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