“No, my children; but whether called Jack or John, he is a good sort.  When he left your mother, she thanked him with tears for all his kindness and devotion to the general, herself, and the children; but he pressed her hands in his, and said to her, in so gentle a voice that I could not help being touched by it:  ’Why do you thank me?  Did He not Say—­love ye one another!’”

“Who is that, Dagobert?”

“Yes, of whom did the traveller speak?”

“I know nothing about it; only the manner in which he pronounced those words struck me, and they were the last he spoke.”

“Love one another!” repeated Rose, thoughtfully.

“How beautiful are those words!” added Blanche.

“And whither was the traveller going?”

“Far, very far into the North, as he told your mother.  When she saw him depart, she said to me:  ’His mild, sad talk has affected me even to tears; whilst I listened to him, I seemed to be growing better—­I seemed to love my husband and my children more—­and yet, to judge by the expression of his countenance, one would think that this stranger had never either smiled or wept!’ She and I watched him from the door as long as we could follow him with our eyes; he carried his head down, and his walk was slow, calm, and firm; one might fancy that he counted his steps.  And, talking of steps, I remarked yet another thing.”

“What was it, Dagobert?”

“You know that the road which led to our house way, always damp, because of the overflowing of the little spring.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, the mark of the traveller’s footsteps remained in the clay, and I saw that he had nails under his shoe in the form of a cross.”

“How in the form of a cross?”

“Look!” said Dagobert, placing the tip of his finger seven times on the coverlet of the bed; “they were arrange:  thus beneath his heel:” 

          *
        * * *
          *
          *
          *

“You see it forms a cross.”

“What could it mean, Dagobert?”

“Chance, perhaps—­yes, chance—­and yet, in spite of myself, this confounded cross left behind him struck me as a bad omen, for hardly was he gone when misfortune after misfortune fell upon us.”

“Alas! the death of our mother!”

“Yes—­but, before that, another piece of ill-luck.  You had not yet returned, and she was writing her petition to ask leave to go to France or to send you there, when I heard the gallop of a horse.  It was a courier from the governor general of Siberia.  He brought us orders to change our residence; within three days we were to join other condemned persons, and be removed with them four hundred leagues further north.  Thus, after fifteen years of exile, they redoubled in cruelty towards your mother.”

“Why did they thus torment her?”