"In honor of the Creator of men and beasts, and S. Francis of Assisi, go free now and for ever," she said.
The creature stood motionless one instant, then, with the rush and speed of an arrow, it shot through the opening, flew across the green, and leaped into the water, that hissed as though a red-hot coal had been dropped into it. Annette ran, laughing and full of excitement, back to the rock, and watched the swimmer. Only his nose and long tail showing, he made fiercely for the shore, his whole being concentrated in the one longing for freedom.
"If he should run into a cage on the other side, I believe his heart would burst with the disappointment," Annette said, standing up to watch him. "Bravo! There he is, my dear brother, the fox."
He leaped up the farther shore and over the track, and rushed headlong into the broad, free woods.
"Won't he have a story to tell!" said Annette, seating herself; "that is, if he ever stops running. You may depend on it, Honora, I shall be a great heroine among the foxes; and as years go by, and the story is passed down from generation to generation, I shall undergo a change in the picture. My hair will grow to be golden, with stars in it, and my eyes will be radiant, and they will put wings on me, and I shall be an angel. That's the way the myths and marvels were made. But how they will get over my sawing off the rope with a dull pen-knife is more than I can tell."
"The spirit will be true, dear, if not the letter," Honora answered, smiling. "What signifies a little inaccuracy in the material part? That will be turned to dust before the story reaches the winged period."
Miss Ferrier had something on her mind which she shrank a little from speaking of, but presently mentioned in that careless manner we assume when we care more than we like to own:
"I've been wondering lately whether it would be silly in me to have my genealogy looked up. It seems a little top-heavy to have one's family tree all leaves and no roots, though mine is not so in reality. My father and mother were both very poor and ignorant when I was born; but my great-grandfather was a French gentleman. He became poor in some way, and had no idea how to do anything for himself. I dare say he was very weak, but he was immensely genteel. He and his sons lived in a tumble-down old stone house somewhere near Quebec, and ate oatmeal porridge out of painted china bowls, with heavy spoons that had a crest on them. There they moaned away their existence in a state of resigned surprise at their circumstances, and of expectation that the riches that had taken to themselves wings would fly back again. There was one desperate one in the family, and he was my grandfather. He grew tired of shabby gentility, and set out to work. The others cast him off; and I suppose he wasn't very energetic, or very lucky, for he went down. He married a wife from the working class, and they had no end of children, who all died sooner or later, except my father. My grandfather died, too—was glad to get himself out of sight of the sun; and my poor father—God be merciful to him!—stumbled on through life in the same dazed way. All he inherited was the dull astonishment of that old Frenchman who could never be made to realize that riches would not some day come back as they had gone. Of course"—Annette shrugged her shoulders, and laughed slightly—"it would be necessary to drop some of the later details. That is the way people do. Build a bridge over the chasm into the shining part. Miss Pembroke, what do you think of my unearthing my great-grandfather, and setting him up in my parlors for people to admire? Wouldn't it be more interesting than a stuffed fox? I am of his ancestry"—her laughter died out in a flash of pride. "If they had any fire worthy their blood, I have it. Some spark was held in abeyance, and I have caught it. I would like to go back and search out my kindred. Well! do you think me vulgar?"
Honora looked at her earnestly. "No, Annette; but you are condescending too much. You are coming nearer to vulgarity than I ever knew you to before. Lineage is something, is much, and those who can look back on a noble and stainless ancestry are fortunate, if they are worthy of it. I do not wonder that they are pleased to remember their forefathers. But character is more, and does not need ancestry. It is sufficient to itself. What, after all, is the real advantage of belonging to a high family? It is that one is supposed to inherit from it high qualities. If one has the qualities without the family, it is far higher. It is the kind of character that founds great families—that natural, newly-given loftiness. I should be sorry if you allowed yourself to take a step in this matter, Annette."
"You can easily say all that," Annette replied, half pleased and half bitter. "You have a past that you can look to with pride."