrible night, the troop-ship, the killed and wounded. And the poor fellows taken prisoners! I can not but think of them and their fate. What will it be?"
The other did not answer; only impatiently moved his injured arm and, regarding him, the down-turned, dark countenance, the knit brows, quickly the priest changed the subject of conversation.
In the large room some one began to play, and before the fire, where now the birds were turning and the serving-lad, with a long spoon was basting, the dark-browed girl started to dance. At the side of the hearth old Pierre smoked stolidly, gazed at the coals, and dreamed—perhaps of the past, and dangers he had himself encountered, or of the present, and his ships scattered—where?—on profitable, if precarious errands. Somberly, in no freer mood than on the occasion of their first visit to the inn, the crew looked on; but a tall, savage-appearing islander soon matched her step; a second took his place; from one partner to another she passed—wild, reckless men whose touch she did not shun; yet it might have been noticed her eyes turned often, through wreaths of smoke, mist-like in the glare and glimmer of dips and torches, toward the Black Seigneur.
Why—her gaze seemed to say—did he not join them, instead of sitting there with a priest? She whirled to the threshold; her flushed face looked in. "Are you saying a mass for the souls of your men who were captured?"
"I see," he returned quietly, "you have been gossiping."