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 close and kissed her softly, but the woman who