"What about?"
"Why, cut it fine as you pass by the 'nabs' at the barrier; the meeting might lead to disagreeable recollections. It is not every old acquaintance it is worth while to renew our friendship with. You have been wanted at the barriers for some time."
"I'll keep my weather-eye open," replied the driver, getting on his box.
It needs scarcely be told, after this specimen of slang, that the coachman was a robber, one of the Schoolmaster's worthy associates. The vehicle then quitted the Rue du Temple.
Two hours afterwards, towards the closing of a winter's day, the vehicle containing the Chouette, the Schoolmaster, and Tortillard, stopped before a wooden cross, marking out the sunken and lonely road which conducted to the farm at Bouqueval, where the Goualeuse remained under the kind protection of Madame Georges.
CHAPTER III.
AN IDYL.
The hour of five had just struck from the church clock of the little village of Bouqueval; the cold was intense, the sky clear, the sun, sinking slowly behind the vast leafless woods which crowned the heights of Ecouen, cast a purple hue over the horizon, and sent its faint, sloping rays across the extensive plains, white and hard with winter's frost.