[10] Storm Witch.
CHAPTER XX.
The Germans had quitted Grandfontaine, Framont, and even Schirmeck. At a distance, very far off, on the plains of Alsace, dark points might be remarked indicating their battalions in retreat. Hullin awoke early, and made the round of the camp. He stood for a few moments contemplating the scene that lay extended before him, the cannon pointed towards the gorge, the volunteers stretched around the fire, the armed sentinels; then, satisfied with his inspection, he returned to the farm where Louise and Catherine were still sleeping.
The greyish light of dawn was stealing through the chamber. A few wounded in the next apartment were beginning to be attacked by fever; they might be heard calling on their wives and mothers. A little later, the hum of voices and the footsteps of people coming to and fro broke the still silence of the night. Catherine and Louise awoke; and the first sight that met their eyes was Jean-Claude sitting in a corner of the window-seat, gazing affectionately upon them; and, ashamed of their apparent laziness, they rose at once, to go and embrace him.
"Well?" said Catherine, inquiringly.
"Well, they are gone; we are left masters of the route, as I foresaw."
This assurance did not appear to tranquillise the old farm-mistress; she had to look out of window, and see with her own eyes the Germans in full retreat as far as Alsace. And even then all the remainder of the day her stern countenance still preserved the expression of an indefinable anxiety.
Between eight and nine o'clock, the pastor Saumaize arrived from the village of Charmes. Some mountaineers then came down to the foot of the mountain to carry away the dead; they then dug, to the right of the farm, a long ditch, where volunteers and kaiserlicks, whether clad in uniform or coats, hats or shakos, were quietly ranged side by side.