At the moment when the blow is falling, and Raymond has no chance of escape, he darts forward, and, seizing Odon in his powerful grasp, drags him to the bridge of the Gave, which is thrown over the torrent, where a mill-wheel is working.

There a fearful struggle goes on, which is closed by both combatants being precipitated into the stream, to reappear crushed and mangled by the mighty engine under which they fell.
The bravo young Cagot casts one dying look, full of tenderness and gratitude, towards those who watch his end with pity and despair, and all is over.
* * * * * On the evening of that fatal day, Guilhem and Raymond, both exhausted and overcome with grief and fatigue, rest themselves in a miserable hut, far away amongst the rocks, in one of the steepest and wildest gorges of Mont Binet.

It was one of the accursed and abhorred dwellings of the Cagot village of Lurbe.
The night was black and fearful: a tempest raged in all its terrors without, and occasional gusts of wind and rain penetrated the wretched retreat where the unfortunate fugitives sat, their vestments torn, and their bodies as severely wounded as their minds.

Several Cagots, both male and female, from other cabins near, hovered round them, tenderly administering to their wants, and preparing such balms to heal their wounds as their simple knowledge afforded.

They accompanied these friendly offices with tears and passionate gesticulations, accompanied by half inarticulate exclamations, such as savages, unused to speech, might do in a strange unvisited land.
"'It is, then, true, my father,' said Raymond, as he looked round on these beings, ill-clothed, poor, degraded by oppression and contempt, scarcely endowed with common intelligence, and miserable to regard--'It is, then, true, that you are a Cagot, and that these are my brothers and my equals?
Ah! why did you let me wander into a world which I ought never to have known?
Why did you not let me live and die a Cagot as I was born?
These, then, are Cagots!' "'Yes,' cried Guilhem, weeping bitterly; 'Yes, we are Cagots, and all men are our persecutors; and yet, when one of _their_ children falls into our hands, we do not ill-use it, we do not torture it, we do not crush it beneath the wheels of a mill; we do good for evil, and they repay us by evil alone! Ah! I am as if bound on a flaming pile, my tears are like molten lead on my cheeks.