In truth, at first old David Hautville and all his sons except Eugene had risen against Burr and Madelon, all their pride in arms that she should return to this man who had once forsaken her for another.  But later they had yielded, for their pride was undermined by their own gloomy convictions as to Madelon, which they confided not to one another.  However, the boy Richard still greeted Burr surlily, with a fierce black flash under frowning brows, and scarcely spoke to Madelon at all until the day before her marriage.  That was set some two months after Dorothy’s.

Burr and Madelon, during the days of their betrothal, were as closely beset by spies on every hand as a party of Madelon’s old kindred might have been, encamped in a wooded country, where every bush veiled savage eyes and every tree stood in front of a foeman, but they did not know it.  Folk knew when Mrs. Gordon went to visit her son’s betrothed, though ’twas on a dark evening.  They knew what she wore, and how long she stayed.  They knew when Madelon returned her visit; they knew, to remember, in many cases, more details of their daily lives than Burr and Madelon themselves.

Madelon had few wedding preparations to make.  The wedding-garments which she had stitched with sorrow for her marriage with Lot would serve her now.  She employed her time in increasing still further the household stores of linen for her father’s and brothers’ use, when she should be gone, and in making a great stock of sweet-sauce, jelly, and cordials from the fruits and berries of the season.

One afternoon in late summer, when the high blackberries were ripe, Madelon set forth with a great basket on her arm.  A fine cordial, good for many ills, she knew how to make from the berries, and had planned to brew a goodly quantity this year.  She went down the road a way, then over some bars, with her hands on the highest and a spring like a willow branch set free, across a pasture where some red cows were grazing, then over another set of bars, into a rough and shaggy land sloping gradually into a hill.  Here the high blackberries grew in great thorny thickets, and Madelon pressed among them warily and began picking.  She had not picked long—­indeed the bottom of her basket was not covered—­when she heard a rustle in the bushes behind her and looked over her shoulder hurriedly, and there was Lot Gordon.

Lot came forward from a cluster of young firs, parting the rank undergrowth with the careless wonted movement of one who steers his way among his own household goods.  Well used to all the wild disorder of out-doors was Lot Gordon, and could have picked his way of a dark night among the stones and bushes and trees of many a pasture and woodland.  Moreover, Lot, uprising from the great nest which he had hollowed out for himself from a sweet fern growth under the balsam firs, exhaling their fragrant breath of healing, and coming into sight, made better show than he had ever done in his own book-walled study.