Remember what
he has suffered."
"The greater the merit, could he but forgive. You will keep my
secret, father?"
"I will: let me see him."
Father Kenelm went behind the curtain and watched the sufferer.
Etienne glared at him with lacklustre eyes, but knew him not, and
continued his inarticulate ravings. His forgiving nurse moistened
his lips from time to time with water, and by him was a decoction
of cooling herbs, with which she assuaged his parching thirst.
"Thou art a true follower of Him who prayed for His murderers,"
said Father Kenelm. "The Man of Sorrows comfort thee."
CHAPTER XIV. THE GUIDE.
Rarely had a spring occurred so dry as that of 1069. With the
beginning of March dry winds set in from the east, no rain fell,
and the watercourses shrank to summer proportions.
All that winter Hugo de Malville had mourned in hopeless grief the
loss of his boy--his only child; but at length grief deepened into
one bitter thirst--a thirst for revenge.
That the Dismal Swamp protected the objects of his hatred from his
sword he felt well assured; and had the frost been keen enough to
render the marshes penetrable, he would have risked all in a
desperate attempt to root out the vermin, as he called the poor
natives, from the woods.
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