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am no Catholic, I do not know that I am superstitious, yet when I became conscious that the thing I held was the wooden cross that Mathilde had given me, a weird feeling passed through me, and there was an arrest of the passions of mind and body; a coolness passed over all my nerves, and my brain got clear again, the ring of fire loosing, melting away. It was a happy, diverting influence, which gave the mind rest for a moment, till the better spirit, the wiser feeling, had a chance to reassert itself; but then it seemed to me almost supernatural. One can laugh when misery and danger are over, and it would be easy to turn this matter into ridicule, but from that hour to this the wooden cross which turned the flood of my feelings then into a saving channel has never left me. I keep it, not indeed for what it was, but for what it did. As I stood musing, there came to my mind suddenly the words of a song which I had heard some voyageurs sing on the St. Lawrence, as I sat on the cliff a hundred feet above them and watched them drift down in the twilight: "Brothers, we go to the Scarlet Hills: (Little gold sun, come out of the dawn!) There we will meet in the cedar groves; (Shining white dew, come down!) There is a bed where you sleep so sound, The little good folk of the hills will guard, Till the morning wakes and your love comes home. (Fly away, heart, to the Scarlet Hills!)" Something in the half-mystical, half-Arcadian spirit of the words soothed me, lightened my thoughts, so that when, presently, Gabord opened the door, and entered with four soldiers, I was calm enough for the great shift. Gabord did not speak, but set about pinioning me himself. I asked him if he could not let me go unpinioned, for it was ignoble to go to ones death tied like a beast. At first he shook his head, but as if with a sudden impulse lie cast the ropes aside, and, helping me on with my cloak, threw again over it a heavier cloak he had brought, gave me a fur cap to wear, and at last himself put on me a pair of woollen leggings, which, if they were no ornament, and to be of but transitory use (it seemed strange to me then that one should be caring for a body so soon to be cut off from all feeling), were most comforting when we came into the bitter, steely air. Gabord might easily have given these last tasks to the soldiers, but he was solicitous to perform them himself. Yet with surly brow and a rough accent he
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