th upon women and children."

"They can, and they will," said a voice from the crowd.

None answered. The street was very quiet in the darkness. Far away
in the east the red glare glowed. On the wind was still that faint,
distant, ravening roar, like the roar of famished wolves; it was the
roar of fire and of war.

In the silence Reine Allix spoke: "God is good. Shall we not trust in
Him?"

With one great choking sob the people answered; their hearts were
breaking. All night long they watched in the street--they who had done
no more to bring this curse upon them than the flower-roots that slept
beneath the snow. They dared not go to their beds; they knew not when
the enemy might be upon them. They dared not flee; even in their own
woods the foe might lurk for them. One man indeed did cry aloud, "Shall
we stay here in our houses to be smoked out like bees from their hives?
Let us fly!"

But the calm, firm voice of Reine Allix rebuked him: "Let who will,
run like a hare from the hounds. For me and mine, we abide by our
homestead."

And they were ashamed to be outdone by a woman, and a woman of ninety
years old, and no man spoke any more of flight. All the night long they
watched in the cold and the wind, the children shivering beneath their
mothers' skirts, the men sullenly watching the light of the flames in
the dark, starless sky. All night long they were left alone, though
far off they heard the dropping shots of scattered firing, and in the
leafless woods around them the swift flight of woodland beasts startled
from their sleep, and the hurrying feet of sheep terrified from their
folds in the outlying fields.

The daybreak came, gray, cheerless, very cold. A dense fog, white and
raw, hung over the river; in the east, where the sun, they knew, was
rising, they could only see the livid light of the still towering flames
and pillars of black smoke against the leaden clouds.

"We will let them come and go in peace if they will," murmured old
Mathurin. "What can we do? We have no arms, no powder hardly, no
soldiers, no defence."

Bernadou said nothing, but he straightened his tall limbs, and in his
grave blue eyes a light gleamed.

Reine Allix looked at him as she sat in the doorway of her house. "Thy
hands are honest, thy heart pure, thy conscience clear. Be not afraid to
die if need there be," she said to him.

He looked down and smiled on her. Margot clung to him in a passion of
weeping. He clasped her cl