And he, waking from his dream, changed the Latin into English, and said:
“‘For he hath delivered me from the snare of the hunter, and from the
sharp sword.
For he hath given his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all
thy ways.’”
“The words are good,” she said. He then told her he was going out, but that he should be within call, saying, at the same time, that someone would no doubt arrive from Fort Cypress soon: and he went from the house. Then the girl rose slowly, crept lamely to a chair and sat down. Outside, the priest paced up and down, stopping now and then, and listening as if for horses’ hoofs. At last he walked some distance away from the house, deeply lost in thought, and he did not notice that a man came slowly, heavily, to the door of the hut, and opening it, entered.
Mary Callen rose from her seat with a cry in which was timidity, pity, and something of horror; for it was Pretty Pierre. She recoiled, but seeing how he swayed with weakness, and that his clothes had blood upon them, she helped him to a chair. He looked up at her with an enigmatical smile, but he did not speak. “Oh,” she whispered, “you are wounded!”
He nodded; but still he did not speak. Then his lips moved dryly. She brought him water. He drank deeply, and a sigh of relief escaped him. “You got here safely,” he now said. “I am glad of that—though you, too, are hurt.”
She briefly told him how, and then he said: “Well, I suppose you know all of me now?”
“I know what happened in Pipi Valley,” she said, timidly and wearily. “Father Corraine told me.”
“Where is he?”
When she had answered him, he said: “And you are willing to speak with me still?”
“You saved me,” was her brief, convincing reply. “How did you escape? Did you fight?”