That night Biencourt chanced to be favored by a visit from Lescarbot. The poet had been wandering about the forest, vainly striving to fashion an ending to his famous ballad, and was consequently in a state of great depression. His figure drooped; his gray eyes stared moodily before him. And thus for hours he sat, while the moon rose above the trees and paled the solitary candle with her rays.
“There will never be an end,” he cried at last, rising pettishly and flinging the door open wide. “For months have I thought upon it—the wild storm, the dicing, the newcomer, and the duel—and each time I reel back, baffled like a child at the entrance of a gloomy forest. For who can paint the motive that daily forms itself beneath his gaze? And here is that which came perhaps from far.”
Monsieur Lescarbot’s troubled face relaxed. His analysis evidently pleased him well, for he stepped briskly into the moonlight flung across the doorway.
Biencourt made no answer. He was busy with a long epistle, which a vessel on the morrow would carry to a certain black-eyed maid of honor at the court of France, and scarcely heeded what the poet said.
“From far! Who knows how far?” Lescar-bot went on dreamily. “Perchance from the royal”—here he paused and crossed himself hastily, as heavy footsteps sounded near by. They came nearer still, and the poet drew in from the doorway, falling upon his knees in prayer. Biencourt sprang in wonder to his feet, and there, in the brilliant moonlight, a few feet from the hut, saw what had so transfigured his companion, a man bending laboriously beneath a heavy load—a load with lifeless limbs, and loose hair waving in the night wind. Then he knew, as the poet had known, it was the Duc de Montpelier with the dead form of Madame Manette upon his shoulders.
A moment only the duc paused before he staggered across the threshold, and, shivering violently, laid the body on the floor. Yet in that moment the thought of his broken trust stung Biencourt like a lash, and half unconsciously his sword flashed in the moonlight. But ere he could frame the question surging to his lips, it was answered.
The duc sank down beside the body, his left hand resting on the ashen face. “You will seek to know the meaning of the riddle,” he said mechanically, without lifting his eyes from off her rigid form. “It is very simple. She was my wife. Nay, do not start, monsieur”—as Biencourt made a gesture of amazement. “It is as I say, and this is the body of Madame la Duchesse de Montpelier, wife of a prince of the blood, and—a Huguenot. And know you not”—and here the duc spoke lower and his words came slowly, while he made the sign of the cross—“know you not the Holy Father can disannul such marriages if it be the interest of the Truth? And among all the Huguenots of France—fierce and bitter as they have been and are—is there none more relentless than the comte, her father.”
For an hour the duc spoke no word more. With his arms tightly clasped about his wife’s stiffening form, he crouched beside her on the floor. And at the table near by the two unwilling spectators sat watching.
Finally the duc spoke again, still with the same mechanical tone and with his eyes still fastened on her face. “She came to Acadie without my knowledge, by the connivance of some of her own faith at Rochelle, as she herself told me, hiring a swift trading bark that dogged our course all the way, and landed her in the darkness below the fort. And ever since our meeting here has she been most bitter to me. She gave me no reproaches. She was too proud, if you understand, but each morning her eyes rested scornfully on me, as we left her at the door. Often, too, in the evenings, would I wander about her hut, watching her shadow pass to and fro across the window. Once I tapped lightly at the door, giving a secret signal we had often idly used in France, and she bade me depart so sternly I never ventured signal more. To-night it chanced I was standing not far from the window, when suddenly I heard her fall. In an instant I was within, but Manette was already dead. And now she is dead, monsieur,” went on the duc, his eyes glittering feverishly as he tossed the golden hair caressingly to and fro, “now she is dead, she is mine again. And I will bury her this night in a secret place I last week learned of, so that alien faces shall look on her no more, and where she shall slumber by the dust of dead Indian chiefs, and near the noise of a rushing stream. For it was by a brawling brook on her father’s estate that we first met, and ever she loved its noises well.”
The rest of the night to Biencourt was always like a half-forgotten dream. Together he remembered they had borne the icy body the distance of a hundred yards, when, wearied from their recent wounds, he and the duc had come perforce to a sudden stop. It was then he had left the duc and Lescarbot with their burden, and, running to the fort, brought Imbert, yawning, to their aid. After that the journey was easy, for Imbert poised Madame Manette’s body on his giant shoulders, easily as a mother might raise her child, and mile after mile bore it on through the waving forest. Port Royal, its bastion and palisades swimming in yellow moonlight, was left behind; the forest closed over them, dark and sullen, and still they pressed on. The duc went first, leading the way without hesitation, for the path was well marked, though in shadow, and even to a stranger impossible to miss. And by this the others knew they were going to the ancient sepulchre of the Indian chiefs—a place of mysteries, where strange influences had their hiding-places.