"I have seen the husbandmen in the fields, the shepherds leading their flocks, the cities open and tranquil. But it is known that in your country, woodmen, husbandmen, shepherds and town folks transform themselves into soldiers at a moment's notice."
"Yes, when our country is threatened with invasion."
"And do you apprehend such an invasion?"
Karouer looked at the abbot fixedly, smiled sarcastically, made no answer, whistled, and presently broke out into a Breton song, mechanically whirling his pen-bas as he strode rapidly forward in the lead of the three monks.
Night drew on. Karouer and the dignitaries whom he guided, having been all day on the march, were now approaching one of the highest points on the mountain path that they had been following, when, struck by an unexpected spectacle, Witchaire suddenly reined in his horse.
The sight that took the abbot by surprise was, indeed, startling. A flame, hardly distinguishable by reason of its great distance, and yet perceptible on the horizon, whose outlines the dusk had not yet wholly blotted out, had barely arrested his attention, when, almost instantaneously, similar tongues of fire gradually shot up from the distant tops of the long chain of the Black Mountains. The fires gained in brilliancy and size in the measure that they broke out nearer and nearer to the spot where the abbot stood. Suddenly, only twenty paces away from him, the startled prelate perceived a bluish gleam through a dense smoke. The gleam speedily changed into a brilliant flame, that, shooting upwards toward the starry sky, spread a light so bright that the abbot, his monks, his guide, the rocks round about and a good portion of the crag of the mountain stood illumined as if at noon. A few minutes later similar bonfires continued to be kindled from hill to hill, tracing back, as it seemed, the route that the travelers had left behind, and losing themselves in the distance in the evening haze. The abbot remained mute with stupefaction. Karouer emitted three times a gutteral and loud cry resembling that of a night bird. A similar cry, proceeding from behind the plateau of rocks where the nearest bonfire was burning, responded to the signal from Karouer.
"What fires are these that are springing up from hill-top to hill-top?" the abbot inquired with intense curiosity the moment he recovered from his astonishment. "It must be some signal."
"At this moment," answered Karouer, "similar fires are burning from all the hill-tops of Armorica, from the mountains of Arres to the Black Mountains and the ocean."
"But to what purpose?"
As was his wont, Karouer made no answer to such pointed interrogatories, but striking up some Breton song, quickened his steps, while he whirled his pen-bas in the air.