Menard rose, but she stepped to the door. "Let me go, M'sieu. Ah, I see them. It is my little friends." She went out, and they could hear her laughing with the two children, and trying to coax them toward the door.
"Danton will never get away," said the Captain, in a low tone to the priest.
"He has lost his head, poor boy. I thought him of better stuff. And the girl--Ah, if he had only gone alone! I could forgive his rashness, Father, his disobedience, if only he could go down with a clear name."
"There is still doubt," said the priest, cautiously. "We know only what Tegakwita said."
"I'm afraid," Menard replied, shaking his head, "I'm afraid it's true. You said he wore the hunting clothes. Some one freed him. And the girl is gone. I wish--Well, there is no use. I hoped for something better, that is all."
Just outside the door the maid was talking gaily with the two children, who now and then raised their piping voices. Then it was evident that they were going away, for she was calling after them. She came into the hut, smiling, and carrying a small willow basket full of corn.
"See," she said, "even now it is something to have made a friend. We shall not go hungry to-day, after all. Will you partake, Father? And M'sieu?"
She paused before the Captain. He had stepped forward, and was staring at her.
"The children? They are wandering along the path."
She hesitated, in surprise; then set the basket on the ground and obeyed. Menard paced the floor until she returned.
"They are outside, M'sieu, too frightened to come near."
"Give me that birch cup, outside the door." He was speaking in quick, low tones. "They must not see me. It would frighten them."
She brought him the cup, and he emptied the flowers on the floor, tearing open the seams, and drying the wet white bark on his sleeve. He snatched a charred coal from the heap of ashes in the centre of the floor, and wrote rapidly in a strange mixture of words and signs, "A piece of thread, Mademoiselle. And look again--see that they have not gone."
He rolled the bark tightly, and tied it with the thread which she brought from her bundle.
"We must have a present. Father Claude, you have your bale. Find something quickly,--something that will please them. No, wait--Mademoiselle, have you a mirror? They would run fifty leagues for a mirror."