"It would be less terrifying to me could I so believe," she replied gravely, her eyes questioning my face, as if to read therein what answer I desired. "I have that about my person," and I marked that her fingers toyed with the beads of a rosary at her throat, "which would protect me from his touch."
"What then did you make of that fantastic figure? I was so gravely startled myself by the apparition I saw double, scarcely retaining sufficient strength for the uplifting of a hand. So speak, Madame, and plainly, for our comforting,--was that flesh and blood, or was it some ghastly visitant from the unknown?"
"I believe," she answered firmly, "it was human. To my eyes a wild man, partially arrayed in white skins, decorated with a multitude of great feathers, appearing ghastly tall, and weirdly distorted in the moonlight--a fiend, indeed, yet not of the upper air."
"An Indian?"
"I know not what other name to choose. A savage surely, yet possessing a skin strangely fair in the sheen for one of the red race."
My roving, unsatisfied eyes met those of De Noyan.
"Blessed Mother!" he ejaculated with a short, uneasy laugh. "I never would have thought it in the night. Holy Saints preserve me, if I was ever more a child! Yet now the dawn brings me new heart of courage, and I would not swear but Eloise may be right."
"And you, friend Cairnes?" In a few, brief English sentences I retold to the sectary this opinion expressed by Madame. "Does your mind agree with ours?"
He stared at me gloomily, his hands knotting into each other, and his lips moving oddly ere he found speech.
"Nay," he muttered at last, "you know little about such matters. I tell you again that it was the Devil my eyes saw. Twice have I looked upon him, and each time, in response to prayer, has the good Lord delivered His servant from the bondage of sin, the snares of the fowler. Not by carnal weapons of the flesh are we bidden to overcome, but by spiritual wrestling; even as did he of old wrestle with the angel, are we to master the adversary of souls."
"Madame possesses that also," and I pointed to the rosary at her white throat, "by which she is able to resist the contamination of evil."
He sniffed disdainfully, his coarse red hair appearing to bristle all over his bullet head.
"'T is a foul device designed to rob men of the true power of prayer," he declared angrily. "I say to you, it was the voice of prayer which caused that foul fiend to fly away to his own. The prayer of the righteous availeth much."