She gave a wild whinny of fright, and jumped cornerwise, clear out across
the chasm, towards the moving bridge. Her front feet struck the timbers,
and then, without a cry, mare and rider dropped headlong down to the
river beneath, swollen by the autumn rains.
Baby looked down and saw the mare's head thrust above the water, once,
twice; then there was a flash of a sabre--and nothing more.
Shangois, with his dreams of malice and fighting, and the secrets of a
half-dozen parishes strapped to his back, had dropped out of Bonaventure,
as a stone crumbles from a bank into a stream, and many waters pass over
it, and no one inquires whither it has gone, and no one mourns for it.
CHAPTER XVII
ON Sunday morning Ferrol lay resting on a sofa in a little room off the
saloon. He had suffered somewhat from the bruise on his head, and while
the Lavilettes, including Christine, were at mass, he remained behind,
alone in the house, save for two servants in the kitchen. From where he
lay he could look down into the village. He was thinking of the tangle
into which things had got. Feeling was bitter against him, and against
the Lavilettes also, now that the patriots were defeated.
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