“What about his scars?” I asked hardily.

“Scars! yes, I am told he has the proper stigmata of the dauphin.  He was taken out of the Temple prison; a dying boy being substituted for him there.  We all know the dauphin’s physician died suddenly; some say he was poisoned; and a new physician attended the boy who died in the Temple.  Of course the priest who received the child’s confession should have known a dauphin when he saw one.  But that’s neither here nor there.  We lived then in surprising times.”

“Madame d’Angouleme would recognize him as her brother if she saw him?” I suggested.

“I think she is not so open to tokens as at one time.  Women’s hearts are tender.  The Duchess d’Angouleme could never be convinced that her brother died.”

“But others, including her uncle, were convinced?”

“The Duke of Richemont was not.  What do you yourself think, Monsieur Williams?”

“I think that the man who is out is an infinite joke.  He tickles the whole world.  People have a right to laugh at a man who cannot prove he is what he says he is.  The difference between a pretender and a usurper is the difference between the top of the hill and the bottom.”

The morning sun showed the white mortar ribs of my homestead clean and fair betwixt hewed logs; and brightened the inside of the entrance or hall room.  For I saw the door stood open.  It had been left unfastened but not ajar.  Somebody was in the house.

I told Abbe Edgeworth we would dismount and tie our horses a little distance away.  And I asked him to wait outside and let me enter alone.

He obligingly sauntered on the hill overlooking the Fox; I stepped upon the gallery and looked in.

The sweep of a gray dress showed in front of the settle.  Eagle was there.  I stood still.

She had put on more wood.  Fire crackled in the chimney.  I saw, and seemed to have known all night, that she had taken pieces of unbroken bread and meat left by Pierre Grignon on my table; that her shoes were cleaned and drying in front of the fire; that she must have carried her dress above contact with the soft ground.

When I asked Abbe Edgeworth not to come in, her dread of strangers influenced me less than a desire to protect her from his eyes, haggard and draggled as she probably was.  The instinct which made her keep her body like a temple had not failed under the strong excitement that drove her out.  Whether she slept under a bush, or not at all, or took to the house after Pierre Grignon and I left it, she was resting quietly on the settle before the fireplace, without a stain of mud upon her.

I could see nothing but the foot of her dress.  Had any change passed over her face?  Or had the undisturbed smile of my Cloud-Mother followed me on the road?

Perhaps the cloud had thickened.  Perhaps thunders and lightnings moved within it.  Sane people sometimes turn wild after being lost, running from their friends, and fighting against being restrained and brought home.