"Facts!" ejaculated Laurent with illimitable scorn.
"There was undoubtedly treachery at Pont-aux-Rochers. Colonel Richard, commanding at Saint-Goazec, had definite information sent him that L'Oiseleur's men would pass the bridge at a certain hour last Friday; he acted on the information, which purported to come from L'Oiseleur himself, ambushed the unprepared Chouans, and smashed them up."
"Well," said Laurent with a little grimace, "information may have been sent to this Colonel Richard, but that it should have been sent by La Rocheterie himself, by their own commander, by L'Oiseleur, who for more than a year before the Restoration kept the Imperialists at bay single-handed is, as I said before, grotesque!"
M. Perrelet shrugged his shoulders. "I assure you I should prefer to think so, too. But, in that case, why did his men shoot him?"
"That idea is equally grotesque, Monsieur le Docteur. They would be incapable of such a thing. They did not shoot him, that's all.—What are his wounds, by the way? Very serious, I suppose?"
"No, not in themselves, except that he has a bullet lodged in his left shoulder which I rather dislike because I do not know how, in this state of exhaustion, he is ever going to stand the extraction. He has also had a ball through the right side, a little above the hipbone, which, by some miracle, has touched nothing vital. And there is a painful but superficial glancing wound across the chest.—But what did the mischief was the haemorrhage; tied as he was in an upright position to that tree, and abandoned there for goodness knows how long . . . and he evidently struggled hard to get free . . . you can imagine——"
Laurent's face had slowly blanched as he stared at him.
"It is really true—about that tree!"
"I do not see what object the contingent who found him could have in making up such a story. And when he was brought in he had a cut end of rope dangling from either wrist. I saw them with my own eyes—and the state of his wrists, too!"
Laurent could feel now that he had turned pale. Could so unspeakable a thing have been the prelude to that forlorn journey in the cart!