Berenger had stepped over the threshold, with his hat in his hand, as if the ruin were a sacred place to him, and stood gazing in a transfixed, deadened way.  The captain asked where the remains were.

‘Our people,’ said the old man and the fisher, ’laid them by night in the earth near the church.’

Just then Berenger’s gaze fell on something half hidden under the fallen timbers.  He instantly sprang forward, and used all his strength to drag it out in so headlong a manner that all the rest hurried to prevent his reckless proceedings from bringing the heavy beams down on his head.  When brought to light, the object proved to be one of the dark, heavy, wooden cradles used by the French peasantry, shining with age, but untouched by fire.

‘Look in,’ Berenger signed to Philip, his own eyes averted, his mouth set.

The cradle was empty, totally empty, save for a woolen covering, a little mattress, and a string of small yellow shells threaded.

Berenger held out his hand, grasped the baby-play thing convulsively, then dropped upon his knees, clasping his hands over his ashy face, the string of shells still wound among his fingers.  Perhaps he had hitherto hardly realized the existence of his child, and was solely wrapped up in the thought of his wife; but the wooden cradle, the homely toy, stirred up fresh depths of feelings; he saw Eustacie wither tender sweetness as a mother, he beheld the little likeness of her in the cradle; and oh! that this should have been the end!  Unable to repress a moan of anguish from a bursting heart, he laid his face against the senseless wood, and kissed it again and again, then lay motionless against it save for the long-drawn gasps and sobs that shook his frame.  Philip, torn to the heart, would have almost forcibly drawn him away; but Master Hobbs, with tears running down his honest cheeks, withheld the boy.  ’Don’t ye, Master Thistlewood, ’twill do him good.  Poor young gentleman!  I know how it was when I came home and found our first little lad, that we had thought so much on, had been take.  But then he was safe laid in his own churchyard, and his mother was there to meet me; while your poor brother—–­Ah!  God comfort him!’

‘Le pauvre Monsieur!’ exclaimed the old peasant, struck at the sight of his grief, ’was it then his child?  And he, no doubt, lying wounded elsewhere while God’s hand was heavy on this place.  Yet he might hear more.  They said the priest came down and carried off the little ones to be bred up in convents.’

‘Who?—­where?’ asked Berenger, raising his head as if catching at a straw in this drowning of all his hopes.

‘’Tis true,’ added the fisherman.  ’It was the holy priest of Nissard, for he send down to St. Julien for a woman to nurse the babes.’

‘To Nissard, then,’ said Berenger, rising.

‘It is but a chance,’ said the old Huguenot; ’many of the innocents were with their mothers in yonder church.  Better for them to perish like the babes of Bethlehem than to be bred up in the house of Baal; but perhaps Monsieur is English, and if so he might yet obtain the child.  Yet he must not hope too much.’