the announcement of her wealth fell dead before the
dogged immovability of the Chouan.

"The priests have told us to go to war," he replied. "Every Blue we
shoot earns one indulgence."

"But suppose the Blues shoot you?"

He answered by letting his arms drop at his sides, as if regretting the
poverty of the offering he should thus make to God and the king.

"What will become of me?" exclaimed the young girl, sorrowfully.

Marche-a-Terre looked at her stupidly; his eyes seemed to enlarge; tears
rolled down his hairy cheeks upon the goatskin which covered him, and a
low moan came from his breast.

"Saint Anne of Auray!--Pierre, is this all you have to say to me after a
parting of seven years? You have changed indeed."

"I love you the same as ever," said the Chouan, in a gruff voice.

"No," she whispered, "the king is first."

"If you look at me like that I shall go," he said.

"Well, then, adieu," she replied, sadly.

"Adieu," he repeated.

He seized her hand, wrung it, kissed it, made the sign of the cross, and
rushed into the stable, like a dog who fears that his bone will be taken
from him.

"Pille-Miche," he said to his comrade. "Where's your tobacco-box?"

"Ho! _sacre bleu_! what a fine chain!" cried Pille-Miche, fumbling in a
pocket constructed in his goatskin.

Then he held out to Marche-a-Terre the little horn in which Bretons put
the finely powdered tobacco which they prepare themselves during the
long winter nights. The Chouan raised his thumb and made a hollow in
the palm of his hand, after the manner in which an "Invalide" takes his
tobacco; then he shook the horn, the small end of which Pille-Miche had
unscrewed. A fine powder fell slowly from the little hole pierced in
the point of this Breton utensil. Marche-a-Terre went through the same
process seven or eight times silently, as if the powder had power
to change the current of his thoughts. Suddenly he flung the horn to
Pille-Miche with a gesture of despair, and caught up a gun which was
hidden in the straw.

"Seven or eight shakes at once! I suppose you think that costs nothing!"
said the stingy Pille-Miche.

"Forward!" cried Marche-a-Terre in a hoarse voice. "There's work before
us."

Thirty or more Chouans who were sleeping in the straw under the mangers,
raised their heads, saw Marche-a-Terre on his feet, and disappeared
instantly through a door which led to the garden, from which it was easy
to reach the fields.

When Francine