invisible."

As he spoke the cry of an owl, heard at a distance, interrupted the
conversation. Again the commander examined Marche-a-Terre, whose
impassible face still gave no sign. The conscripts, their ranks closed
up by an officer, now stood like a herd of cattle in the road, about
a hundred feet distant from the escort, which was drawn up in line
of battle. Behind them stood the rear-guard of soldiers and patriots,
picked men, commanded by Lieutenant Lebrun. Hulot cast his eyes over
this arrangement of his forces and looked again at the picket of men
posted in advance upon the road. Satisfied with what he saw he was
about to give the order to march, when the tricolor cockades of the two
soldiers he had sent to beat the woods to the left caught his eye; he
waited therefore till the two others, who had gone to the right, should
reappear.

"Perhaps the ball will open over there," he said to his officers,
pointing to the woods from which the two men did not emerge.

While the first two made their report Hulot's attention was distracted
momentarily from Marche-a-Terre. The Chouan at once sent his owl's-cry
to an apparently vast distance, and before the men who guarded him could
raise their muskets and take aim he had struck them a blow with his whip
which felled them, and rushed away. A terrible discharge of fire-arms
from the woods just above the place where the Chouan had been sitting
brought down six or eight soldiers. Marche-a-Terre, at whom several men
had fired without touching him, vanished into the woods after climbing
the slope with the agility of a wild-cat; as he did so his sabots
rolled into the ditch and his feet were seen to be shod with the thick,
hobnailed boots always worn by the Chouans.

At the first cries uttered by the Chouans, the conscripts sprang into
the woods to the right like a flock of birds taking flight at the
approach of a man.

"Fire on those scoundrels!" cried Hulot.

The company fired, but the conscripts knew well how to shelter
themselves behind trees, and before the soldiers could reload they were
out of sight.

"What's the use of _decreeing_ levies in the departments?" said Hulot.
"It is only such idiots as the Directory who would expect any good of
a draft in this region. The Assembly had much better stop voting more
shoes and money and ammunition, and see that we get what belongs to us."

At this moment the two skirmishers sent out on the right were seen
returning with ev