"That's right, Driot," said the old man without looking back, "I am not afraid for you, though this is not the place for my sons. But it is freezing so hard that it seems likely that the whole Marais will be frozen before sunrise; and it may be the death of Mathurin, crippled as he is. Why did you bring him?"
In the general silence the farmer's eyes swept the larger room; a movement of some of those present showed him Mathurin sitting in the inner one; and the father saw his crippled son, and beside him the girl who had been the cause of so much suffering and sorrow.
"That girl!" he muttered, "lying in wait for him again!" With imperious gesture he forced a passage through the dancers, shouldering them to right and left. "Gauvrit," he exclaimed, nodding to the host, who had risen and was staggering towards him, "Gauvrit, I have no wish to offend you; but I must take away my lads. The Marais is a deathtrap in weather such as this."
"I couldn't prevent your sons coming," stammered Gauvrit. "I assure you, Toussaint Lumineau...."
Without heeding him, the farmer raised his voice:
"Out of this, Mathurin!" said he. "Take the wrap I have brought you," and he threw the shabby old cloak over the cripple's shoulders, who rising, meek as a child, followed his father without a word. The guests looked on, some mockingly, others with emotion, at the sight of the fine old man who had come that bitter night across the Marais to rescue his son from the wiles of La Seulière. Some of the girls said to each other, "He had not a word for Félicité." Others, "How handsome he must have been as a young man." And one voice murmured, and it was that of the young girl who had sung the ronde, "André is the image of his father."
Toussaint Lumineau and his sons heard nothing of this. The door of La Seulière had shut behind them, and they were out in the darkness and the icy wind.
The clouds were very high; as they scudded along in huge irregular bodies they formed a succession of black patches, their edges silvered by the moon. The cold was so intense it seemed to pierce through the stoutest clothing, and chill to the very marrow of the bones. It was indeed death to any but the strongest. The farmer, who knew the danger, hurriedly untied the two punts, and getting into the first motioned Mathurin to lie down in the bottom of the boat, then pushed out into the middle of the canal. Again the cripple obeyed, curling himself up on the boards; wrapped in his brown cloak, motionless, he looked like a mass of sea-wrack. But, unnoticed by the others, he had lain down with his face turned towards La Seulière, and raising his cloak with one finger, was looking back towards the farm. As long as distance and the canal banks allowed him to distinguish the light proceeding from the chinks of the door, he remained with eyes fixed upon the paling ray that recalled to him a new hope. Then the cloak fell back into its place, covering the radiant, tearful face of the crippled man.
André followed in the second punt. By the same dykes, past the same meadows they returned, struggling against the strong gusts of wind that blew. The storm that had burst had prevented the sheet of ice from covering the water. The farmer, unaccustomed to punting, did not make rapid progress. From time to time he would ask:
"You are not too cold, Mathurin?"