For a breathing space the two pairs of eyes held one another like wrestlers. Then:
“As thou wilt,” rejoined the priest coldly. “But forget not that no traitors to God and the king can dwell at ease in Acadie. Mine are no empty threats.”
He flung wide the door and called to the waiting Micmacs. As they stepped out of the surrounding gloom, the pine torches carried by them illuminated their ferocious countenances. Margot sprang forward and cast herself upon her knees before the priest.
“O mon père, mon père, do with me what you will, inflict on me any penance that seems unto you good; but spare, oh, spare my cousin, if only for the sake of the gran’-père!”
The girl’s agonized pleading rang out into the night. Then, in a voice rendered tremulous by years and infirmity, but still not devoid of dignity, Grétin himself spoke.
“M. l’Abbé,” he said, “the boy is of heretic blood—yes. But also is he of my blood—mine, who am a faithful servant of the true church. If he has been led astray, I myself will see to it that he returns to the fold. For he is a good lad, and the prop and staff of my old age.”
Le Loutre turned on the gran’-père his piercing eyes.
“Thou hast reason, Grétin. Thou hast indeed been a faithful servant of the church, but art thou that now? Do not thy religion and thy king demand of thee that thou shouldst leave, with all that is thine, the air breathed by pestilential heretics, and dost thou not still linger, battening in their green pastures, yea, feeding from their hand? Art thou, therefore, fit to be the guide of erring youth? It may be too, that thou wilt have to suffer for his sin if he repent not.”
The old man bowed his head, and a low moan escaped him.
“Hurt not the lad,” he murmured. “He is as the very apple of my eye.”