‘Ventre du diable!’ cried he passionately, as he placed his burden on the ground; ‘don’t hasten on this way; they’ll never follow us so far, and I am half dead with fatigue.’
‘Come, come, Gros Jean,’ said one of the others, in a voice of command, ‘we must not halt before we reach the three elms.’
‘Why not bury it here?’ replied the first speaker, ‘or else take your share of the labour?’
‘So I would,’ retorted the other violently, ‘if you could take my place when we are attacked; but, parbleu! you are more given to running away than fighting.’
During this brief colloquy my heart rose to my mouth. The ruffianly looks of the party, their arms, their savage demeanour, and their secret purpose, whatever it was, to which I was now to a certain extent privy, filled me with terror, and I made an effort to draw myself back on my hands into the brushwood beneath the tree. The motion unfortunately discovered me; and with a spring, the two armed fellows bounded towards me, and levelled their pistols at my head.
‘Who are you? What brings you here?’ shouted they both in a breath.
‘For heaven’s sake, messieurs,’ said I, ‘down with your pistols! I am only a traveller, a poor inoffensive wanderer, an Englishman—an Irishman, rather, a good Catholic’—Heaven forgive me if I meant an equivocation here!—‘lower the pistols, I beseech you.’
‘Shoot him through the skull; he’s a spy!’ roared the fellow with the sack.
‘Not a bit of it,’ said I; ‘I’m a mere traveller, admiring the country, and an——’
‘And why have you tracked us out here?’ said one of the first speakers.