"God forbid!" exclaimed Masha, yawning; "last night there was no sleep and the night before but an hour or two; I am tired to death."
Soon after midnight Louise awoke at the sound of running feet without. She started up and looked about, but could see nothing in the darkness. Some one came to the door and called out "Dmitry Vannkof—Mishka—awake and come to the door, I have news for you".
"Mon Dieu!" thought Louise. "Perhaps I had better be substitute for Dmitry Vannkof, whoever he may be, and attend to this visitor; it is dark and I should not be seen." She was about to rise and go to the door, when the unseen visitor continued to shout and to knock impatiently with some hard object, probably an axe; Louise remembered that though she had picked up much Russian during the campaign, she was not a sufficiently good scholar to carry on a conversation without suspicion and discovery. She therefore lay still.
"Mishka, curse you, are you drunk or dead?" roared the unseen one.
To the horror and surprise of Louise some one shuffled close beside her on the floor, and a woman's voice said aloud: "Mishka, we are called—awake—séchasse idyóm, soodar! (we're just coming, sir!)".
Mishka grunted and awoke with imprecations. "What is it?" he shouted; "are we never to be allowed to sleep again? Who's there?"
"It is I, the Starost; the Hetman of the Mojaisk Cossacks is in the village; we are to assemble at four in Toozof's field, bringing pitchforks and pickaxes. There is to be an oblava (battue). It is said that the best general of all these accursed cut-throats is to pass at daybreak; he is sleeping at Biéloy; he is to be ambushed with all his guard; we shall not have lived in vain if we succeed in this; we shall be three thousand Cossacks and the moujiks of twelve villages; be ready at four and thank God meanwhile for all His mercies."
The man departed.
"By the Saints!" exclaimed Mishka, yawning; "if one were not so deadly sleepy that would be good news. See, Masha, what we will do. I will sleep until four, while you wake; when I have departed you shall sleep, if you will, for a score of hours!" Masha agreed to this arrangement, and within a minute his snoring was sonorous proof that her goodman had wasted none of his time.
Louise lay and listened to Masha's yawning and half-uttered exclamations of weariness. Why had these people not despatched her at sight? Had they entered in the dark and failed to detect her? The thing was a mystery. She felt refreshed and her head scarcely ached; Biéloy was, she remembered, but a league away, towards Moscow. So far as she had understood the Starost's words, it was Marshal Ney and his guards who were to be ambushed. "I shall warn them, of course," she reflected; "but there is no need to disturb them too soon, for Heaven knows every man of us requires all the sleep he can get."