"I suppose that you and Papa are never frightened?" deduced Anne.
"Never!" responded La Vireville firmly. ("Heaven forgive me for a liar!" he added inwardly.)
"Then I will try not to be," announced Anne, with another sigh, and, to the Chouan's relief, he settled down against him, and almost instantly fell asleep.
As for La Vireville, he remained for some time in the same position, his back against the rocky wall of the cave, looking down at the brown head with its heavy silken curls that rested confidingly against his redingote, and reflecting on the chance that had given him so unusual a companion in these regions. This cave had known in the past year very different occupants, for it had served, and would shortly serve again, as a depot for arms and ammunition, smuggled in under cover of night from Jersey, and smuggled out again, in the same conditions, by the Chouans of the parishes which he commanded in the neighbourhood. He touched one of the soft ringlets that held so many gleams of gold in their brown, then, very cautiously, so as not to disturb the sleeper, he slipped down at full length on the floor of the cave, taking Anne with him in an encircling arm, and, pillowing his own aching head on the other, tried to follow his example.
(2)
During the afternoon Anne-Hilarion woke up, in a mood for converse, and with his sleep his late adventures seemed, temporarily at least, blotted from his mind. Having eaten, he made inquiries after La Vireville's head, but instead of reviving the question of how he got the hurt, branched off into an account of Baptiste's calamitous fall off a ladder at some undated epoch, and the large swelling on his forehead which was the result. From this topic he entered that of a gathered finger once sustained by Elspeth, which had, she said, pained her right up to her shoulder, and to which a succession of poultices had been applied. La Vireville rather absently remarking that it would be impossible to make poultices at present, nothing but seaweed being available for the purpose, Anne, for some reason, found this observation so exquisitely humorous that he laughed over it for a long time.
"If we were wrecked on a desert island, like Robinson Crusoe, of whom Grandpapa has read to me," he concluded, "we might have to make poultices of seaweed. Perhaps we might even have to eat it. Do you know about Robinson Crusoe, M. le Chevalier?"
"No," answered Fortuné drowsily. "Tell me about him."
Anne told him, to the appropriate sound of the waves without.
"One hears the sea in here," he remarked at the end. "But not so much as last night. Last night it was as it says in 'Noroway-over-the-foam':