"What's the matter?" asked Jean Oullier, leaving Michel to Bertha's care and hurrying on to join Courte-Joie and Trigaud.
"Matter!" cried Courte-Joie, "the matter is that this brute has put the whole band of the red-breeches on our track! May the plague choke me for not having thought of it before! Ever since we left La Pénissière he has been a regular Tom Thumb; and, unluckily for us, it isn't bread crumbs he has strewn along the way, but the twigs, leaves, bark of his tree. Those scoundrelly soldiers, who, I haven't a doubt, will find out that we dug among the embers, are by this time at the other end of the trail this animal has provided for them. Ah, double, treble, quadruple, brute!" concluded Courte-Joie, by way of peroration.
Joining action to words he brought down his fist with all his might on the skull of the giant, who seemed no more conscious of the blow than if Courte-Joie had merely passed his hand through his hair.
"Damn it!" said Jean Oullier, "what's to be done now?"
"Give up the farm at Saint-Hilaire, where they'd catch us like mice in a trap."
"But," said Bertha, quickly, "Monsieur Michel cannot possibly go any farther. See how pale he is!"
"Let us bear to the right," said Jean Oullier, "and make for the Bouaimé moor, where we can hide among the rocks. To walk faster and leave fewer tracks, I'll take Monsieur Michel on my shoulders. We'll walk in file, and Trigaud's steps will hide the rest."
The Bouaimé moor, toward which Jean Oullier now guided the little troop, lies about three miles from the village of Saint-Hilaire; the river Maine must be crossed to reach it. It extends on the north as far as Rémouillé and Montbert; the lay of the land is very uneven and it is strewn with granite rocks, some evidently placed there by the hand of man. Druidic stones and dolmens lift their brown heads crowned with moss amid tufts of heather and the yellow flowers of the gorse and broom. It was to one of the most remarkable of these stones that Jean Oullier now guided the little caravan. This stone was flat, and rested on four enormous corner-stones of granite. Ten or a dozen persons could easily have lain in its shadow.
Michel was no sooner there than he gave way entirely, and would have fallen flat on the ground if Bertha had not supported him. She hastened to gather ferns, which she spread beneath the dolmen; and Michel was no sooner laid upon them than, in spite of the gravity of the situation, he fell soundly asleep.
Trigaud was stationed as sentinel on the dolmen; aboriginal statue on an aboriginal pedestal, he called to mind by his mighty outline the giants of two thousand years ago, who raised that altar. Courte-Joie, unstrapped, lay down to rest near Michel, whom Bertha would not leave, in spite of the exhaustion, both moral and physical, which the fatigues of the previous day and night had entailed upon her. Jean Oullier walked away, partly to reconnoitre the situation, and partly to obtain provisions, of which they stood greatly in need.