The dwarf flung herself on Shubenacadie's back, and thrust her feet down under his wings. He began to rise, and expanded, stretching his neck forward, and Zélie uttered a yell of terror. The weird little woman leaped off and turned her laughing beak toward the terrified maid. Her ear-hoops swung as she rolled her mocking head.
"Oh, if it frightens you I will not ride to-day," she said. Shubenacadie sailed across the battlements, and though they could no longer see him they knew he had taken to the river.
"If I tell my lady this," shivered Zélie, "she will never let you out of the turret. And she but this moment sent me to call you down out of the chill east wind."
"Tell Madame Marie," urged the dwarf insolently.
"And do you ride that way over bush and brier, through mirk and daylight?"
"I was at Penobscot this week," answered Le Rossignol.
Zélie gazed with a bristling of even the hairs upon her lip.
"It goeth past belief," she observed, setting her hands upon her sides. "And the swan, what else can he do besides carry thee like a dragon?"
"He sings to me," boldly asserted Le Rossignol. "And many a good bit of advice have I taken from his bill."
"It would be well if he turned his mind more to thinking and less to roving," respectfully hinted Zélie. "I will go before you downstairs and leave the key in the turret door," she suggested.