“I thought they were straitened in Monsieur’s court,” he raged, “and they have been maintaining a false dauphin!”

“As I said, Bellenger,” remarked his superior, “you are either a fool or the greatest rascal I ever saw.”

He looked at Bellenger attentively.

“Yet why should you want to mix clues—­and be rewarded with evident misery?  And how could you lose him out of your hand and remain unconscious of it?  He was sent to the ends of the earth for safety—­poor shattered child!—­and if he is safe elsewhere, why should you be pensioned to maintain another child?  They say that a Bourbon never learns anything; but I protest that a Bourbon knows well what he does know.  I feel sure my uncle intends no harm to the disabled heir.  Who is guilty of this double dealing?  I confess I don’t understand it.”

Now whether by our long and silent stare we drew his regard, or chance cast his eye upward, the potter that instant saw us standing in the cloud above him.  He dropped by his motionless wheel, all turned to clay himself.  The eyeballs stuck from his face.  He opened his mouth and screeched as if he had been started and could not leave off—­

“The king!—­the king!—­the king!—­the king!”

IX

The fool’s outcry startled me less than Madame de Ferrier.  She fell against me and sank downward, so that I was obliged to hold her up in my arms.  I had never seen a woman swoon.  I thought she was dying, and shouted to them below to come and help me.

The potter sat sprawling on the ground, and did not bestir himself to do anything.  As soon as my hands and mind were free I took him by the scruff of the neck and kicked him behind with a good will.  My rage at him for disregarding her state was the savage rage of an Iroquois.  The other man laughed until the woods rang.  Madame de Ferrier sat up in what seemed to me a miraculous manner.  We bathed her temples with brandy, and put her on a cushion of leaves raked up and dried to make a seat by the fire.  The other man, who helped me carry her into the ravine, stood with his hat off, as was her due.  She thanked him and thanked me, half shrouding her face with her hood, abashed at finding herself lost among strangers in the night; which was my fault.  I told him I had been a bad guide for a lady who had missed her way; and he said we were fortunate to reach a camp instead of stumbling into some danger.

He was much older than I, at least fourteen years, I learned afterwards, but it was like meeting Skenedonk again, or some friend from whom I had only been parted.

The heartening warmth of the fire made steam go up from our clothes; and seeing Madame de Ferrier alive once more, and the potter the other side of his wheel taking stock of his hurt, I felt happy.

We could hear in the cabin behind us a whining like that uttered by a fretful babe.