‘AH! la pauvre,’ cried the good woman, pressing forward as she saw how faint, heated, and exhausted was the wanderer.  ’Come in, ma pauvrette.  Only a bride at the Bartholomew!  Alas!  There, lean on me, my dear.’

To be tutoyee by the Fermiere Rotrou was a shock; yet the kind manner was comfortable, and Eustacie suffered herself to be led into the farm-house, where, as the dame observed, she need not fear chance-comers, for they lived much to themselves, and no one would be about till their boy Robinet came in with the cows.  She might rest and eat there in security, and after that they would find a hiding-place for her—­safe as the horns of the altar—­for a night or two; only for two nights at most.

‘Nor do I ask more,’ said Eustacie.  ’Then Martin will come for me.’

’Ah, I or Blaise, or whichever of us can do it with least suspicion.’

‘She shall meet you here,’ added Rotrou.

’All right, good man; I understand; it is best I should not know where you hide her.  Those rogues have tricks that make it as well to know nothing.  Farewell, Madame, I commend you to all the saints till I come for you on Monday morning.’

Eustacie gave him her hand to kiss, and tried to thank him, but somehow her heart sank, and she felt more lonely than ever, when entirely cast loose among these absolute strangers, than amongst her own vassals.  Even the farm-kitchen, large, stone-built, and scrupulously clean, seemed strange and dreary after the little, smoky, earth-built living-rooms in which her peasantry were content to live, and she never had seemed to herself so completely desolate; but all the time she was so wearied out with her long and painful walk, that she had no sooner taken some food than she began to doze in her chair.

‘Father,’ said the good wife, ’we had better take la pauvrette to her rest at once.’

‘Ah! must I go any farther?’ sighed Eustacie.

‘It is but a few fields beyond the yard, ma petite,’ said the good woman consolingly; ’and it will be safer to take you there ere we need a light.’

The sun had just set on a beautiful evening of a spring that happily for Eustacie had been unusually warm and mild, when they set forth, the dame having loaded her husband with a roll of bedding, and herself taking a pitcher of mild and a loaf of bread, whilst Eustacie, as usual, carried her own small parcel of clothes and jewels.  The way was certainly not long to any one less exhausted than she; it was along a couple of fields, and then through a piece of thicket, where Rotrou held back the boughs and his wife almost dragged her on with kind encouraging words, till they came up to a stone ivy-covered wall, and coasting along it to a tower, evidently a staircase turret.  Here Rotrou, holding aside an enormous bush of ivy, showed the foot of a winding staircase, and his wife assured her that she would not have far to climb.