"Can you see anything?" said the general, trying himself to pierce the darkness that surrounded the little troop.
"No, general," said the men with one voice.
"Yet it was certainly from here," said the general, as if speaking to himself, "that the man answered me. Look behind the bushes, but without scattering; you may find his body."
The soldiers obeyed, searching round a radius of some hundred and fifty feet. But they returned in about fifteen minutes and reported that they could see nothing, and had found no traces of the body.
"You saw absolutely nothing?" asked the general.
One grenadier alone came forward, holding in his hand a cotton cap.
"That's our guide's cap," said the general.
"Because the men who attacked him would have worn hats," replied the general, without the slightest hesitation.
The captain was silent, not daring to ask further; but it was evident that the general's explanation had explained nothing to his mind.
Dermoncourt understood the captain's silence.
"It is very simple," he said; "the men who have just murdered our guide have followed us ever since we left Montaigu for the purpose of rescuing the prisoner. The arrest must be a more important matter than I thought it was. These men who have followed us were at the fair, and wore hats, as they always do when they go to the towns; whereas our guide was called from his bed suddenly by the man who sent him to us, and he would of course put on the cap he was in the habit of wearing; it may even have been on his head as he slept."
"Do you really think, general," said the captain, "that those Chouans would dare to come so near our line of march?"
"They have come step by step with us from Montaigu; they have not let us out of their sight one single instant. Heavens and earth! people complain of our inhumanity in this war, and yet at every step we are made to feel, to our cost, that we have not been inhuman enough. Fool and simpleton that I have been!"
"I understand you less and less, general," said the captain, laughing.
"Do you remember that beggar-woman who spoke to us just after we left Montaigu?"
"Well, it was that old hag who put up this attack. I wanted to send her back into the town; I did wrong not to follow my own instinct; I should have saved the life of this poor devil. Ah! I see now how it was done. The _Ave Marias_ for which the prisoner asked have been answered here."