Legend of Moulin Huet | Page 9

when she came face to face with Jacques Gaultier! In an
instant it all flashed on her that he must have wrought this terrible work,
and, overcome by grief and horror, she sank down in a deadly faint.
Bad man as he was, Jacques was really overcome at the consequences
of his act, for he thought he had also killed Marguerite. He called
loudly to her Father, who came up hurriedly. He was also seriously
alarmed when his gaze rested on his child lying like one dead on the
floor. Between them they carried her downstairs and laid her on her bed.
They applied such restoratives as suggested themselves, but as
everything was for sometime quite unavailing, a more miserable pair it
would have been difficult to discover.
Hirzel now came in. He was running upstairs to the granary when his
Father called him in to see if he could do anything for his poor sister.
"A pretty night's work this," he said, when he came into the room and
saw his sister lying there.
At this moment she opened her eyes, and he went close to her and
raised her in his arms. With an expression of deep thankfulness,
Marguerite's first words were to send that murderer, Jacques Gaultier,
away out of her sight. Hirzel ordered him to leave the room, with more
fierceness in his tone than anyone had heard there before.
"Oh! Hirzel, what shall I do without Charlie? Stay with me, only you,
and I will tell you all."
Hearing this her Father left the room, and Hirzel bent down and
whispered to her---
"Charlie is alive and well. He told me to tell you this himself."
"Oh! Hirzel, you are deceiving me. How could he be alive after such a

dreadful fall? It was terrible."
Here Marguerite's fortitude gave way, and she indulged in a flood of
tears, while Hirzel looked at her with the masculine helplessness usual
on such occasions, and indeed it seemed to cost the fine tender-hearted
fellow an effort to keep from joining in them too. At last he said, "Well
Marguerite, if you don't stop, I'll go off, and tell Charlie you only cried
after you heard he was alive and well."
"Ah! Hirzel, is that not the way with our sex. Sometimes, to cry over
the best and happiest times while the worst is bravely borne?"
Hirzel then told Marguerite how he had met Charlie just outside at the
foot of the lane, considerably bruised and knocked about, though
without any internal injuries. How he escaped was nothing short of a
miracle, one of those things which occasionally happen, perhaps, to
show what can be done when there is the will to do it.
There was an iron loop which projected about a foot from the walls,
this Charlie made a spring at after the manner of a gymnast; he caught
it, and although it came away in his grasp, yet it broke his fall, and
what was of more importance, changed the direction of his course to
the brickwork alongside the wheel, instead of the water under it. Once
on the brickwork he jumped down into the garden, and went out into
the lane, where he met Hirzel.
Charlie did not for a moment suspect that there was anything but pure
accident in what had happened, and as he met Hirzel just at that
moment he judged it wisest not to return near the house in case he
should get Marguerite into trouble; but after telling Hirzel to assure his
sister that he was safe, he set off to the fortress, little thinking he was
supposed to be lying dead at the foot of the Moulin Huêt cliffs, carried
there by the mill stream.
Marguerite now told to her brother, her suspicions of how all had
happened. He wished to go immediately and tax Jacques with the crime;
but, in deference to his sister's wishes, remained where he was. The
noise of the mill wheel turning round suddenly ceased, and on Hirzel's

going up to ascertain the cause, he found his Father tying up the rope in
the room behind the granary. This rope passed out of a small round
hole in the wall of this room, and round the corner of the house where it
was attached to the wheel. The window through which Charlie and
Marguerite had been talking was rather a large one, but had some iron
bars across which had prevented Marguerite leaning out to see what
had become of Charlie. This perhaps was as well, for at best his descent
would have been extremely trying to look at.
The next morning did not bring Jacques to finish his work, but in the
evening he appeared, after vainly trying to induce Marguerite to speak
to him,