She spoke never a word. Her red lips were a red line of resolution.
Her despairing eyes were fixed upon her work without a glance for
either of them.

However, when supper was set on the table, and she had blown the horn
at the door and waited, and nobody else came, she turned with sudden
life upon her father and her brothers, who had already begun to taste
the smoking hasty-pudding. "Where are the others?" she cried out,
shrilly. "Where are Louis and Richard?"

The men glanced at one another under sullen eyelids, but nobody
answered. "Where are they?" she repeated.

"You know as much about it as we do," Eugene said, then, in his soft
voice.

Madelon stood with wild eyes flashing from one to another. Then she
gave a sudden spring out of the room, and they heard her swift feet
on the chamber-stairs. The men ate their hasty-pudding, bending their
brows over it as if it were a witches' mess instead of their ordinary
home fare.

Madelon came back so rapidly that she seemed to fly over the stairs.
They scarcely heard the separate taps of her feet. She burst into the
room and faced them in a sort of fury. "They have gone!" she gasped
out. "Louis and Richard have gone! Where are they?"

David Hautville slowly shook his head. Then he took another spoonful
of pudding. The brothers bent with stern assiduity over their bowls.