rs;
and now they had to go all the way to Brancour to sell their fish.'

'And the townspeople?' Hobbs asked.

'Ah! poor things; 'twas pity of them, for they were honest folk to deal
with, even if they were heretics. They loved fish at other seasons if
not in Lent; and it seemed but a fair return to go up and bury as many
of them as were not burnt to nothing in their church; and Dom Colombeau,
the good priest of Nissard, has said it was a pious work; and he was a
saint, if any one was.'

'Alack, sir,' said Hobbs, laying his hand on the arm of Berenger, who
seemed neither to have breathed nor moved while the man was speaking:
'I feared that there had been some such bloody work when I missed the
steeple. But take heart yet: your lady is very like to have been out of
the way. We might make for La Rochelle, and there learn!' Then, again to
the fisherman, 'None escaped, fellow?'

'Not one,' replied the man. 'They say that one of the great folks was in
a special rage with them for sheltering the lady he should have wedded,
but who had broken convent and turned heretic; and they had victualled
Montgomery's pirates too.'

'And the lady?' continued Hobbs, ever trying to get a more supporting
hold of his young charge, in case the rigid tension of his limbs should
suddenly relax.'

'I cannot tell, sir. I am a poor fisher; but I could guide you to the
place where old Gillot is always poking about. He listened to their
preachings, and knows more than we do.'

'Let us go,' said Berenger, at once beginning to stride along in his
heavy boots through the deep sand. Philip, who had hardly understood a
word of the _patois_, caught hold of him, and begged to be told what had
happened; but Master Hobbs drew the boy off, and explained to him and
to the two men what were the dreadful tidings that had wrought such
a change in Berenger's demeanour. The way over the shifting sands was
toilsome enough to all the rest of the party; but Berenger scarcely
seemed to feel the deep plunge at every step as they almost ploughed
their way along for the weary two miles, before a few green bushes and
half-choked trees showed that they were reaching the confines of the
sandy waste. Berenger had not uttered a word the whole time, and his
silence hushed the others. The ground began to rise, grass was seen
still struggling to grow, and presently a large straggling mass of
black and gray ruins revealed themselves, with the remains of a once
well-trodden