They were absent about an hour; and as the wind set from the side of the high road, in less than twenty minutes after their departure I heard two smart vollies of musketry, followed by a few dropping shots.
I looked out eagerly as far as my confined casement would allow me, and at length beheld Hubert with only four of his companions on their legs, bearing along in their arms a sixth person, who seemed to be very dangerously wounded. He died, however, before he reached the mill; and the others, laying him down on the grass, came onward with a small leathern valise, which, by the manner in which they carried it, I judged to be very weighty. Their arrival was followed by long and eager conversations, and a great deal of hurry and noise, but to what all this bustle referred I do not know, as they did not think fit to let me out of durance for nearly three hours. During that time, I saw from the window nine of the horses which they possessed brought out, of which six were instantly saddled, and loaded with a portion of their moveables.
As soon as this was complete, to my surprise I beheld the captain come out, and, after shooting upon the spot the three horses that remained unsaddled, mount, together with his four men, apparently in order to depart. My first thought was that they were about to leave me shut up where I was, and I looked round for the means of forcing open the door when they were gone; but the moment after, as I turned towards the casement, in order to observe their further proceedings, Hubert called to me to draw back from the window; and, as I obeyed, he threw in, through the aperture, the key of the room in which I was confined. As I stooped to pick it up, I heard the sound of their horses' feet galloping away; and before I had opened the door, and arrived at the bank of the stream, the last horseman of the five was out of sight, though, with greater consideration than I had any reason to expect, they had left a horse saddled at the door for my use.
[CHAPTER XII.]
When my worthy acquaintance Hubert and his companions had departed in the manner I have described in the last chapter, I had time to look round me, and consider both my own situation and theirs who had just left me.
From everything I had seen I could not doubt that the encounter with the courier and his escort had taken place, and that the robbers had proved successful. It was evident, however, that the struggle had been severe; and from the slaughter of three of their horses, as well as from their leaving a fourth for myself, I was led to conclude that four of the gang had perished in the affray. At all events, no doubt could exist as to their having left their late dwelling for ever; and I certainly was not a little obliged to them for the care which they had taken to provide me with the means of pursuing my journey.
Nevertheless, I judged that it might be expedient to examine their habitation and its vicinity thoroughly before I quitted it; and, on doing so, I found that in the hurry of their departure they had left behind them my own saddle and accoutrements, which I instantly placed upon the horse instead of those with which they had furnished him, not knowing how far the fact of sitting in a thief's saddle might not compromise me with those who might chance to be in pursuit of the thief. Having added my own peculiar saddlebags to the load of my charger, I took such a general survey of the ground and the road which led to it as might be useful afterwards, and, bidding farewell to the old mill, made the best of my way back to the high road. As I never forgot a path that I had once travelled, I had no difficulty in retracing my steps to the exact point at which I had fallen into the hands of the robbers, and gladly found myself once more on the road towards St. Malo, free from any apprehension of fresh interruption.
The affray, however, with the courier and his escort, must have taken place farther up the road, for it could not have failed to have left bloody traces wherever it occurred; and I met with none such in my onward journey, which I now pursued in the same direction that I had been following when I was interrupted. To tell the truth, I was not at all sorry to have no direct knowledge of the affair, for in these cases concealment is almost as bad as the crime itself, and it must be remembered that I was not in a situation to put my head willingly into the jaws of justice. I was, therefore, well contented that the robbery of the courier, and the murder of his escort, had passed totally without my personal cognisance, although I had no doubt whatever of the facts. To put myself as far, too, from the scene as possible, I galloped on pretty quickly till I came to a carrefour, where the road I was pursuing was crossed by that from St. Aubin to Rennes. It was at the distance of at least ten miles from the scene of my late adventures; and as I came up to it I perceived, seated on the little mound of earth at the foot of the guide-post, a man in the dress of a pedlar, with his box of wares laid down by his side. At first he was turned in such a manner as to prevent me from seeing his face; but the sound of my horses' feet causing him to look round, he displayed a countenance garnished with a long black beard, an ornament which at that time was beginning to fall into great disrepute throughout all civilized Europe--so much so, indeed, that no such thing was to be seen in all France, except perhaps on the faces of Jews and Capuchins, and a few which had descended from the reign of Henri Quatre, and were, I suppose, valued by their owners on the score of their antiquity.
The one before me at present was voluminous and massy; but, nevertheless, it did not serve to conceal from me the identity of the wearer with an acquaintance whose face had boasted no such appendage a fortnight before. I affected not to recognise him, however, and, dismounting from my horse--which instantly betrayed its ancient habits by browsing the roadside--I sat down on the same mound with the other traveller, and began conversing with him as a peddling Jew. He spoke learnedly and lamentably upon the evils and inconveniences of his own profession, and ended by moralising so sagely upon the necessity of bearing our own portion of ills with constancy and calmness, that I could not help exclaiming, "Ah! my dear philosopher, you are now quite complete: when I knew you on the Quai des Orfèvres you wanted nothing of Socrates but the beard."
Jacques Marlot shook his head. "Can your eyes see through stone walls, little serpent," he cried; "but remark what your good crowns have done for me; procured me this box of trumpery, and a beard that is worth half the money."