chill night received me into itself. At first my mind was benumbed, like
my body; but the pain of my face, smarting with switch and scratch of the
boughs through which I had fallen, awoke me to thought and fear. I
turned over to lie on my back, and look up for any light of hope in the
sky, but nothing fell on me from heaven save a cold rain, that the
leafless boughs did little to ward off. Scant hope or comfort had I; my
whole body ached and shuddered, only I did not thirst, for the rain
soaked through the accursed napkin on my mouth, while the dank earth,
with its graveyard smell, seemed to draw me down into itself, as it drags
a rotting leaf. I was buried before death, as it were, even if the
wolves found me not and gave me other sepulture; and now and again I
heard their long hunting cry, and at every patter of a beast's foot, or
shivering of the branches, I thought my hour was come--and I unconfessed!
The road was still as death, no man passing by it. This night to me was
like the night of a man laid living in the tomb. By no twisting and
turning could I loosen the rope that Brother Thomas had bound me in, with
a hand well taught by cruel practice. At last the rain in my face grew
like a water-torture, always dropping, and I half turned my face and
pressed it to the ground.

Whether I slept by whiles, or waked all night, I know not, but certainly
I dreamed, seeing with shut eyes faces that came and went, shifting from
beauty such as I had never yet beheld, to visages more and more hideous
and sinful, ending at last in the worst--the fell countenance of
Noiroufle. Then I woke wholly to myself, in terror, to find that he was
not there, and now came to me some of that ease which had been born of
the strange, sweet voice, and the strange words, "Mes Freres de Paradis."

"My brethren of Paradise"; who could she be that rode so late in company
of armed men, and yet spoke of such great kinsfolk? That it might be the