o
unload the straw.

In a moment she came in, her shoes clattering on the floor. The
perspiration stood in great beads on her forehead, and showed how
little she had deserved his reproach. She sat down silently, avoiding
his eyes; but he thought nothing of this. It was no new thing. It
pleased him, if anything.

"Well, my Jeanne," he said, in his gibing tone, "are you longing for
my news?"

The hand she stretched out towards the pitcher of cider, which, with
black bread and onions, formed their meal, shook, but she answered
simply: "If you please, Michel."

"Well, the Girondins have been beaten, my girl, and are flying all
over the country. That is the news. Master Pierre is among them, I do
not doubt, if he has not been killed already. I wish he would come
this way."

"Why?" she asked, suddenly looking up at last, a flash of light in her
gray eyes.

"Why?" he repeated, grinning across the table at her, "because he
would be worth five crowns to me. There is five crowns, I am told, on
the head of every Girondin who has been in arms, my girl."

The French Revolution, it will be understood, was at its height. The
more moderate and constitutional Republicans--the Girondins, as they
were called--worsted in Paris by the Jacobins and the mob, had lately
tried to raise the provinces against the capital, and to this end had
drawn together at Caen, near the border of Brittany. They had been
defeated, however, and the Jacobins, in this month of August, were
preparing to take a fearful vengeance at once on them and the
Royalists. The Reign of Terror had begun. Even to such a boor as this,
sitting over his black bread, the Revolution had come home, and, in
common with many a thousand others, he wondered what he could make of
it.

The girl did not answer, even by the look of contempt to which he had
become accustomed, and for which he hated her; and he repeated, "Five
crowns! Ah, it is money, that is! _Mon Dieu!_" Then, with a sudden
exclamation, he sprang up. "What is that?" he cried.

He had been sitting with his back to the barn, but he turned now so as
to face it. Something had startled him--a rustling in the straw behind
him. "What is that?" he said again, his hand on the table, his face
lowering and watchful.

The girl had risen also; and, as the last word passed his lips, sprang
by him with a low cry, and aimed a frantic blow with her stool at
something he could not see.

"What is it?" he asked, recoiling.