Sacred are the laws of hospitality; he who breaks them is before God and man like Cain.
When the next spring came, it chanced that some officers from the garrison went a-hunting to the hills of Alata. They came near the place where the two fugitives lived in concealment. These latter caught sight of the huntsmen, and cowered behind a rock, lest they should be recognised and perhaps shot down as game. Quite near them a young herdsman was watching his goats. The colonel of the regiment, De Rozières, stepped up to him and inquired if any deserters were concealed in the mountains thereabouts. The herdsman said that he did not know, and was embarrassed. De Rozières began to have suspicions. He threatened the youth with severe punishment—with immediate imprisonment in the Tower of Ajaccio, if he did not tell the truth.
Joseph was frightened; he said nothing, but he pointed to the spot where the poor grenadiers lay hiding. The officer did not understand him. "Speak!" he shouted. Joseph said nothing, but pointed again. The other officers, who had laid hold of the young man, now left him, and hastened in the direction where he had pointed, expecting possibly to find some animal which this stupid mute knew to be lying there.
The two deserters started up and took to flight, but were overtaken and made fast.
Colonel de Rozières gave Joseph four bright louis-d'ors as informer's reward. When the young herdsman saw the gold pieces in his own hand, he forgot, in his childish joy, officers and grenadiers and the whole world; for he had never seen the like before. He ran into his father's hut—called father, mother, and brothers together, and behaved like one out of his wits as he showed them his treasure.
"How didst thou earn this gold, my son Joseph?" asked the old shepherd. The son narrated what had happened. With every word he uttered, his father's countenance grew darker; the brothers seemed horror-struck, and, by the time his story was told, Joseph had grown pale as death.
Sacred are the laws of hospitality; he who breaks them is before God and man like Cain.
The old shepherd threw one terrible glance on his trembling son, and left the hut. He called all his kinsfolk together. When they were assembled, he related to them the circumstances, and requested them to pronounce judgment on his son; for it appeared to him that he was a traitor, and had brought shame on his own house, and all the neighbourhood.
This court of kinsmen pronounced the deed worthy of death, and there was not a dissenting voice. "Wo to me and to my son!" cried the old man in despair. "Wo to my wife that bare me the Judas!"
The kinsmen went to Joseph. They took him and led him to the city-wall of Ajaccio, to a lonely place.