and once more he set off on the familiar road to
Picardy. The long journey was at last accomplished, and he arrived at
the castle as the bleak November winds were sweeping across the land
from the English Channel. Roberval was with a small army five miles
away; but La Pommeraye recognised in one of the servants, Etienne Brule
by name, the man who had escaped uninjured from the famous encounter
with Pamphilo de Narvaez, and who had ever afterwards regarded La
Pommeraye as a being of a supernatural order. This man had been with De
Roberval on his voyage, and from him, after an hour's cross-questioning,
La Pommeraye at last elicited the truth. The remembrance of the horrors
through which he had passed, and his terror of De Roberval's wrath if it
were discovered that he had related the story of the desertion of
Marguerite, seemed to have muddled the poor fellow's wits, and his tale
was wild and incoherent. But he stuck manfully to his assertion that he
had seen Claude reach the shore.

"The others laughed me to scorn," he said, "and some went so far as to
say that they saw the demons drag him down, but I know better. My
eyesight is stronger than theirs, and I saw him rescued and dragged
ashore by the women. But Monsieur will not speak to the Sieur de
Roberval of these things? He foams at the mouth if his niece's name is
so much as mentioned; and he would kill me if he found that I had told
you about her."

Charles heeded not the man's words. Before his eyes he saw a great
pillar of smoke rising up and spreading far over the ocean; he saw his
pilot seize the helm and steer away from the dreaded spot. As the vision
rose before him he cried aloud in the bitterness of his heart, "O God!
Thou art too cruel, too cruel!"

CHAPTER XIII

It was a sad duty that Bastienne and Marguerite had to perform when they
made Marie's poor broken body ready for burial. And while they toiled
with loving hands within the hut, Claude worked as best he could to
prepare a rude coffin from some of the planks which had remained after
the building of their dwelling. Each blow of his hammer went to the
hearts of the women, from whom this sad calamity seemed to have taken
the last ray of hope.

By the evening of the day which followed her death all was ready, and
Claude, with an aching heart, dug a grave in the level, grassy sod, just
back of the cliff from which she had fallen. All completed, he returned
to the hut, and the three watched si