Beside him rode, on a fiery charger, like an aid next his general, a stout man who might by his dress be taken to be a well-to-do farmer. A scar tracked his brow, and he had as gloomy an eye and scowling a face as the battalion commander had an open countenance and frank smile.
"Get ready, my good friends; watch over the nation, against which traitors are plotting. But we are on guard," Santerre kept saying.
"What are we to do, friend Santerre?" asked the working-men. "You know that we are all your own. Where are the traitors? Lead us at them!"
"Wait; the proper time has not come."
"When will it strike?"
Santerre did not know a word about it; so he replied at a hazard, "Keep ready; we'll let you know."
But the man who rode by his knee, bending down over the horse's neck, would make signs to some men, and whisper:
"June twenty."
Whereupon these men would call groups of twenty or so around each, and repeat the date to them, so that it would be circulated. Nobody knew what would be done on the twentieth of June, but all felt sure that something would happen on that day.