ghborhood if Rogron, in his terror, had not opened the door. The
scream of the young girl at bay gave her grandmother the sudden strength
of anger with which she carried her dear Pierrette in her arms to
Frappier's house, where Madame Frappier hastily arranged Brigaut's own
room for the old woman and her treasure. In that poor room, on a bed
half-made, the sufferer was deposited; and there she fainted away,
holding her hand still clenched, wounded, bleeding, with the nails deep
bedded in the flesh. Brigaut, Frappier, his wife, and the old woman
stood looking at Pierrette in silence, all four of them in a state of
indescribable amazement.

"Why is her hand bloody?" said the grandmother at last.

Pierrette, overcome by the sleep which follows all abnormal displays of
strength, and dimly conscious that she was safe from violence, gradually
unbent her fingers. Brigaut's letter fell from them like an answer.

"They tried to take my letter from her," said Brigaut, falling on his
knees and picking up the lines in which he had told his little friend to
come instantly and softly away from the house. He kissed with pious love
the martyr's hand.

It was a sight that made those present tremble when they saw the old
gray woman, a sublime spectre, standing beside her grandchild's pillow.
Terror and vengeance wrote their fierce expressions in the wrinkles
that lined her skin of yellow ivory; her forehead, half hidden by the
straggling meshes of her gray hair, expressed a solemn anger. She read,
with a power of intuition given to the aged when near their grave,
Pierrette's whole life, on which her mind had dwelt throughout her
journey. She divined the illness of her darling, and knew that she was
threatened with death. Two big tears painfully rose in her wan gray
eyes, from which her troubles had worn both lashes and eyebrows, two
pearls of anguish, forming within them and giving them a dreadful
brightness; then each tear swelled and rolled down the withered cheek,
but did not wet it.

"They have killed her!" she said at last, clasping her hands.

She fell on her knees which struck sharp blows on the brick-laid floor,
making a vow no doubt to Saint Anne d'Auray, the most powerful of the
madonnas of Brittany.

"A doctor from Paris," she said to Brigaut. "Go and fetch one, Brigaut,
go!"

She took him by the shoulder and gave him a despotic push to send him
from the room.

"I was coming, my lad, when you wrote me; I am rich,--h