"The Abbé started westward with him," answered Xavier. "From what I heard say, he would go to Pereau; but which way after, I could not find out."
"Come!" I ordered roughly, "we must follow them!" But as I spoke I saw the lad totter. I caught him by the arm and held him up, perceiving now for the first time how he was both wounded and utterly spent.
"Let us go first to your father," I said more gently, leading him, and putting what curb I could upon the fierceness of my haste.
"How did you get here?" I asked him presently.
A gleam came into the lad's faint eyes.
"The Chepody men stayed till morning," said he, "and then set out on the road toward Piziquid, taking me with them. They thought I was nothing but a boy. As we went, I got my hands loose, so,—and waited. At noon one man went into a house,—and—so!—I was free, and had the other dog by the throat. He make no noise; but he fight hard, and hurt me. I got away, and left him in the snow, and ran back all the way to tell you the Black Abbé—"
But here the poor lad's voice failed, and he hung upon me with all his weight. He had fainted, indeed; and now that I thought of his wound, his hunger, his grief, and his prodigious exertions, I wondered not at his swooning. Picking him up in my arms, I carried him to the cottage where the kind damsel had so compassionately tended my own bruises.
As I entered the thronged cottage with my burden, men came about me with many questions; but I kept my own counsel, not knowing whom I could trust, or where the Black Abbé might not have his spies posted. Moreover, I was so distracted with anxiety about the child, that I had small patience wherewith to take questioning civilly. Every bed and every settle being occupied with our wounded, I laid Xavier on the floor, with his head upon a blue petticoat which the kind damsel—who came to me as soon as she saw me enter—fetched from a cupboard and rolled up deftly for me. After a careful examination I found no wound upon the lad save two shallow flesh cuts, one across his forehead and one down his chest. I thereupon concluded that exhaustion, together with the loss of blood, had brought him to this pass, and that with a few days' care he would be altogether restored. Having put some brandy between his lips, and seen his eyelids tremble with recovering consciousness, I turned to the maiden and said:—
"Take care of him for me, Chérie. He deserves your best care; and I trust him to your good heart. Give him something to eat now,—soup, hot milk, at first. And I will come back in two days from now, at furthest."
"But Monsieur must rest!"