"But what did you do?"
"I sat down and watched him," said the dwarf.
"How could you?" shuddered Antonia, feeling how little this tiny being's humanity was developed.
"We had some chat," said Le Rossignol. "He promised me a seigniory if I would run and call some men with ropes. 'I heard a Swiss's wife say that you promised him a seigniory,' quoth I. 'And you had enough ropes then.' He pledged his word and took oath to make me rich if I would get him only a priest. 'You pledged your word to the lady of Fort St. John,' said I. The water kept rising and he kept stretching his neck above it, and crying and shouting, and I took his humor and cried and shouted with him, naming the glorious waves as they rode in from the sea:—
"'Glaud Burge!'
"'Jean le Prince!'
"'Renot Babinet!'
"'Ambroise Tibedeaux!'
"And so on until François Bastarack the twenty-third roller flowed over his head, and Edelwald did not even know he was beneath."
Antonia dropped her face upon her hands.