"And you say you saw the two on their way to Clisson?" she said to Courte-Joie.
"With my own eyes."
"Do you know what is going on at Clisson?"
"It is too far from here to have got the details as yet," replied Courte-Joie; "but a gars from Sainte-Lumine overtook us just now and said that a devilish firing had been going on since ten o'clock in the morning over against Sèvre."
Bertha did not answer; her ideas had taken another course. She saw Michel led to his death by Jean Oullier's hatred; she fancied the poor lad wounded, panting, abandoned, lying helpless on some lonely and bloody moor, calling on her to save him.
"Do you know any one who could guide me to Jean Oullier?" she asked Courte-Joie.
"To-day?"
"Now, this instant."
"The roads are covered with the red-breeches."
"The wood-paths are not."