"Don't think any more about it," said Thérence; "it was a horrid thing to see and recollect. I dare say it gave you bad dreams last night."
"I did not dream at all," said Joseph; "I lay thinking, and little by little I felt my mind awakened and my body healed, as if the time had come to take up my bed and walk, like the paralytic of the Gospels. I saw Huriel before me, shining with light; he blamed my illness, and declared it was a cowardice of the mind. He seemed to say: 'I am a man, you are a child; you shake with fever while my blood is fire. You are good for nothing, but I am good in all ways, for others and for myself. Come, listen to this music.' And I heard an air muttering like a storm, which raised me in my bed as the wind lifts the fallen leaves. Ah, Brulette, I think I have done with being ill and cowardly; I can go now to my own country and kiss my mother, and make my plans to start,—for start I must, upon a journey; I must see and learn, and make myself what I should be."
"You wish to travel?" said Thérence, her face, so lately lighted like a star with pleasure, growing white and cloudy as an autumn moon. "You think to find a better teacher than my father, and better friends than people here? Go and see your mother; that is right, if you are strong enough to go,—unless, indeed, you are deceiving us and longing to die in distant parts—"
Grief and displeasure choked her voice. Joseph, who watched her, suddenly changed both his language and his manner.
"Never mind what I have been dreaming this morning, Thérence," he said; "I shall never find a better master or better friends. You asked me to tell my dreams, and I did tell them, that is all. When I am cured I shall ask advice of all three of you, and of your father also. Till then pay no attention to what comes into my head; let us be happy for the time that we are together."
Thérence was pacified; but Brulette and I, who knew how dogged and obstinate Joseph could be under his gentle manner, and remembered how he had left us without allowing us a chance to remonstrate or persuade him, felt sure that his mind was already fully made up, and that no one could change it.
During the next two days I once more felt dreadfully dull; and so did Brulette, though she amused herself by finishing the embroidery she wanted to give Thérence, and spent some hours in the woods with Père Bastien, partly to leave Joseph to the care of Thérence, and partly to talk of Huriel and comfort the worthy man for the danger and distress the fight had caused him. The Head-Woodsman, touched by the friendship which she showed him, told her the truth about Malzac, and, far from her blaming Huriel, as the latter had feared, it only drew her closer to him through the gratitude which she now felt she owed him.
On the sixth day we began to talk of separating. Joseph was getting better hourly; he worked a little, and did his best in every way to recover his strength. He had decided to go with us and spend a few days at home, saying that he should return almost immediately to the woods of Alleu,—which Brulette and I doubted, and so did Thérence, who was almost as uneasy about his health as she had been about his illness. I don't know if it was she who persuaded her father to accompany us half-way, or whether the notion came into Père Bastien's own mind; at any rate, he made us the offer, which Brulette instantly accepted. Joseph was only half pleased at this, though he tried not to show it.
The little trip naturally diverted the Head-Woodsman's thoughts from his anxieties, and while making his preparations the evening before our departure he recovered much of his natural fine spirits. The muleteers had left the neighborhood without hindrance, and nothing had been said about Malzac, who had neither relations nor friends to inquire for him. A year or two might go by before the authorities troubled themselves to know what had become of him, and indeed, they might never do so; for in those days there was no great policing in France, and a man might disappear without any notice being taken of it. Moreover, the Head-Woodsman and his family would leave those parts at the end of the chopping season, and as father and son never stayed six months in the same place, the law would be very clever indeed to know where to catch them.
For these reasons the Head-Woodsman, who had feared only the first results of the affair, finding that no one got wind of the secret, grew easy in mind and so restored our courage.