Chapter X
A Bit of White Petticoat
We had not advanced above a score of paces when, peering stealthily between the stems of herbs and underbrush, we saw what Grûl had desired us to see. Two more canoes were drawn up at the water's edge. Four savages were in sight, sprawling in indolent attitudes under the shade of a wide water-maple. In their midst, at the foot of the tree, lay a woman bound securely. She was huddled together in a posture of hopeless despair; and a dishevelled glory of gold-red tresses fell over her face to hide it. She lay in a moveless silence. Yet the sound of weeping continued, and Marc, gripping my hand fiercely, set his mouth to my ear and gasped:—
"'Tis my own maid! 'Tis Prudence!"
Then I saw where she sat, a little apart, a slender maid with a lily face, and hair glowing dark red in the full sun that streamed upon her. She was so tied to another tree that she might have no comfort or companionship of her sister,—for I needed now no telling to convey it to me that the lady with the hidden face and the unweeping anguish was Mistress Mizpah Hanford, mother of the child whom I had just seen carried away.
I grieved for Marc, whose eyes stared out upon the weeping maid from a face that had fallen to the hue of ashes. But I praised the saints for sending to our aid this madman Grûl,—whom, in my heart, I now graciously absolved from the charge of madness. Seeing the Black Abbé's hand in the ravishment of these tender victims, I made no doubt to cross him yet again, and my heart rose exultantly to the enterprise.
"Cheer up, lad," I whispered to Marc. "Come away a little till we plot."
I showed my confidence in my face, and I could see that he straightway took heart thereat. Falling back softly for a space of several rods, we paused in a thicket to take counsel. As soon as we could speak freely, Marc exclaimed, "They may go at any moment, Father. We must haste."
"No," said I, "they'll not go till the cool of the day. The others went because they have plainly been ordered to part the child from his mother. It is a most cunning and most cruel malice that could so order it."
"It is my enemy's thrust at me," said Marc. "How did he know that I loved the maid?"