THE CAMP.
D'Aulnay's sentinels about the walls, understanding that all this confusion was made by a stampede of ponies, kept the silence which had been enjoined on them. But some stir of inquiry seemed to occur in the bastions. Father Vincent, lying helpless in the trench, and feeling the chill of lately opened earth through his shaven head and partly nude body, wondered if he also had met D'Aulnay's gratitude for his recent inquiry into D'Aulnay's fitness to receive the sacraments.
"But I will tell my lord of Charnisay the truth about his sins," thought Father Vincent, unable to form any words with a pinioned mouth, "though he should go the length of procuring my death."
The soldier with his buckskin covered by Father Vincent's capote stepped out into the starlight and turned his cowled face toward the fort. He intended to tell the sentinels that D'Aulnay had sent him with a message to the commandant of St. John. The guards, discerning his capote, would perhaps obey a beckoning finger, and believe that he had been charged with silence; for not having heard the churchman's voice he dared not try to imitate it, and must whisper. But that unforeseen element which the wisest cannot rule out of their fate halted him before he took a dozen steps up the hill.
"Where is Father Vincent de Paris?" called some impatient person below the trench. Five figures coming from the tree gained distinctness as they advanced, but it was a new-comer who demanded again,—
"Where is Father Vincent de Paris? Did he not leave the camp with you?"
The soldier went down directly where his gray capote might speak for itself to the eye, and the man who carried the stool pointed with it toward the evident friar.
"There stands the friar behind thee. He hath been tumbled into the trench, I think."
"Is your affair done?"
"And well done, except that some cattle ran mad among us but now, and we thought a sally had been made, so we put out our torches."