‘Listen!’ said Beranger; ‘it imports—–­’

‘Peace,’ was the stern answer; but a Norman farmer looked round at that moment, and Beranger exclaimed, ’Stop the singing!  The gens d’armes!’ The psalm broke off; the whisper circulated; the words ‘from Leurre’ were next conveyed from lip to lip, and, as it were in a moment, the dense human mass had broken up and vanished, stealing through the numerous paths in the brushwood, or along the brook, as it descended through tall sedges and bulrushes.  The valley was soon as lonely as it had been populous; the pulpit remained a mere mossy bank, more suggestive or fairy dances than of Calvinist sermons, and no one remained on the scene save Beranger with his pony, Jacques the groom, a stout farmer, the preacher, and a tall thin figure in the plainest dark cloth dress that could be worn by a gentleman, a hawk on his wrist.

‘Thou here, my boy!’ he exclaimed, as Beranger came to his side; and as the little fellow replied in a few brief words, he took him by the hand, and said to the minister, ’Good Master Isaac, let me present my young son to you, who under Heaven hath been the means of saving many lives this day.’

Maitre Isaac Gardon, a noted preacher, looked kindly at the boy’s fair face, and said, ’Bless thee, young sir.  As thou hast been already a chosen instrument to save life, so mayest thou be ever after a champion of the truth.’

‘Monsieur le Baron,’ interposed Jacques, ’it were best to look to yourself.  I already hear sounds upon the wind.’

‘And you, good sir?’ said the Baron.

‘I will see to him,’ said the farmer, grasping him as a sort of property.  ’M. le Baron had best keep up the beck.  Out on the moor there he may fly the hawk, and that will best divert suspicion.’

‘Farewell, then,’ said the Baron, wringing the minister’s hand, and adding, almost to himself, ‘Alas!  I am weary of these shifts!’ and weary indeed he seemed, for as the ground became so steep that the beck danced noisily down its channel, he could not keep up the needful speed, but paused, gasping for breath, with his hand on his side.  ’Beranger was off his pony in an instant, assuring Follet that it ought to be proud to be ridden by his father, and exhaling his own exultant feelings in caresses to the animal as it gallantly breasted the hill.  The little boy had never been so commended before!  He loved his father exceedingly; but the Baron, while ever just towards him, was grave and strict to a degree that the ideas even of the sixteenth century regarded as severe.  Little Eustacie with her lovely face, her irrepressible saucy grace and audacious coaxing, was the only creature to whom he ever showed much indulgence and tenderness, and even that seemed almost against his will and conscience.  His son was always under rule, often blamed, and scarcely ever praised; but it was a hardy vigorous nature, and respectful love throve under the system