e your own roof in flames if you will; you shall not ruin
ours. Do what you will with your own neck; keep it erect or hang by it,
as you choose. But you have no right to give your neighbours over to
death, whether they will or no."

He strove, he pleaded, he conjured, he struggled with them half the
night, with the salt tears running down his cheeks, and all his gentle
blood burning with righteous wrath and loathing shame, stirred for the
first time in all his life to a rude, simple, passionate eloquence. But
they were not persuaded. Their few gold pieces hidden in the rafters,
their few feeble sheep starving in the folds, their own miserable lives,
all hungry, woe-begone, and spent in daily terrors--these were still
dear to them, and they would not imperil them. They called him a madman;
they denounced him as one who would be their murderer; they threw
themselves on him and demanded his musket, to bury it with the rest
under the altar in the old chapel on the hill.

Bernadou's eyes flashed fire; his breast heaved; his nerves quivered; he
shook them off and strode a step forward. "As you live," he muttered, "I
have a mind to fire on you, rather than let you live to shame yourselves
and me!"

Reine Allix, who stood by him silent all the while, laid her hand on his
shoulder. "My boy," she said in his ear, "you are right, and they are
wrong. Yet let not dissension between brethren open the door for the
enemy to enter thereby into your homes. Do what you will with your own
life, Bernadou,--it is yours,--but leave them to do as they will with
theirs. You cannot make sheep into lions, and let not the first blood
shed here be a brother's."

Bernadou's head dropped on his breast. "Do as you will," he muttered to
his neighbours. They took his musket from him, and in the darkness of
the night stole silently up the wooded chapel hill and buried it, with
all their other arms, under the altar where the white Christ hung. "We
are safe now," said Mathurin, the miller, to the patriots of the tavern.
"Had that madman had his way, he had destroyed us all."

Reine Allix softly led her grandson across his own threshold, and drew
his head down to hers, and kissed him between the eyes. "You did what
you could, Bernadou," she said to him; "let the rest come as it will."

Then she turned from him, and flung her cloak over her head, and sank
down, weeping bitterly; for she had lived through ninety-three years
only to see this agony at the