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We read the story again and again, each time with a fresh pang of pity and regret; but it is not of them that this tale is told. Jacques d'Arthenay died in his wilderness, and his wife followed him quickly, leaving a son to carry on the name. The gravestone of these first d'Arthenays was still to be seen in the old burying-ground: they had been the first to be buried there.
He came one day to meditate beside his father's grave, hoping perhaps to draw some strength, some inspiration, from the memories of that stern and righteous Huguenot; and as he sat beside the stone, lo! a mailed hand appeared, holding a sword, and graved with the point of the sword on the stone, the old motto of his father's house, "D'Arthenay, tenez foi!"
At last he sank down at the foot of a great oak-tree, in a place he knew well, even in the dark: he could go no farther. "D'Arthenay, tenez foi!" It whispered in his ears, and seemed for a little to drown the haunting notes of the violin.
A friend from childhood of St. Castin, Jacques d'Arthenay had followed his old companion to America at the time when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes rendered France no safe dwelling-place for those who had no hinges to their knees.
A stern, silent man, this d'Arthenay, like most of his race: holding in scorn the things of earthly life, brooding over grievances, given to dwelling much on heaven and hell, as became his time and class.
The old stone was sunk half-way in the earth, and was gray with moss and lichens; but the inscription was still legible, if one looked close, and had patience to decipher the crabbed text. "Jacques St. George, Sieur d'Arthenay et de Vivonne. Mort en foi et en esperance, 28me Decembre, 1694."
Then a pair of mailed hands, clasped as in sign of friendship or loyalty, and beneath them again, the words, "D'Arthenay, tenez foi!" The story was that the son of this first Sieur d'Arthenay had been exposed to some dire temptation, whether of love or of ambition was not clearly known, and had been in danger of turning from the faith of his people and embracing that of Rome.
There could be no such companionship as this for the Sieur d'Arthenay and his noble wife; the friendship of half a lifetime was sternly repudiated, and d'Arthenay cast in his lot with the little band of Huguenot settlers who were striving to win their livelihood from the rugged soil of eastern Maine. It was bitter bread that they ate, those French settlers.
Ah, there was one stone here that belonged to him. He had not been in the place since he was a child; he cared nothing about the dead of long ago: but now the memory of it all came back upon him, and he sought and found the grey sunken stone, and pulled away the grass from it, and read the legend with eyes that scarcely saw what they looked at. "D'Arthenay, tenez foi!"
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