window, take up its station on a beam above the hay, and look down with
the brightest, roundest eyes she had ever beheld. Let owls and bats
come where they would, she was happier than she had been for months.
Compassion for herself was plentiful enough, but to have heard Berenger
spoken of with love and admiration seemed to quiet the worst ache of her
lonely heart.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE MOONBEAM

She wandered east, she wandered west,
She wandered out and in;
And at last into the very swine's stythe
The queen brought forth a son.--Fause Foodrage

The morrow was Sunday, and in the old refectory, in the late afternoon,
a few Huguenots, warned by messages from the farm, met to profit by one
of their scanty secret opportunities for public worship. The hum of the
prayer, and discourse of the pastor, rose up through the broken vaulting
to Eustacie, still lying on her bed; for she had been much shaken by the
fatigues of the day and alarm of the night, and bitterly grieved, too,
by a message which Nanon conveyed to her, that poor Martin was in no
state to come for her in the next day; but he and his wife having been
seized upon by Narcisse and his men, and so savagely beaten in order to
force from them a confession of her hiding-place, that both were
lying helpless on their bed; and could only send an entreaty by the
trustworthy fool, that Rotrou would find means of conveying Madame into
Chollet in some cart of hay or corn, in which she could be taken past
the barriers.

But this was not to be. Good Nanon had sacrificed the sermon to creep up
to Eustacie, and when the congregation were dispersing in the dusk, she
stole down the stairs to her husband; and a few seconds after he was
hurrying as fast as _detours_ would allow him to Blaise's farm. An hour
and a half later, Dame Perrine, closely blindfolded for the last mile,
was dragged up the spiral staircase, and ere the bandage was removed
heard Eustacie's voice, with a certain cheeriness, say, 'Oh! nurse; my
son will soon come!'

The full moon gave her light, and the woman durst not have any other,
save from the wood-fire that Nanon had cautiously lighted and screened.
The moonshine was still supreme, when some time later a certain ominous
silence and half-whisper between the two women at the hearth made
Eustacie, with a low cry of terror, exclaim, 'Nurse, nurse, what means
this? Oh! He lives! I know he lives! Perrine, I command you tell m