"Annette, O Annette, will you come? Oh, the miserable creature, to leave me here all alone!"
And now, too, we could hear the shouts of the guests in the saloon calling for wine, beer, ham, sausages. Annette saw that she must go, and ran down the stairs as quickly as she had come up.
"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" I heard her soft voice answering her mistress, "what can be the matter, madame, that you should make such an outcry? One would think the house were on fire."
Wilfrid closed the door after her, and came back to his seat. We looked at each other with some uneasiness.
"This is strange news," said he at last. "At any rate, your papers are all in order?"
"Certainly," I replied, and showed him my pass.
"Good! There is mine, I had it viséed before we left. But still, all these murders bode no good to us. I am afraid we shall make but a poor business here. Many families must be in mourning, and then, besides all these annoyances, the trouble which the police will give us."
"Bah!" cried I, "you take too dismal a view of everything."
We continued to talk about these strange events until long past midnight. The fire in our little stove lighted up the angles of the roof, the square dormer window with its three cracked panes of glass, the mattress spread upon the bare boards, the blackened beams overhead, the little fir table, which cast an unsteady shadow on the worm-eaten floor. A mouse, attracted by the heat, darted back and forth like an arrow along the wall. We could hear the wind without, whistling and bellowing around the high chimney-stacks, sweeping the snow from the gutters beneath the eaves in misty swirls. I was dreaming of Annette. Silence had fallen upon us. Suddenly Wilfrid, throwing off his coat, cried:
"It is time to sleep; put another stick of wood in the stove, and let us go to bed."