"Exactly; ride with all speed to the officer commanding the brigade of guns, and say it is the order of General Elliot that he falls back at once towards the hills of Paramé."
I bowed, for the speaker was the general in person.
To execute this order, I had to ride nearly a mile to the rear, skirting the wide stretch of sand that lies between St. Malo and St. Servand. The morning was still quite dark, and the fires yet smouldered redly in the dockyards and harbour, while a heavy smoke and odour of burning loaded the air, which was very still and oppressive.
I rode towards the place, where the matches of the artillery shone brilliantly; but I had scarcely reached the flank of the brigade, when the whole force got into motion at a rapid trot, the gunners on their seats, and the drivers plying well their whips, as they wheeled off towards the hills with a tremendous noise, chains, shot, rammers, spunges, and buckets all swinging and clattering. Thus I had no occasion to deliver the anticipated orders of General Elliot; but as the artillerymen were driving with such fury, I reined up to let them pass, and followed leisurely in their rear.
Day was now beginning to break, and the summits of the hills and the spires of the city of St. Malo—in the dark ages the abode of saints, in more modern times the asylum of criminals—were brightening in the ruddy gloom; but smoke hung like a sombre pall over all the harbour below.
From time to time I could hear in the distance the hollow bay of the fierce dogs which watched the city walls, a custom that was not abolished until 1770, when one night they tore to pieces and devoured a naval officer.
The sound of water plashing by the wayside drew my horse towards it. The poor animal was thirsty after the long and weary patrol duty of the past night. The stream poured from a rock, and through a moss-green wooden duct fell into the stone basin of a wayside well, and there, while my horse drunk long and thirstily, I heard the rumble of the artillery as they passed away among the echoing mountains and I was left alone in the rear.
By the roadside near the fountain, there grew a dense thicket of mulberry trees and wild broom-bushes, from amid which—just as I was turning my horse to ride off—there rung a half-stifled cry, followed by a fierce and very unmistakeable malediction in French—for that language, and not the old Armoric, is spoken by the Bretons of Dol and St. Malo.
Supposing that some unfortunate English straggler or wounded man might be lying there at the mercy of some of the enemy, I drew a pistol from my holsters and dismounted. My horse was so well trained, that I knew he would remain where I left him, while penetrating into the thicket. The gloom of the latter was excessive, but day was breaking, and a faint light stole between the slender stems of the trees.
Two figures now appeared—those of a man and woman. Having come close upon them unobserved, I now shrunk behind a bush to watch. The woman was on her knees, and her left shoulder reclined against the root of a tree; her whole attitude indicated weariness or despair, or both together. Her hands were tied with a scarf or handkerchief, and her dark hair hung over her face so as to conceal her features entirely. Close by her, and with one hand resting against the same tree, the man stood erect, but looking down, and surveying her with some solicitude, or at least with interest. He wore a peasant's frock of blue linen, girt at the waist by a belt with a square buckle. He was armed with a small hatchet and couteau de chasse, and carried in his right hand a knotted cudgel.