For the innocent, then, had the shot been intended; and she running into danger out of her sweet, tender instincts of helpfulness, had been barely saved at the extreme peril of her unconscious father’s life.  Philip, whose vehement affection for the little one had been growing all day, was in the act of telling Berenger to string the bullet in the place of the injured pearl, as the most precious heirloom of Ribaumont bravery, when Eustacie returned, and learning all, grew pale and shuddered as danger had never made her do before:  but this strange day had almost made a coward of her.

‘And this is has spared,’ said Berenger, taking out the string of little yellow shells.  ’Dost know them, sweet heart?  They have been my chaplet all this time.’

‘Ah!’ cried Eustacie, ’poor, good Mademoiselle Noemi! she threaded them for my child, when she was very little.  Ah! could she have given them to you—­could it then not have been true—­that horror?’

’Alas! it was too true.  I found these shells in the empty cradle, in the burnt house, and deemed them all I should ever have of my babe.’

’Poor Noemi! poor Noemi!  She always longed to be a martyr; but we fled from her, and the fate we had brought on her.  That was the thought that preyed on my dear father.  He grieved so to have left his sheep—­and it was only for my sake.  Ah!  I have brought evil on all who have been good to me, beginning with you.  You had better cast me off, or I shall bring yet worse!’

‘Let it be so, if we are only together.’

He drew her to him and she laid her head on his shoulder, murmuring, ’Ah! father, father, were you but here to see it.  So desolate yesterday, so ineffably blest today.  Oh!  I cannot even grieve for him now, save that he could not just have seen us; yet I think he knew it would be so.’

‘Nay, it may be that he does see us,’ said Berenger.  ’Would that I had known who it was whom you were laying down “en paix et seurte bonne!” As it was, the psalm brought precious thoughts of Chateau Leurre, and the little wife who was wont to sing it with me.’

‘Ah!’ said Eustacie, ’it was when he sang those words as he was about to sleep in the ruin of the Temple that first I—­ cowering there in terror—­knew him for no Templar’s ghost, but for a friend.  That story ended my worst desolation.  That night he became my father; the next my child came to me!’

’My precious treasure!  Ah! what you must have undergone, and I all unknowing, capable of nothing wiser than going out of my senses, and raging in a fever because I could convince no one that those were all lies about your being aught but my true and loving wife.  But tell me, what brought thee hither to be the tutelary patron, where, but for the siege, I had over-passed thee on the way to Quinet?’