"Ah! you acknowledge your fault, do you?" replied the Père Séguin, "enough, that shows you have a heart. I bear you no ill-will; you are vif as the mountain breeze, but that comes of being young. Give me your hand, and when you want a dove or lilies of the valley for your sister, venison or wild boar for your friends, I, my gun, and my dog, are at your service; but"—and he whispered in my ear—"no more knives."
"See! see!" and I opened my jacket, "it is gone. I threw it into the moat this morning."
"'Tis well! very well! You have had a happy escape, young man. Au revoir. Now, Faro, take your leave of Monsieur;" and instantly obeying a sign from his master, the red dog licked my boots. A moment more, and they were both lost to view in the forest.
From that time I was frequently with the Père Séguin, for he seemed to have a fancy—a sort of affection for me, and on my part I had an incomprehensible pleasure in his society, though in the early part of our acquaintance I could not divest myself of an undefined dread of him; and had some difficulty in reconciling myself to the harsh and guttural tones of his voice, and his peculiarly severe physiognomy. Nevertheless, many an evening did I slip away from the paternal hearth, much to the distress of my poor mother, to seat myself on one of his wooden stools, and eat the chestnuts he was roasting in the embers, while he related, by the pale light of his small charcoal fire, which but dimly showed the extent even of his small room, frightful stories of ghosts, suicides, drownings, and fearful murders, with which he delighted to terrify me; and, dear reader, he succeeded to perfection, for all the time I sat listening to them I was cold, and trembled like a leaf in the northern blast.
Well do I remember—yes, as well as if it had been yesterday—going out with him to fish for barbel, and joining him over-night to go in search of bait. I found him crouched by his fire, eating potatoes out of the same plate with his dog. This frugal meal over, he took up a small lantern, a large box, and a long spade, and beckoned me to follow him.
The moon was rising as we left the hut, but red as blood, lightning streaked the sky at short intervals, and the wind howled as if a storm was approaching. Père Séguin rubbed his hands, and an expression of satisfaction passed across his extraordinary countenance; for, living as he did a lonely wandering life, he had become superstitious, and firmly believed that worms caught at certain hours of the night, and in a breeze that foretold an approaching tempest, were more likely to attract the fish than those taken in the daylight. To this article of his creed I offered no objection, but I own my heart shrunk within me when I observed that he took the direct road to the burial-ground. "Père Séguin," said I, "we need go no further; the turf in this lane is capital; we shall find all we want here without a longer walk." "Since when," he inquired in a voice that seemed to come from between his shoulders, "since when have young fawns taught the old roebuck the way to the forest-glades?" And he strode on without a word more, still in the direction I so much abhorred.
Arriving at the cemetery, Père Séguin walked leisurely round it, paying as much attention to me as if I had not been with him, and I followed like a criminal going to the scaffold. After having made a careful examination of the wall, he stopped suddenly, gave me the lantern and the spade, and leaped upon the top, desiring me to do the same. I hesitated, and fell back, for I felt more inclined to throw them down and run away, and Père Séguin saw it.
"Ha! ha!" he exclaimed, fixing his yellow eye upon me. "I thought you were heart of oak, young Sir; are you only a man of straw?"
I gave no answer, but I leaped on to the wall like a rope-dancer.
"Hum!" he muttered; "good legs, but a faint heart." And he begun rapidly to turn up the rank grass, and pick the large red worms from amongst the roots, when, looking up in my face, he said, with infinite coolness, "Why, you are as pale as my mother was on the day of her death! What ails you?"