ed that he was
French, a sergeant of francs-tireurs, and had come with two of his
men from the wood of Dieulet, bringing important information for the
general.

"Hallo there, Cabasse! Ducat!" he shouted, turning his head, "hallo! you
infernal poltroons, come here!"

The men were evidently badly scared, but they came forward. Ducat, short
and fat, with a pale face and scanty hair; Cabasse short and lean, with
a black face and a long nose not much thicker than a knife-blade.

Meantime Maurice had stepped up and taken a closer look at the sergeant;
he finally asked him:

"Tell me, are you not Guillaume Sambuc, of Remilly?"

And when the man hesitatingly answered in the affirmative Maurice
recoiled a step or two, for this Sambuc had the reputation of being a
particularly hard case, the worthy son of a family of woodcutters who
had all gone to the bad, the drunken father being found one night lying
by the roadside with his throat cut, the mother and daughter, who
lived by begging and stealing, having disappeared, most likely, in
the seclusion of some penitentiary. He, Guillaume, did a little in the
poaching and smuggling lines, and only one of that litter of wolves'
whelps had grown up to be an honest man, and that was Prosper, the
hussar, who had gone to work on a farm before he was conscripted,
because he hated the life of the forest.

"I saw your brother at Vouziers," Maurice continued; "he is well."

Sambuc made no reply. To end the situation he said:

"Take me to the general. Tell him that the francs-tireurs of the wood of
Dieulet have something important to say to him."

On the way back to the camp Maurice reflected on those free companies
that had excited such great expectations at the time of their formation,
and had since been the object of such bitter denunciation throughout the
country. Their professed purpose was to wage a sort of guerilla warfare,
lying in ambush behind hedges, harassing the enemy, picking off his
sentinels, holding the woods, from which not a Prussian was to emerge
alive; while the truth of the matter was that they had made themselves
the terror of the peasantry, whom they failed utterly to protect
and whose fields they devastated. Every ne'er-do-well who hated the
restraints of the regular service made haste to join their ranks, well
pleased with the chance that exempted him from discipline and enabled
him to lead the life of a tramp, tippling in pothouses and sleeping by
the roadsi