"The good God doesn't send black angels or make presents to wrong-doers."
"Hush," said Brulette, "let José explain himself."
But she had hardly said the words when a loud commotion, like the galloping of two hundred animals, was heard from the broad grass-ground around the fountain, some sixty feet from the house, from which it was separated by the garden and hemp-field. The bell tinkled, the dogs barked, and the man's rough voice was heard shouting, "Quick, quick! here, here! to me, Clairin! come, come! I miss three! You, Louveteau, you, Satan! off with you, quick!"
For a moment Brulette was so frightened that she ran from Joseph to me, which gave me fine courage, and seizing my gun again I said to Joseph:—
"I don't choose that your people should come racketing round here at night. Brulette has had enough of it and she wants to be taken home. Come now, stop this sorcery or I'll chase your witches."
Joseph stopped me as I was going out.
"Stay here," he said, "and don't meddle with what does not concern you; or maybe you'll regret it later. Keep still, and see what I brought in; you shall know all about it presently."
As the uproar was now dying away in the distance, I did look, all the more because Brulette was crazy to know what was in the parcel; and Joseph, undoing it, showed us a bagpipe, so large, and full, and handsome that it was really a splendid thing, and such as I had never seen before.
It had double bellows, one of which measured five feet from end to end; and the wood of the instrument, which was black cherry, dazzled the eyes with the pewter ornaments, made to shine like silver, which were inlaid at all the joints. The wind-bag was of handsome leather tied with a knot of calico, striped blue and white; indeed, the whole workmanship was done in so clever a way that it only took a very little breath to fill the bag and send out a sound like thunder.
"The die is cast!" said Brulette, to whom Joseph was not listening, so intent was he in taking apart and replacing the various parts of his bagpipe. "You will be a piper, José, in spite of the hindrances you will meet with, and the trouble it will be to your mother."