The Forge in the Forest

"Up this river!" I exclaimed. "Then whither can they be taking him?"

"They did not leave him in the village," answered Martin, positively, "for the word goes that they passed on up in great haste. By the route they have taken, they are clearly bound for the Straits – "

"Ay, they'll cross to the head of the Pictook, and descend that stream," said I. "But which way will they turn then?" – For I was surprised and confused at the information.

"Well, Monsieur," said Martin, "when they get to the Straits, who knows? They may be going across to Ile St. Jean. They may turn south to Ile Royale; for the English, I hear, have no hold there, save at Louisburg and Canseau. Or they may turn north toward Miramichi. Who knows – save the Black Abbé?"

"I must overtake them," said I, resolutely. "Good-bye, my friend and thank you. If all goes well, you will get a summons from the Forge ere the moon is again at the full;" and I made haste back to the spot where Mizpah waited.

As I swung along, I congratulated myself on the good fortune which had so held me to the trail. Then I fell to thinking of my comrade, and the wonder of the situation, and the greater wonder of her eyes and hair, – which thoughts sped the time so sweetly that ere I could believe it I saw before me the overhanging willows, and the thicket by the stream. Then I stopped as if I had been struck in the face, and shook with a sudden fear.

At my very feet, fallen across the dead tree which I have already mentioned, lay the body of an Indian. Every line of the loose, sprawled body told me that he had met an instant death, – and a bullet hole in his back showed me the manner of it. Only for a second did I pause. Then I sprang into the thicket, with a horror catching at my heart. There was Mizpah lying on her face, – and a hoarse cry broke from my lips. But even as I flung myself down beside her I saw that she was not dead. No, she was shaking with sobs, – and the naturalness of it, strange to say, reassured me on the instant. I made to lift her, when she sprang at once to her feet, and looked at me wildly. I took her hand, to comfort her; but she drew it away, and gazed upon it with a kind of shrinking horror.

I understood now what had happened. Nevertheless, knowing not just the best thing to say, I asked her what was the matter.

"Oh," she cried, covering her eyes, "I killed him. He threw up his hands, and groaned, and fell like a log. How could I do it? How could I do it?"

I tried to assure her that she had done well; but finding that she would pay me no heed, I went to look at her victim. I turned him over, and muttered a thanksgiving to Heaven as I recognized him for one of the worst of the Black Abbé's flock. I found his tracks all about the canoe. Then I went back to Mizpah.

"Good soldier! Good comrade!" said I, earnestly. "You have killed Little Fox, the blackest and cruelest rogue on the whole Shubenacadie. Oh, I tell you you have done a good deed this day!"

The knowledge of this appeared to ease her somewhat, and in a few moments I gathered the details. The Indian had come suddenly to the bank, and seeing a canoe there had examined it curiously, – she, the while, waiting in great fear, for she had at once recognized him as one of her former captors, and one of whom she stood in special dread. While looking at our things in the canoe, he had appeared all at once to understand. He had picked up my coat, and examined it carefully, – and the grin that disclosed his long teeth disclosed also that he recognized it. Looking to the priming of his musket, he started cautiously up the bank upon my trail.

"As soon as he left the canoe," said Mizpah, still shaken with sobs, "I knew that something must be done. If he went away, it would be just to give the alarm, and then we could not escape, and Philip would be lost forever. But I saw that, instead of going away, he was going to track you and shoot you down. I didn't know what to do, or how I could ever shoot a man in cold blood, – but something made me do it. Just as he reached the end of the log, I seemed to see him already shooting you, away in the woods over there, – and then I fired. And oh, oh, oh, I shall never forget how he groaned and fell over!" And she stared at her right hand.

"Comrade," said I, "I owe my life to you. He would have shot me down; for, as I think of it, I went carelessly, and seldom looked behind when I got into the woods. To be so incautious is not my way, believe me. I know not how it was, unless I so trusted the comrade whom I had left behind to guard my trail. And now, here are news! They have brought the child this way, up this very river! The saints have surely led us thus far, for we are hot upon their track!"

And this made her forget to weep for the excellence of her shooting.

Chapter XV

Grûl's Hour

Though we were in a hot haste to get away, it was absolutely necessary first to bury the dead Indian, lest a hue and cry should be raised that might involve and delay us. With my paddle, therefore, I dug him a shallow grave in the soft mud at the edge of the tide, which was then on the ebb. This meagre inhumation completed, I smoothed the surface as best I could with my paddle; and then we set off, resting easy in the knowledge that the next tide would smooth down all traces of the work.

It was by this close upon sunset, and I felt a little hesitation as to what we had best do. I had no wish to run through the settlement till after dark, nor was I anxious to push on against the furious ebb of the des Saumons, against which the strongest paddlers could make slow headway. But it was necessary to get out of the creek before the water should quite forsake us; and, moreover, Mizpah was in a fever of haste to be gone. She kept gazing about as if she expected the savage to rise from his muddy grave and point at her. We ran out of the creek, therefore, and were instantly caught in the great current of the river. I suffered it to sweep us down for half a mile, having noted on the way up a cluster of haystacks in an angle of the dyke. Coming to these, I pushed ashore at once, carried the canoe up, and found that the place was one where we might rest secure. Here we ate our black bread and drank new milk, for there were many cattle pasturing on the aftermath, and some of the cows had not yet gone home to milking. Then, hiding the canoe behind the dyke, and ourselves between the stacks, in great weariness we sought our sleep.

There was no hint of dawn in the sky when I awoke with a start; but the constellations had swung so wide an arc that I knew morning was close at hand. There was a hissing clamour in the river-bed which told me the tide was coming in. That, doubtless, was the change which had so swiftly aroused me. I went to the other side of the stack, where Mizpah lay with her cheek upon her arm, her hair fallen adorably about her neck. Touching her forehead softly with my hand, I whispered: —

"Come, comrade, the tide has turned!" Whereupon she sat up quietly, as if this were for her the most usual of awakenings, and began to arrange her hair. I went out upon the shadowy marsh and soon accomplished a second theft of new milk, driving the tranquil cow which furnished it into the corner behind the stacks, that our dairy might be the more conveniently at hand. Our fast broken (and though I hinted nought of it to Mizpah, I found black bread growing monotonous), I carried the canoe down to the edge of the tide. But Mistress Mizpah's daintiness revolted at the mud, whereupon she took off her moccasins and stockings before she came to it, and I caught a gleam of slim white feet at the dewy edge of the grass. When I had carried down the paddles, pole, and baggage, I found her standing in a quandary. She could not get into the canoe with that sticky clay clinging to her feet, and there was no place where she could sit down to wash them. Carelessly enough (though my heart the while trembled within me), I stretched out my hand to her, saying: —

"Lean on me, comrade, and then you can manage it all right."

And so it was that she managed it; and so indifferently did I cast my eyes about, now at the breaking dawn, now at the swelling tide, that I am sure she must have deemed that I saw not or cared not at all how white and slender and shapely were her feet!

In few minutes we were afloat, going swiftly on the tide. The sky was all saffron as we slipped through the settlement, and a fairy glow lay upon the white cottages. The banks on either hand took on the ineffable hues of polished nacre. To the door of one cottage, close by the water, came a man yawning, and hailed us. But I flung back a mere "Bon jour," and sped on. Not till the settlement was out of sight behind us, not till the cross on the spire of the village was quite cut off from view, did I drop to the even pace of our day-long journeying. When at length we got beyond the influence of the tide, des Saumons was a shallow, sparkling, singing stream, its bed aglow with ruddy-coloured rocks. Here I laid aside my paddle and thrust the canoe onwards by means of my long pole of white spruce, while Mizpah had nought to do but lean back and watch the shores creep by.

At the head of tide we had stopped to drink and to breathe a little. And there, seeing an old man working in front of a solitary cabin, I had deemed it safe to approach him and purchase a few eggs. After this we kept on till an hour past noon, when I stopped in a bend of the river, at the foot of a perpendicular cliff of red rock some seventy or eighty feet in height. Here was a thicket wherein we might hide both the canoe and ourselves if necessary. The canoe I hid at once, that – being a matter of the more time. Then we both set ourselves to gathering dry sticks, for it seemed to me we might here risk the luxury of a fire, with a dinner of roasted eggs.

We had gathered but a handful or two, when I heard a crashing in the underbrush at the top of the cliff; and in a second, catching Mizpah by the hand, I had dragged her into hiding. Through a screen of dark and drooping hemlock boughs we gazed intently at the top of the cliff, – and I noted, without thinking worth while to remedy my oversight, that I had forgotten to release Mizpah's hand.

The crashing noise, mingled with some sharp outcries of rage and fear, continued for several minutes. Then there was silence; and I saw at the brink a pointed cap stuck full of feathers, and the glare of a black and yellow cloak.

"Grûl!" I whispered, in astonishment; and I felt an answering surprise in the tightened clasp of Mizpah's hand.

A moment more and Grûl peered over the brink, scrutinizing the upper and lower reaches of the river. He held a coil of rope, one end of which he had made fast to a stout birch tree which leaned well out over the edge.

"What is he going to do?" murmured Mizpah, with wide eyes.

"We'll soon see!" said I, marvelling mightily.

The apparition vanished for some minutes, then suddenly reappeared close to the brink. He carried, as lightly as if it had been a bundle of straw, the body of a man, so bound about with many cords as to remind me of nothing so much as a fly in the death wrappings of some black and yellow spider. To add to the semblance, the victim was dressed in black, – and a closer scrutiny showed that he was a priest.

"It is the Black Abbé, none other," I murmured, in a kind of awe; while Mizpah shrank closer to my side with a sense of impending tragedies. "Grûl has come to his revenge!" I added.

In a business fashion Grûl knotted the end of his coil of rope about the prisoner's body, the feathers and flowers in his cap, meanwhile, nodding with a kind of satisfied rhythm. Then he lowered the swathed and helpless but silently writhing figure a little way from the brink, governing the rope with ease by means of a half-twist about a jutting stump. There was something indescribably terrifying in the sight of the fettered form swinging over the deep, with shudderings and twistings, and the safe edge not a yard length above him. I pitied him in spite of myself; and I put a hand over Mizpah's eyes that she might not see what was coming. But she pushed my hand away, and stared in a fascination.

For some moments Grûl gazed down in silence upon his victim.

I fancied I caught the soul-piercing flame of his mad eyes; but this was doubtless due to my imagination rather than to the excellence of my vision. Suddenly the victim, his fortitude giving way with the sense of the deadly gulf beneath him, and with the pitiless inquisition of that gaze bent down upon him, broke out into wild pleadings, desperate entreaties, screams of anguished fear, till I myself trembled at it, and Mizpah covered her ears.

"Oh, stop it! save him!" she whispered to me, with white lips. But I shook my head. I could not reach the top of the cliff. And moreover, I had small doubt that Grûl's vengeance was just. Nevertheless, had I been at the top of the cliff instead of the bottom, I had certainly put a stop to it.

After listening for some moments, with a sort of pleasant attention, to the victim's ravings, Grûl lay flat, thrust his head and shoulders far out over the brink, and reached down a long arm. I saw the gleam of a knife in his darting hand; and I drew a quick breath of relief.

"That ends it," said I; and I shifted my position, which I had not done, as it seemed to me, for an eternity. The victim's screaming had ceased before the knife touched him.

But I was vastly mistaken in thinking it the end.

"He has not killed him," muttered Mizpah.

And then I saw that Grûl had merely cut the cord which bound his captive's hands. The Abbé was swiftly freeing himself; and Grûl, meanwhile, was lowering him down the face of the cliff. When the unhappy captive had descended perhaps twenty feet, his tormentor secured the rope, and again lay down with his head and shoulders leaning over the brink, his hands playing carelessly with the knife.

The Abbé, with many awkward gestures, presently got his limbs free, and the cord which had enwound him fell trailing like a snake to the cliff foot. Then, with clawing hands and sprawling feet, he clutched at the smooth, inexorable rock, in the vain hope of getting a foothold. It was pitiful to see his mad struggles, and the quiet of the face above looking down upon them with unimpassioned interest; till at last, exhausted, the poor wretch ceased to struggle, and looked up at his persecutor with the silence of despair.

Presently Grûl spoke, – for the first time, as far as we knew.

"You know me, Monsieur l'Abbé, I suppose," he remarked, in tone of placid courtesy.

"I know you, François de Grûl," came the reply, gasped from a dry mouth.

"Then further explanation, I think you will allow, is not needed. I will bid you farewell, and a pleasant journey," went on the same civil modulations of Grûl's voice. At the same moment he reached down with his shining blade as if to sever the rope.

"I did not do it! I did not do it!" screamed the Abbé, once more clutching convulsively at the smooth rock. "I swear to you by all the saints!"

Grûl examined the edge of his knife. He tested it with his thumb. I saw him glance along it critically. Then he touched it, ever so lightly, to the rope, so that a single strand parted.

"Swear to me," he said, in the mildest voice, "swear to me, Monsieur l'Abbé, that you had no part in it. Swear by the Holy Ghost, Monsieur l'Abbé!"