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Father Beret uttered a short, thin cry and moved as if to go to the fallen girl, but just then he saw Hamilton's sword pass over again into his right hand, and knew that there was no time for anything but death or fight. The good priest did not shirk what might have made the readiest of soldiers nervous. Hamilton was known to be a great swordsman and proud of the distinction.
A drizzling rain had begun to fall again, with a raw wind creeping from the west. "Come with me to my house, my son," Father Beret presently added; and together they went, the priest covering Alice's sword from the rain with the folds of his cassock.
Moreover, he was fond of Father Beret and had done a great deal for the little church of St. Xavier and the mission it represented; but he distinctly desired to be let alone while he pursued his own course; and he had promised the dying woman who gave Alice to him that the child should be left as she was, a Protestant, without undue influence to change her from the faith of her parents.
He was strong, expert, and game to the middle of his heart. "I'll add a traitor Jesuit to my list of dead," he panted forth, rising yet again to the extremest tension of his power. As he did this Father Beret settled himself as you have seen a mighty horse do in the home stretch of a race. Both men knew that the moment had arrived for the final act in their impromptu play.
As they did so, one of the Europeans in the motor-boat, a stocky black-moustached fellow in blue overalls, wearing in place of the regulation helmet of that climate a greasy black béret over one ear, lifted his hand from the wheel and called out the Arabic salutation of the country: "Peace be unto you!" "And to you, peace!" responded a deep voice from the doorway of the deck-house.
Surely, when a thing was so cheap, one need not be so parsimonious as to withhold a mere anticipation. He was off before the girls could press him into details, for indeed he had none. "There now, what did I tell you?" cried Alice, when the big man was gone. "I told you Rene would come. They always come back!" Father Beret came in a little later.
Farnsworth did not tell Hamilton or any other person about what the priest had done to him, but nursed his sore ribs and his wrath, waiting patiently for the revenge that he meant soon to take. Alice heard from Adrienne the story of Farnsworth's conduct and his humiliating discomfiture at the hands of Father Beret.
She carefully avoided recalling to them any painful memories, and showed them the tenderest affection, sharing with them their love of God, their truthfulness, their quietness, their industry. And she taught Beret to do the same. In their grandfather's house the life that had to be suppressed at home got leave to expand. Here there was singing and dancing and play and story-telling.
The simple geniality and lack of self-consciousness in Father Beret evidently set him at his ease. Once or twice she saw him look at his guest with an earnest scrutiny that puzzled her, but he talked far more than usual and with greater animation, discussing the Arabs and listening to the priest's account of the curiosities of life in Amara.
She pretended to be asleep when Mildrid came at last, and Mildrid moved softly, so softly; but her sister heard her sobbing, and when she had got into bed she heard her say her usual evening prayer so sadly, heard her whisper: "O God, help me, help me!" It made Beret so unhappy that she could not get to sleep even now.
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