Jean rolled the discarded clothes into a bundle, with which he disappeared. Roy conjectured that he might have buried it in the bushes or under heaps of black rubbish outside. Jean then led him into the outhouse, which was more than two-thirds full of heavy logs and fagots of wood—the winter supply, piled together.
"Am I to get underneath all that, Jean?"
"Oui, m'sieu. The gendarmes will not readily find you there. I meanwhile betake myself to the soupente."
The soupente in a French cottage is a kind of upper cupboard, a small corner cut off from the one room, near the ceiling, descending only half-way to the ground, and reached by a ladder.
"And if they find you there?"
"M'sieu, they will not know me in this dress. See—I am not the Jean who chopped wood at Bitche. And I hope then to draw their attention from m'sieu."
Roy wrung his hand. "I don't know what makes you so good to me," the boy said huskily.
"It is not difficult to tell m'sieu why." Jean looked abstractedly at the roof of the wood-hut. "It is for the sake of that kind M. le Capitaine, who would not leave my mother unhappy. Does m'sieu remember how M. le Capitaine regarded my mother that day?"
Roy remembered, and understood.
Jean hauled aside logs and masses of wood, making a little cave far back, where Roy could creep in and lie close to the wall. Jean wrapped round him an old coat, for warmth, and, when he had laid himself down, threw light black rubbish over him as an additional security. After which he carefully heaped up anew the logs and fagots, till not the faintest sign remained of any human being beneath.