oise might cover
attacks. As the milder ungeared his primitive machinery, he had
thought of saving water in the flume-chamber. There were wires and
chains for shutting off its escape.

He now opened a door in the humid wall and put his candle over the
clear, dark water. The flume no longer furnished a supply, and he
stared open-lipped, wondering if the enemy had meddled with his
water-gate in the upland.

The flume, at that time the most ambitious wooden channel on the north
shore, supported on high stilts of timber, dripped all the way from
a hill stream to the fourth story of Petit Cap mill. The miller had
watched it escape burning thatches, yet something had happened at the
dam. Shreds of moss, half floating and half moored, reminded him to
close the reservoir, and he had just moved the chains when La Vigne
startled him by speaking at his ear.

The miller recoiled, but almost in the action his face recovered
itself. He wore a gray wool night-cap, and its tassel hung down over
one lifted eyebrow.

"Pierre Sandeau, my friend," opened La Vigne with a whimper, "I
followed you up here to weep with you."

"You did well," replied the miller bluntly, "for I am a ruined man
with the parish to feed, unless the Seminaire fathers take pity on
me."

"Yes, you have lost more than all of us," said La Vigne.

"I am not the man to measure losses and exult over my neighbors,"
declared the miller; "but how many pigs would you give to your girl's
dower now, Guillaume?"

"None at all, my poor Pierre. At least she is not a widow."

"Nor ever likely to be now, since she has no dower to make her a
wife."

"How could she be a wife without a husband? Taunt me no more about
that pig. I tell you it is worse with you: you have no son."

"What do you mean? I have half a dozen."

"But Laurent is shot."

"Laurent--shot?" whispered the miller, relaxing his flabby face, and
letting the candle sink downward until it spread their shadows on the
floor.

"Yes, my friend," whimpered La Vigne. "I saw him through my window
when the alarm was given. He was doubtless coming to save us all, for
an officer was with him. Jules Martin's thatch was just fired. It was
bright as sunrise against the hill, and the English saw our Laurent
and his officer, no doubt, for they shot them down, and I saw it
through my back window."

The miller sunk to his knees, and set the candle on the floor; La
Vigne approached and mingled night-cap tassels and groa