settles.

But it was easily lost sight of in the fire's warmth. She had been so chilled by salt air and spray as to crowd close to the flame and court scorching. Her white face kindled with heat. She threw back her mufflers, and the comfort of the child occurring to her, she looked at its small face through a tunnel of clothing. Its exceeding stillness awoke but one wish, which she dared not let escape in words.

These stone walls readily echoed any sound. So scantily furnished was the great hall that it could not refrain from echoing. There were some chairs and tables not of colonial pattern, and a buffet holding silver tankards and china; but these seemed lost in space. Opposite the fireplace hung two portraits,—one of Charles La Tour's father, the other of a former maid of honor at the English court. The ceiling of wooden panels had been brought from La Tour's castle at Cape Sable; it answered the flicker of the fire with lines of faded gilding.

The girl dropped her wrappings on the bench, and began to unroll the baby, as if curious about its state.

"I believe it is dead!" she whispered.

But the clank of a long iron latch which fastened the outer door was enough to deflect her interest from the matter. She cast her cloak over the baby, and held it loosely on her knees, with its head to the fire. When the door shut with a crash, and some small object scurried across the stone floor, the girl looked out of her retreat with fear. Her eyelids and lips fell wider apart. She saw a big-headed brownie coming to the hearth, clad, with the exception of its cap, in the dun tints of autumn woods. This creature, scarcely more 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. "I heard a tune in the woods which I must get out of my clavier,—a green tune, the color of quickening lichens; a dropping tune with sap in it; a tune like the wind across inland lakes."

She ran along the settle, and thrust her head around its high back.

Zélie, with white garments upon one arm, was setting solidly forth down the uncovered stairs, when the dwarf arrested her by a cry.

"Go back, heavy-foot,—go back and fetch me my clavier."

"Mademoiselle the nightingale has suddenly returned," muttered Zélie, ill pleased.

"Am I not always here when my lady comes home? I demand the box wherein my instrument is kept."

"What doth your instrument concern me? Madame has sent me to dress the baby."

"Will you bring my clavier?"

The dwarf's scream was like the weird high note of a wind-harp. It had its effect on Zélie. She turned back, though muttering against the overruling of her lady's commands by a creature like a bat, who could probably send other powers than a decent maid to bring claviers.

"And where shall I find it?" she inquired aloud. "Here have I been in the fortress scarce half an hour, after all but shipwreck, and I must search out the belongings of people who do naught but idle."

"Find it where you will. No one hath the key but myself. The box may stand in Madame Marie's apartment, or it may be in my own chamber. Such matters are blown out of my head by the wind along the coast. Make haste to fetch it so I can play when Madame Marie appears."

Le Rossignol drew herself up the back of the settle, and perched at ease on the angle farthest from the fire. She beat her heels lightly against her throne, and hummed, with her face turned from the listless girl, who watched all her antics.

Zélie brought the instrument case, unlocked it, and handed up a crook-necked mandolin and its small ivory plectrum to her tyrant. At once the hall was full of tinkling melody. The dwarf's threadlike fingers ran along the neck of the mandolin, and as she made the ivory disk quiver among its strings her head swayed in rapturous singing.

Zélie forgot the baby. The garments intended for its use were spread upon the settle near the fire. She folded her arms, and wagged her head with Le Rossignol's. But while the dwarf kept an eye on the stairway, watching like a lover for the appearance of Madame La Tour, the outer door again clanked, and Klussman stepped into the hall. His big presence had instant effect on Le Rossignol. Her music tinkled louder and faster. The playing sprite, sitting half on air, gamboled and made droll faces to catch his eye. Her vanity and self-satisfaction, her pliant gesture and skillful wild music, made her appear some soulless little being from the woods who mocked at man's tense sternness.

Klussman took little notice of any one in the hall, but waited by the closed door so relentless a sentinel that Zélie was reminded of her duty. She made haste to bring perfumed water in a basin, and turned the linen on the settle. She then took the child from its mother's limp hands, and exclaimed and muttered under her breath as she turned it on her knees.

"What hast thou done to it since my lady left thee?" inquired Zélie sharply. But she got no answer from the girl.

Unrewarded for her minstrelsy by a single look from the Swiss, Le Rossignol quit playing, and made a fist of the curved instrument to shake at him, and let herself down the back of