than two feet high, had a
woman's face, of beak-like formation, projecting forward. She was as
bright-eyed and light of foot as any bird. Moving within the inclosure
of the settles, she hopped up with a singular power of vaulting, and
seated herself, stretching toward the fire a pair of spotted seal
moccasins. These were so small that the feet on which they were laced
seemed an infant's, and sorted strangely with the mature keen face above
them. Youth, age, and wise sylvan life were brought to a focus in that
countenance.

To hear such a creature talk was like being startled by spoken words
from a bird.

"I'm Le Rossignol," she piped out, when she had looked at the vagrant
girl a few minutes, "and I can read your name on your face. It's
Marguerite."

The girl stared helplessly at this midget seer.

"You're the same Marguerite that was left on the Island of Demons a
hundred years ago. You may not know it, but you're the same. I know that
downward look, and soft, crying way, and still tongue, and the very baby
on your knees. You never bring any good, and words are wasted on you.
Don't smile under your sly mouth, and think you are hiding anything
from Le Rossignol."

The girl crouched deeper into her clothes, until those unwinking eyes
relieved her by turning with indifference toward the chimney.

"I have no pity for any Marguerite," Le Rossignol added, and she tossed
from her head the entire subject with a cap made of white gull breasts.
A brush of red hair stood up in thousands of tendrils, exaggerating by
its nimbus the size of her upper person. Never had dwarf a sweeter
voice. If she had been compressed in order to produce melody, her tones
were compensation, enough. She made lilting sounds while dangling her
feet to the blaze, as if she thought in music.

Le Rossignol was so positive a force that she seldom found herself
overborne by the presence of large human beings. The only man in the
fortress who saw her without superstition was Klussman. He inclined to
complain of her antics, but not to find magic in her flights and
returns. At that period deformity was the symbol of witchcraft. Blame
fell upon this dwarf when toothache or rheumatic pains invaded the
barracks, especially if the sufferer had spoken against her unseen
excursions with her swan. Protected from childhood by the family of La
Tour, she had grown an autocrat, and bent to nobody except her lady.

"Where is my clavier?" exclaimed Le Rossignol. "