The other nodded.
“Then you have heard that the gendarmes are being drafted into the army, and sent to France?”
The man nodded again. He had done so long without speech that he had no doubt come to recognize its uselessness in the majority of human happenings. The abbé felt in his pocket, and gave the man a packet of tobacco. The Corsicans, unlike nearly all other races of the Mediterranean, are smokers of wooden pipes.
“Thanks,” said the man, in an odd, soft voice, speaking for the first time.
“I am going up into the mountains,” said the abbé, slowly, knowing no doubt that men who have lived long with Nature are slow to understand words, “to seek an old man who has recently gone there. He is travelling with a man called Jean, who has the evil eye.”
“The Count de Vasselot,” said the outlaw, quietly. He touched his forehead with one finger and made a vague wandering gesture of the hand. “I have seen him. You go the wrong way. He is down there, near the entrance to the Lancone Defile with others.”
He paused and looked round him with the slow and distant glance which any may perceive in the eyes of a caged wild beast.
“They are all down from the mountains,” he said.
Even the Abbé Susini glanced uneasily over his shoulder. These still, stony valleys were peopled by the noiseless, predatory Ishmaels of the macquis. They were, it is true, not numerous at this time, but those who had escaped the clutch of the imperial law were necessarily the most cunning and desperate.
“Buon,” he said, turning to retrace his steps. “I shall go down to the Lancone Defile. God be with you, my friend.”