CHAPTER XXIII.
Jerôme de St. Quirin had safely effected his retreat upon the farm. Since midnight he had occupied the rising ground on which it stood.
"Who goes there?" was the challenge of the sentinels as the escort approached.
"It is us—us from the village of Charmes," replied Marc Divès in his stentorian voice.
They were recognised and allowed to pass.
The farm was wrapped in silence. An armed sentinel was walking up and down before the barn, where about thirty of the mountaineers were asleep upon some straw. Catherine, at sight of those heavy gabled roofs, those old outhouses, those stables, of all that ancient dwelling-place within whose walls she had passed her youth, where her father and her grandfather had tranquilly spent their peaceful and industrious lives, and which she was about to abandon, perhaps for ever, Catherine felt a terrible oppression of the heart; but she kept the feeling to herself, and springing from the sleigh, just as in former times she used to return from market:
"Well, Louise," said she, "here we are at home again, thanks be to God."
Old Duchêne had come and opened the door, exclaiming:
"Ah! is it you, Madame Lefévre?"