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 groans with him.

“Oh, my son!  And I quarreled with thee, Guillaume, about a pig, and made the children unhappy.”

“But I was to blame for that, Pierre,” wept La Vigne, “and now we have neither pig nor son!”

“Perhaps Montgomery’s men have scalped him;” the miller pulled the night-cap from his own head and threw it on the floor in helpless wretchedness.

La Vigne uttered a low bellow in response, and they fell upon each other’s necks and were about to lament together in true Latin fashion, when the wife of Montcalm’s officer called to them.

She stood out from the shadow of the stone column, dead to all appearances, yet animate, and trying to hold up Angele whose whole body lapsed downward in half unconsciousness.  “Bring water,” demanded Madame De Mattissart.

And seeing who had overheard the dreadful news, La Vigne ran to the flume-chamber, and the miller scrambled up and reached over him to dip the first handful.  Both stooped within the door, both recoiled, and both raised a yell which echoed among high rafters in the attic above.  The miller thought Montgomery’s entire troop were stealing into the mill through the flume; for a man’s legs protruded from the opening and wriggled with such vigor that his body instantly followed and he dropped into the water.