"Not at all," Ralph said, apologetically; "but father told me to call, and pay him for some masses. My eldest sister was very ill, when we came away, and father worries about her.
"Where does the priest live?"
"The last house on the left, as you go out from the farther end of the village. But anyone will show you it, in the morning.
"You don't want the light any longer?"
For the boys had, while speaking, been taking off their boots, and making a show of preparing to lie down on the straw.
"No, thank you. Good night.
"Oh, I forgot--what do you charge, a cask, for your best beer? Father wanted to know and, if the price suits, will send down a cart to fetch it."
The landlord named the price, and then said good night, and left them.
When he returned to the room where he had left the German soldiers, the sergeant asked him a question or two concerning the boys; and the landlord repeated the substance of the conversation which he had just had. This allayed the last suspicions which had remained in the sergeant's mind; and he congratulated himself, greatly, that he had not taken his men out, in such a night, upon a mere groundless suspicion.
"If the landlord repeats that yarn to the Germans, it will allay all suspicion," Ralph said, when they were left alone. "Otherwise the sergeant might have taken it into his head to come to have a look at us and, although it would not very much matter that he should discover that the birds had flown, still it would have put him on his guard, and he might have doubled the sentries, and made it much more difficult for us.