“Madame,” whispered Pierre, “he is a stranger to this place, and the people would not receive him into their houses—­not one of them.  My father only said, ‘He is an enemy to our dear English madame,’ and all the women turned the back upon him.  I stole after him, you know, behind the trees and the hedges.  He marched very slowly, like a man very weary, down the road, till he came in sight of the factory of the late Pineaux.  He turned aside into the court there.  I saw him knock at the door of the house, try to lift the latch, and peep through the windows.  Bien!  After that, he goes into the factory; there is a door from it into the house.  He passed through.  I dared not follow him, but in one short half-hour I saw smoke coming out of the chimney.  Bon!  The smoke is there again this morning.  The Englishman has sojourned there all the night.”

“But, Pierre,” I said, shivering, though the sun was already shining hotly—­“Pierre, the house is like a lazaretto.  No one has been in it since Mademoiselle Pineau died.  Monsieur le Cure locked it up, and brought away the key.”

“That is true, madame,” answered the boy; “no one in the village would go near the accursed place; but I never thought of that.  Perhaps monsieur your enemy will take the fever, and perish.”

“Run, Pierre, run,” I cried; “Monsieur Laurentie is in the sacristy, with the strange vicaire.  Tell him I must speak to him this very moment.  There is no time to be lost.”

I dragged myself to the seat under the sycamore-tree, and hid my face in my hands, while shudder after shudder quivered through me.  I seemed to be watching him again, as he strode weariedly down the street, leaning, with bent shoulders, on his stick, and turned away from every door at which he asked for rest and shelter for the night.  Oh! that the time could but come back again, that I might send Jean to find some safe place for him where he could sleep!  Back to my memory rushed the old days, when he screened me from the unkindness of my step-mother, and when he seemed to love me.  For the sake of those times, would to God the evening that was gone, and the sultry, breathless night, could only come back again!

CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH.

SUSPENSE.

I felt as if I had passed through an immeasurable spell, both of memory and anguish, before Monsieur Laurentie came to me, though he had responded to my summons immediately.  I told him, in hurried, broken sentences, what Pierre had confessed to me.  His face grew overcast and troubled; yet he did not utter a word of his apprehensions to me.

“Madame,” he said, “permit me to take my breakfast first; then I will seek Monsieur Foster without delay.  I will carry with me some food for him.  We will arrange this affair before I return; Jean shall bring the char a bancs to the factory, and take him back to Noireau.”

“But the fever, monsieur?  Can he pass a night there without taking it?”