When he was out of range, he paused and leaned against a tree, for his strength failed him at the thought of what was taking place between Aristandre and the enemy's sentinels.
He heard a great uproar in the tower, and something that sounded like the blows of a pickaxe on stone. It was Aristandre's spade, which he kept whirling about his head in the darkness; but he prudently kept silent, in order to be taken for a drunken gypsy, and Mario, straining his ears to hear his loud voice among the others, lost hope, and, with hope, courage to fly without him.
The poor boy was thinking so little of himself that he did not even start when he felt a hand on his arm.
It was Pilar, who had run faster than he, and was retracing her steps to find him.
"Well, well, what are you doing here?" she said. "Come, while they are killing him! When they have finished killing him, they will chase us!"
The little gypsy's ghastly sang-froid horrified Mario. Reared amid scenes of violence and bloodshed, she hardly knew what fear meant, and had not the faintest conception of pity.
But, by virtue of some swift sequence of ideas, Mario thought of Lauriane, and all the resolution of which a child is capable returned to his heart.
He ran on once more, and, motioning to Pilar to take the lower road, turned into the road leading to the plateau of Le Chaumois. A few steps farther on he stumbled over an object which lay across the road. It was the second dead body which Aristandre had pointed out to him, but which they had not had time to examine. Feeling the body under him, Mario was bathed in cold perspiration; perhaps it was Adamas! He mustered courage to touch it, and having satisfied himself that the clothes were those of a peasant, he hurried forward.
The sight of the pale sky over the bare fields made him breathe more freely; the darkness was stifling him. He took a bee-line across the fields, but a new terror awaited him there. A pale, indistinct form seemed to be flitting over the furrows. It came toward him. He tried to elude it, but it followed him. It was an animal of some sort chasing him. All the old women's tales about the white greyhound, and the imp that cries: "Robert is dead!" flashed through his mind.
But of a sudden the beast neighed and came near enough to be recognized. It was Mario's dear little horse, which had scented him from afar and came to offer him his help.