But before she could reply, I heard it myself, a strange, chanting cry, slow and plangent, from far out upon the water. Presently I caught the words, and knew the voice.
"Woe, woe to Acadie the fair," it came solemnly, "for the day of her desolation draws nigh!"
"It is Grûl," said I, "passing in his canoe, on some strange errand of his."
"Grûl? Who is Grûl?" she questioned, clinging a little to my hand, and then dropping it suddenly.
"A quaint madman of these parts," said I; "and yet I think his madness is in some degree a feigning. He has twice done me inestimable service—once warning us of an immediate peril, and again yesterday, in leading us to the spot where you were held captive. For some reason unknown to me, he has a marvellous kindness for me and mine. But the Black Abbé he hates in deadly fashion—for some ancient and ineffaceable wrong, if the tale tell true."
"And he brought you to us?" she murmured, with a sort of stillness in her voice, which caught me strangely.
"Yes, Grûl did!" said I.
And then there was silence between us, and we heard the mysterious and solemn voice passing, and dying away in the distance. My ears at last being released from the tension of listening, my eyes began to serve me, and through the branches I marked a grayness spreading in the sky.
"We must be stirring, Madame," said I, rising abruptly to my feet. "Let us take our bread down to the brook and eat it there."
But she was already gone, snatching up the sack of bread; and in a few minutes, having righted the canoe and carried it down to a convenient landing-place, I joined her. She was stretched flat beside a little basin of the brook, her cap off, her hair in a tight coil high upon her head, her sleeves pulled up, while she splashed her face and arms in the running coolness. Without pulling down her sleeves or resuming her cap, she seated herself on a stone and held out to me a piece of bread. In the coldly growing dawn her hair and lips were colourless, the whiteness of her arms shadowy and spectral. Then as we slowly made our meal, I bringing water for her in my drinking-horn, the rose and fire and violet of sunrise began to sift down into our valley and show me again the hues of life in Mizpah's face. I sprang up, handed her the woollen cap, and tried hard to keep my eyes from dwelling upon the sweet and gracious curves of her arms.