"He smelt something, though," growled Tobie the groom. "He would have searched the stable and found the inner place if I had not stood in front of him: luckily I was the biggest man of the two. It is not so easy, do you see, to make a way past me."

"I gave them enough good food and wine to send them to sleep for the afternoon," said Marie the cook. "It was a sad waste, but the only way to keep such creatures quiet."

"What a terrible man, that General!" said Gigot. "How he slept and snored and kicked the sofa! you can see the marks of his boots now. And how he resembles the Emperor! I know, for I saw his Majesty once--"

"Stop your recollections, Gigot," said Monsieur Joseph; for Gigot, like many solemn and silent people, was difficult to check when once set talking. "We have something else to think of now. Make haste with dinner, Marie. We must console our poor friends for their captivity.

Come, Riette, we will go and fetch them."

So that evening was a merry one at Les Chouettes, and the moon was high before the second batch of guests climbed slowly to the moor on their homeward way. The day's experience had not heightened their courage, somehow, or advanced their plans for a rising. Even the Comte d'Ombre agreed that the time was hardly ripe; that five or six men might throw away their own lives or liberties, but could not make a new revolution; that the peasants must be sounded, public opinion educated; and that the Prefect's courteous moderation was an odious quality which made everything more difficult.

And in the meanwhile, Monsieur de Mauves was justifying their conclusions in a way that would have startled them.

Beyond the wood, Angelot led the party across stubble-fields, where blue field flowers with grey dusty leaves cl.u.s.tered by the wayside, and distant poplars, pointing high into the evening air, showed where his home lay. Then they turned down into one of the hollow lanes of the country, its banks scooped out by winter rains and treading of cattle, so that it was almost like three sides of a cylinder, while the thick pollard oaks, leaning over it, made twilight even in the lingering sunshine.

The General was riding in front, the gendarmes some yards behind; Angelot, with his dog and gun, kept close beside the Prefect, who talked to him with his usual friendliness. Presently he said, "I love your uncle, Angelot, much better than he loves me, and I am sorry that he should run such useless risks."

"What risks, monsieur?" the young man said, glancing up quickly; and somehow it was difficult to meet the Prefect's eyes.

"Ah, you know very well. Believe me, your father is right, and your uncle is wrong. The old regime cannot be reestablished. The path of France is marked out for her; a star has arisen to guide her, and she is foolish, suicidal, not to follow where it leads. I do not defend or admire the Emperor in everything: but see what he has done for France.

She lay ruined, distracted. She took the mountain path of liberty, made a few wrong turns, and was dashed over the precipice. See how the Emperor has built her up into a great nation again; look at the laws and the civilisation; look at the military glory which has cost much blood, it is true, but has raised her so high in Europe that the nations who were ready to devour her are mostly crouching at her feet. Would our Bourbons have done all this for us, Angelot? Are they, after all, worth the devotion of men like your uncle and--for instance--Monsieur des Barres? Does not true patriotism lead a man to think of his country's good and glory, not of the advantage of one special family? Your uncle can hardly believe in that mediaeval fiction of divine right, I suppose?"

Angelot smiled. "My uncle belongs to the days of Saint Louis," he said.

"But you do not," the Prefect replied. "I find it hard to forgive him.

He is free, of course, to put his own neck in danger. One of these days he will drive me to extremities, and will find himself and his friends in a state prison--lucky if nothing worse happens. But he has no right to involve you in these treasonous tricks of his. It is selfish and immoral. Your father should see to it. You ought not to have been there to-day."

The Prefect spoke low and earnestly. It was impossible to misunderstand him. Angelot felt something like a cold shiver running over him. But he smiled and answered bravely.

"If my uncle has been foolish, so have I, and I will share the consequences with him. But as to to-day, monsieur?"

"I know all," the Prefect said. "Your uncle had visitors this morning, who were spirited away out of our sight. Their horses were hidden in an inner stable; they themselves in a hovel in the wood--and if they have waited there till we were gone, they must be tired of it. That famous breakfast we enjoyed was not prepared on such miraculously short notice.

Your little cousin, poor child, was employed to carry food to the fugitives hidden in the wood. With all my heart I pity her; a life of political plots is not happiness. But if Monsieur de la Mariniere does not hesitate to sacrifice his daughter, it is no wonder that he lightly runs his nephew into danger! You acted well, you and he. But I almost think it might have been safer to carry on that first breakfast-party, and not show its character by absurd attempts at concealment. You cannot contradict a word I have been saying, Angelot. I do not ask you to tell me the names of your uncle's guests."

"If you did, monsieur," the young fellow answered, "I should consider that an uncomfortable day had punished them enough, and so I should respectfully decline to answer you. I don't know how you made all these wonderful discoveries."

The Prefect looked at him and laughed. "You take it lightly!"

"I am speaking to a friend," Angelot said.

"That is all very well. Yes--too good a friend, I fear, from the point of view of duty. But I shall not repent, if you will be warned into prudence yourself, and will warn your uncle."

"I am rather afraid, monsieur, that my father has all the prudence of the family."

The Prefect would have argued further, but suddenly a sound like low thunder, still distant, echoed down the lane.

"What is that?" he said, looking round.

"Cattle, monsieur. Pull right into the bank and give them room to pa.s.s,"

said Angelot.

The gendarmes, who knew the country, had already taken this precaution.

They were drawing up in single file by the side of the road, close under the steep bank, pressing into it, in the dark shadow of the pollards.

But General Ratoneau, in advance, was riding stolidly forward, clanking along at a quick foot's pace in the very middle of the narrow lane, with all that swaggering air of a conqueror, which was better suited to German fields than to the quiet woody ways of France. Angelot hurried forward.

"Monsieur le General!" he called out; but Ratoneau, though he must have heard, did not turn his head or take any notice.

"Insolent animal! I might as well leave him to fight it out with the cows," the young fellow muttered; but for the Prefect's sake he ran on, his dog scampering after him, caught up the General, and stretched out a hand to his bridle.

"What the devil do you want!" said the General, lifting his whip.

"There is a herd of cows coming," Angelot shouted, though the blood rushed into his face at the man's involuntary movement. "You must get out of their way, or they will knock you down and trample on you. This is their way home. Draw up under the bank at once."

"I shall get out of n.o.body's way," roared the General. "But you had better get out of mine, little ape of a Chouan, or--"

The whip quivered in the air; another moment would have brought it down on Angelot's bare hand. He cried out, "Take care!" and in that moment s.n.a.t.c.hed the whip and threw it over the horse's head. It fell into a ma.s.s of blackberry briars which made a red and green thicket under the bank just here. The lane turned slightly and was very narrow at this place, with a stony slope upwards. It was a little more than usual like the dry bed of a torrent. Only under the right-hand bank there was a yard of standing-room, where it was possible to draw aside while the crowd of horned beasts rushed past. The thunder of their hoofs was drawing near. The Prefect, fifty yards behind, called out advice to his angry colleague, which fell on deaf ears. Angelot was pelted with some choice specimens of a soldier's vocabulary, as he seized the bridle and tried to pull the horse to the side of the road. But the rider's violent resistance made this impossible. The horse plunged: the General, swearing furiously, did his best to throw Angelot down under its feet.

For a minute the young fellow did his best to save the obstinate man in spite of himself, but then he was obliged to let the bridle go, and stepped to the shelter of the bank, while man and horse filled up the roadway with prancing and swearing.

"Give me back my whip, you--" the various epithets which followed were new to Angelot's country ears, but their tone made them serious.

Still, there was something so ridiculous in the General's fury that Angelot could scarcely help laughing in his face as he called out in answer, "When the cows are gone, monsieur, if you ask me civilly! I had to take it, or you would have struck me, and that was out of the question."

Even as he spoke, the cattle were coming. The lane was filled with a solid ma.s.s of padding feet, panting hides, low heads, and long fierce horns. An old bull of unfriendly aspect led the way, and one or two younger bulls came pushing and lowing among the quieter cows. Behind the large horned creatures came a few goats and sheep; then a dog, sharply barking, and a woman, shouting and flourishing her stick. But in this narrow s.p.a.ce she had no control over the herd, which poured along like water in a stream's bed, irresistible, unresisted. They knew their own way home from pasture to the yards at La Mariniere. This was their own road, worn hollow by no trampling but theirs and that of their ancestors. Anything or anybody they happened to meet always drew aside to let them pa.s.s, and they were not as a rule ill-tempered.

General Ratoneau thought he could ride through them, and spurred his restless horse, fresh from Monsieur Joseph's corn, straight at the wedged heads and shoulders of the advancing herd. The horse plunged, shied, tried to bolt; and there were a few moments of inextricable confusion. Angelot shouted to the woman in charge of the cows; she screamed to the dog, which dived among them, barking. Frightened, they scrambled and crushed together so that Angelot was pressed up by their broad sides against the bank, and only lifted himself out of their way by climbing to the trunk of a tree. The sun was setting; the dazzling light, in a sky all gold and red and purple, lay right across the lane: the General's uniform, his horse's smart trappings, flashed and swayed above the brown ma.s.s for a moment or two as it pushed down the slope.

Then the horse fell, either slipping on a stone or pushed over by the cattle, but fortunately not under their feet. He and his master rolled over together into the briars on the farther side of the lane, and there lay struggling till the beasts had crowded by, hurrying on past the rest of the party, drawn prudently aside in the shelter of the bank.

As soon as they were gone, the Prefect and the gendarmes rode up to help Angelot, who had already pulled the General out of the briars, unhurt, except by scratches. The horse had at once struggled to its feet, and stood trembling in the road.

It was impossible for any one but the sufferer to take such an adventure seriously. Two of the gendarmes were convulsed with laughter; it was only Simon whose native cleverness and keen sense of his own advantage kept his face grave and sympathising, as he handed the General his hat and the other objects which his tumble had sent flying. The Prefect was smiling as he asked anxiously whether any bones were broken. Angelot trembled with hardly restrained laughter. It had seized him with an overpowering force, when he saw the General's fat figure rise in the air with a most undignified jerk, then being deposited in the thicket with a fine pair of riding boots and shining spurs uppermost. This was so exactly the accident that suited the man's swaggering airs of superiority, Angelot felt that he could almost forgive him his insolent words and looks, could almost bear the incomprehensible language of five minutes ago, the threatened stroke with the whip--ah, by the by, here lay the precious whip, with its silver handle, safely deposited in the bushes out of the cows' way. Angelot magnanimously picked it up and presented it to the General with a bow. He grunted a word meant for thanks, but the eyes that met Angelot's flashed with a dark fury that startled the careless boy and came back to his mind afterwards.

"Whose beasts were those?" the General asked hoa.r.s.ely.

"They were my father's beasts, monsieur," Angelot answered. "They did not realize, unfortunately--" He broke off under a warning look from the Prefect, who went on with the sentence for him--"No one would regret such a tiresome accident more than your father, I am sure."

"I was going to say so," Angelot murmured softly. "Now if they had been my uncle's cattle--"

The General turned his back and mounted his horse. "The owner does not signify," he growled. "He cannot be punished. But it was either foolishness or malice that brought us along such a road."

"Come, come, General, that was my fault, after all!" the Prefect said pleasantly. "And you must acknowledge that our young friend did his best to save you. We all knew this country and its ways better than you did--it is a pity, but there is no more to be said."

The General seemed to be of the same opinion, for he rode off without a word. Angelot, looking after him, thought that one of these days there might be a good deal more to be said.

But now the Prefect was asking a last direction as to the road, and wishing Angelot good-night, for the sun was actually setting. His last words were: "Adieu, my friend! Be prudent--and make my best compliments to your parents. No doubt we shall meet soon at Lancilly."

"And perhaps without Monsieur le General!" said Angelot, smiling.

"Possibly! We are not inseparable," the Prefect replied, and waved his hand kindly as he rode away.

"How was it that I did not strike that reptile? he tried to strike me,"