The man gave a queer laugh. He evidently thought that the abbé expected too much.
The abbé walked until midnight, and then being tired he found a quiet spot between two great rocks, and lying down slept there until morning. In the leather saddle-bag which formed his pillow he had bread and some meat, which he ate as he walked on towards the Lancone Defile. Once, soon after daylight, he paused to listen, and the sound that had faintly reached him was repeated. It was the warning whistle of the steamer, the old Persévérance, entering Bastia harbour ten miles away. He was still in the shade of the great heights that lay between him and the Eastern coast, and hurried while the day was cool. Then the sun leapt up behind the hazy summits above Biguglia. The abbé looked at his huge silver watch. It was nearly eight o'clock. When he was near to the entrance of the defile he stood in the middle of the road and gave, in his high clear voice, the cry of the goat-herd calling his flock. He gave it twice, and then repeated it. If there were any in the macquis within a mile of him they could not fail to see him as he stood on the dusty road in the sunlight.
He was not disappointed. In a few minutes the closely-set arbutus bushes above the road were pushed aside and a boy came out—an evil-faced youth with a loose mouth.
“It is Jean of the Evil Eye who has sent me,” he said glibly, with an eye on the abbé's hands in case there should be a knife. “He is up there with a broken leg. He has with him the old man.”
“The old man?” repeated the abbé, interrogatively.
“Yes, he who is foolish.”
“Show me the way,” said Susini. “You need not look at my hands; I have nothing in them.”
They climbed the steep slope that overhung the road, forcing their way through the thick brushwood, stumbling over the chaos of stones. Quite suddenly they came upon a group of men sitting round a smouldering fire where a tin coffee-pot stood amid the ashes. One man had his leg roughly tied up in sticks. It was Jean of the Evil Eye, who looked hard at the Abbé Susini, and then turning, indicated with a nod the Count de Vasselot who sat leaning against a tree. The count recognized Susini and nodded vaguely. His face, once bleached by long confinement, was burnt to a deep red; his eyes were quite irresponsible.
“He is worse,” said Jean, without lowering his voice. “Sometimes I can only keep him here by force. He thinks the whole island is looking for him—he never sleeps.”
Jean was interrupted by the evil-faced boy, who had risen, and was peering down towards the gates of the defile.