“It is true we shouldn’t starve,” I admitted, “but for to-night we must be strong, ready for anything. A fast is bad preparation for the kind of work we have before us. Besides, I must find where we are, how the Republican forces are disposed, and the nearest point at which we may find friends. We must guard against the possibility of blundering haphazard into some trap and so failing at the last moment.”
“You are right, of course,” she agreed instantly, though her face was very pale. “I will wait for you here, and pray for you.”
She gave me her hand and I bent and kissed it with trembling lips.
“There will be no danger,” I assured her again, waved my hand to her and plunged into the thicket.
I made my way through it for some distance before venturing into the open; then, under shelter of a hedge, I hastened down the slope, gained the road and turned my face toward the village. Ten minutes brought me to it—a straggle of sordid houses along each side the road teeming with dirty children and with a slatternly woman leaning in every doorway. There was an inn at either end to catch the traveller going east or west and I entered the first I came to and asked for breakfast. It was served by a pert and not uncomely maid,—bacon, eggs and creamy biscuits,—and I fell to it with an appetite tempered only by the thought that I must eat alone. There was at the time no other guest, and as the maid seemed very willing to talk, I determined to turn her to account.
“These are delicious biscuits,” I began. “I have tasted none so good since I started on this journey.”
She dropped me a curtesy, flushing with pleasure.
“Have you come a long journey, monsieur?” she asked.
“What!” I cried. “You still say ‘monsieur’! Is it a royalist then with whom I have to deal,—a ci-devant,—an aristocrat?”
“A royalist?” she repeated, visibly horrified. “Oh, no; but the habit is an old one.”