"O Mother Lefevre!" cried Louise; "if he should be killed, while you speak thus!"
"She is right, poor child!" thought Catherine—
And she continued:
"I said I repent of forgiving him; but he is a brave man, to whom I can wish no ill. I forgive him with all my heart. In his place I would have done as he has done."
Two or three hundred yards further on, they entered the defile of the Rocks. The snow had ceased falling and the moon shone brilliantly from between two great black and white clouds. The narrow gorge, bordered by pointed rocks, seemed to unroll its length to their view, and on its sides high firs rose, until lost in distance. Nothing broke the deep quiet of the woods; human turmoil seemed indeed far away. So profound was the silence that they heard every step of the horse in the soft snow, and even his weary breathing. Frantz Materne halted from time to time, cast a glance over the dark mountain sides, and then hastened to overtake the others.
And valleys succeeded valleys; the sled ascended, descended, turned to right and to left, and the partisans, with their cold blue bayonets fixed, followed steadily after.
Thus toward three in the morning they had reached the field of Brimbelles, where even yet may be seen an old oak standing in a turn of the valley. On the other side, to the left, in the midst of bushes white with snow, behind its little wall of loose stones and the palings of its little garden, the lodge of Cuny, the forester, began to outline itself against the mountain side, with its three bee-hives in a row on a plank, its old knotty vine climbing to the roof, and its little branch of fir hung over the door by way of sign; for in that solitude Cuny joined to his avocation of forester that of innkeeper.
Here, as the road runs along the edge of a bank several feet above the field, and the moon was obscured by a thick cloud, the doctor, fearing lest the sledge should be overset, halted beneath the oak.
"Another hour will see us to the end of our journey, Mother Lefevre," said he; "so be of good cheer—we have now plenty of time."