“You’re spreading straw as if you thought they’d sleep here! Enough, Pille-Miche, enough!” said a low, gruff voice, which Francine recognized.
“And won’t they sleep here?” returned Pille-Miche with a laugh. “I’m afraid the Gars will be angry!” he added, too low for Francine to hear.
“Well, let him,” said Marche-a-Terre, in the same tone, “we shall have killed the Blues anyway. Here’s that coach, which you and I had better put up.”
Pille-Miche pulled the carriage by the pole and Marche-a-Terre pushed it by one of the wheels with such force that Francine was in the barn and about to be locked up before she had time to reflect on her situation. Pille-Miche went out to fetch the barrel of cider, which the marquis had ordered for the escort; and Marche-a-Terre was passing along the side of the coach, to leave the barn and close the door, when he was stopped by a hand which caught and held the long hair of his goatskin. He recognized a pair of eyes the gentleness of which exercised a power of magnetism over him, and he stood stock-still for a moment under their spell. Francine sprang from the carriage, and said, in the nervous tone of an excited woman: “Pierre, what news did you give to that lady and her son on the road? What is going on here? Why are you hiding? I must know all.”
These words brought a look on the Chouan’s face which Francine had never seen there before. The Breton led his innocent mistress to the door; there he turned her towards the blanching light of the moon, and answered, as he looked in her face with terrifying eyes: “Yes, by my damnation, Francine, I will tell you, but not until you have sworn on these beads (and he pulled an old chaplet from beneath his goatskin)--on this relic, which _you know well_,” he continued, “to answer me truly one question.”
Francine colored as she saw the chaplet, which was no doubt a token of their love. “It was on that,” he added, much agitated, “that you swore--”
He did not finish the sentence. The young girl placed her hand on the lips of her savage lover and silenced him.
He took his mistress gently by the hand, looked at her for a moment and said: “Is the lady you are with really Mademoiselle de Verneuil?”
Francine stood with hanging arms, her eyelids lowered, her head bowed, pale and speechless.