The warm and healthy blood strengthened and revivified the serf.... He had not eaten since the previous night.
Yvon rested a few moments; he then bound the hind legs of the buck with a flexible twig and dragging his booty, not without considerable effort by reason of its weight, he arrived with it at his hut near the Fountain of the Hinds. His family was now for a long time protected from hunger. The buck could not yield less than three hundred pounds of meat, which carefully prepared and smoked after the fashion of foresters, could be preserved for many months.
Two days after these two fateful nights, Yvon learned from a woodsman serf, that one of his fellows, a forester of the woods of Compiegne like himself, having discovered the next morning the body of Gregory the Hollow-bellied pierced with an arrow that remained in the wound, and having identified the weapon as Yvon's by the peculiar manner in which it was feathered, had denounced him as the murderer. The bailiff of the domain of Compiegne detested Yvon. Although the latter's crime delivered the neighborhood of a monster who slaughtered the travelers in order to gorge himself upon them, the bailiff ordered his arrest. Thus notified in time, Yvon the Forester resolved to flee, leaving his son and family behind. But Den-Brao as well as his wife insisted upon accompanying him with their children.
The whole family decided to take the road and place their fate in the hands of Providence. The smoked buck's meat would suffice to sustain them through a long journey. They knew that whichever way they took, serfdom awaited them. It was a change of serfdom for serfdom; but they found consolation in the knowledge that the change from the horrors they had undergone could not but improve their misery. The famine, although general, was not, according to reports, equally severe everywhere.
The hut near the Fountain of the Hinds was, accordingly, abandoned. Den-Brao and his wife carried the little Jeannette by turns on their backs. The other child, Nominoe, being older, marched besides his grandfather. They reached and crossed the borders of the royal domain, and Yvon felt safe. A few days later the travelers learned from some pilgrims that Anjou suffered less of the famine than did any other region. Thither they directed their steps, induced thereto by the further consideration that Anjou bordered on Britanny, the cradle of the family. Yvon wished eventually to return thither in the hope of finding some of his relatives in Armorica.