The smuggler took, perhaps, the best way of teaching me to bear the weight of what I had done, by showing me that there were others who walked under it so lightly. Wondering at his coolness, yet envying it, I took another and another cup of the spirit, till I began to find some relief, and could look around me and gain some knowledge of the external objects. It was then I perceived the reason why the miller had been so slow in admitting us. The whole place was strewed with various contraband goods, which had not yet been deposited in their usual receptacle, which was apparently an under-chamber, reached by a trap-door in the floor of the mill, so artfully contrived that it had escaped even my eyes in my frequent visits to the place.
It now stood open; and no sooner did Garcias perceive that the brandy and his conversation had produced some effect upon me, than, pointing to a low bed in one corner, he advised me to lie down and go to sleep, while he helped the miller to conceal the salt and other prohibited articles, with which the floor was encumbered. I said I could not sleep; and he made me take a fourth cup of brandy, which soon plunged me at least into forgetfulness.
How long I lay I know not; but when I woke, the interior of the mill was quite dark, except where a moonbeam streamed in through a high window and fell upon the dark gigantic figure of Garcias standing with the miller near the door, apparently in the act of listening. At the same time a high pile of salt, moved to the edge of the trap-door, but not yet let down, proved that the smugglers had been interrupted in their employment. In an instant a tremendous knocking, which had most probably been the cause of my waking, was repeated against the mill-door, and a voice was heard crying, "If you do not open the door, take the consequences, for I give you notice that I shall break it open: I am François Derville, officer of his majesty's douane; and I charge you to yield me entrance."
"Ay, I know you well!" muttered Garcias to himself, "and a bold fellow you are too.--See, miller, by the loop hole," he continued in the same under-tone,--"see whether there is any one with him?"
The miller climbed up to a small aperture high in the wall, which apparently commanded a view of the door; and after looking through it for a moment, while the blows were reiterated on the outside, he descended, saying, "He is alone: I have looked all up the valley, and no one is near him; but I see he has got an iron crow to break open the door."
"He will not try that when he knows I am here," said Garcias; and elevating his voice to a tone that drowned the knocking without, he added, "Hold! Derville, hold! I am here,--Pedro Garcias:--you know me, and you know I am not one to be disturbed; so go away about your business, if you would not have worse come of it.
"Pedro Garcias, or Pedro Devil!" replied the man without, "what matters it to me? I will do my duty. Therefore, let me in, or I will break open the door;" and a heavy blow of his crow confirmed this expression of his intention.
"The man is mad!" said Garcias, with that calm, cold tone which very often in men of stormy passions announces a more deadly degree of wrath than when their anger exhausts itself in noisy fury;--"the man is mad!" and stooping down he took up one of the heavy wooden mallets with which he had been breaking the salt.
In the meanwhile, the blows without were redoubled, and the door evidently began to give way. "Take care what you are doing!" cried Garcias, in a voice of thunder; "you are rushing into the lion's den!" Another and another blow were instantly struck: the door staggered open, and the douanier stood full in the portal.
Garcias raised his arm--the mallet fell, and the unhappy officer rolled upon the floor with his scull dashed to atoms, like an ox before the blow of the butcher. He made no cry or sound, except a sort of inarticulate moan, but fell dead at once, without a struggle.