nice plot! I stepped to the window. Outside in the square
Buckhurst was still speaking to a spellbound, gaping throng. A few men
cheered him. They were strangers in Paradise.

"What's he doing it for?" I asked, utterly at a loss to account for
proceedings which seemed to me the acme of folly. "He must know that
the commune cannot be started here in Brittany! Speed, what is that
man up to?"

Behind us the mayor was angrily demanding that we leave his house; and
after a while we did so, skirting the crowd once more to where, in a
cleared space near the fountain, Buckhurst stood, red flag in hand,
ranging a dozen peasants in line. The peasants were not Paradise men;
they wore the costumes of the interior, and somebody had already armed
them with scythes, rusty boarding-pikes, stable-forks, and one or two
flintlock muskets. An evil-looking crew, if ever I saw one; wild-eyed,
long-haired, bare of knee and ankle, loutish faces turned toward the
slim, gray, pale-faced orator who confronted them, flag in hand. They
were the scum of Morbihan.

He told them that they were his guard of honor, the glory of their
race--a sacred battalion whose names should shine high on the
imperishable battlements of freedom.

Around them the calm-eyed peasants stared at them stupidly; women
gazed fascinated when Buckhurst, raising his flag, pointed in silence
to the mayor's house, where that official stood in his doorway,
observing the scene:

"Forward!" said Buckhurst, and the grotesque escort started with a
clatter of heavy sabots and a rattle of scythes. The crowd fell back
to give them way, then closed in behind like a herd of sheep,
following to the mayor's house, where Buckhurst set his sentinels and
then entered, closing the door behind him.

"Well!" muttered Speed, in amazement.

After a long silence, Kelly Eyre looked at his watch. "It's time we
were in the tent," he observed, dryly; and we turned away without a
word. At the bridge we stopped and looked back. The red flag was
flying from the mayor's house.

"Speed," I said, "there's one thing certain: Byram can't stay if
there's going to be fighting here. I heard guns at sea this morning; I
don't know what that may indicate. And here's this idiotic revolution
started in Paradise! That means the troops from Lorient, and a
wretched lot of bushwhacking and guerrilla work. Those Faouet Bretons
that Buckhurst has recruited are a bad lot; there is going to be
trouble, I tell you."