She caressed it absently, while the tired creature sank down on her bosom; then only she saw that there was a letter beneath one wing. She unloosed it, and looked at it without being able to tell its meaning; she could not read a word, printed or written. Military habits were too strong with her for the arrival not to change her reverie into action; whoever it was for, it must be seen. She gave the pigeon water and grain, then wound her way down the dark, narrow stairs, through the height of the tower, out into the passage below.
She found an old French cobbler sitting at a stall in a casement, stitching leather; he was her customary reader and scribe in this quarter. She touched him with the paper. “Bon Mathieu! Wilt thou read this to me?”
“It is for thee, Little One, and signed 'Petit Pot-de-terre.'”
Cigarette nodded listlessly.
“'Tis a good lad, and a scholar,” she answered absently. “Read on!”
And he read aloud:
“'There is ill news. I send the bird on a chance to find thee. Bel-a-faire-peau struck the Black Hawk—a slight blow, but with threat to kill following it. He has been tried, and is to be shot. There is no appeal. The case is clear; the Colonel could have cut him down, were that all. I thought you should know. We are all sorry. It was done on the night of the great fete. I am thy humble lover and slave.'”
So the boy-Zouave's scrawl, crushed, and blotted, and written with great difficulty, ran in its brief phrases that the slow muttering of the old shoemaker drew out in tedious length.
Cigarette heard; she never made a movement or gave a sound, but all the blood fled out of her brilliant face, leaving it horribly blanched beneath its brown sun-scorch; and her eyes—distended, senseless, sightless—were fastened on the old man's slowly moving mouth.
“Read it again!” she said simply, when all was ended. He started and looked up at her face; the voice had not one accent of its own tone left.