"Take no notice," muttered the mousquetaire, "ride straight ahead, look neither to left nor right. Yet—listen. All day from the time we were a league outside of Dijon—ma foi!" in a loud tone that might have been heard fifty yards off, "a fine night, a pleasant night for the season!"—then lowering it again, "a man has tracked us, a man armed and masked, or masked whenever we drew near him—si, si, monsieur"; again in the loud voice assumed for the purpose, "the vin du pays, especially of Chantillon, is excellent; a cup will cheer us to-night."
"Doubtless," replied St. Georges, in a similar voice; then sinking it, he asked beneath his teeth, "Why not warn me before?"
"Oh! red wine, monsieur, above all," replied Boussac, loudly. "There is little white grows here." Again lowering his tone: "I feared to distress, to alarm you. You had the child. Now I am forced to do so. He has been joined by five others at different points since we passed Flavigny. All armed and all masked. Yes," in the loud voice, "and with a soupe à l'oignon, as monsieur says. They are around us," sinking it again. "I judge they mean attack. Well, we know we are soldiers: they should be brigands, larrons! Shall we encounter them, give them a chance to show who, and what they are?"
"Ay," said St. Georges. "Observe, here is a small church and graveyard; wheel in and let us await them. I see them now, even in the dusk."
Swiftly, as on parade, the order was given, and as swiftly executed. The black horse wheeled by the side of the chestnut of the chevau-léger into the open graveyard—the gate of the place hung on one hinge down toward the road from which the church rose somewhat—and then St. Georges in a loud voice said:
"Halt here, comrade. Our horses are a little blown. We will breathe them somewhat."
It was a wretched, uncared-for spot into which they had ridden, the church being a little, low-built edifice of evidently great antiquity, and doubtless utilized for service by the out-dwellers of Aignay-le-Duc, which lay half a league further off, and some sparse lights of which might be now seen twinkling in the clear, frosty air beneath a young moon that rose to the right of the village. In the graveyard itself there was the usual heterogeneous accumulation of tombstones and memorials of the dead; here and there some dark-slate headstones; in other places wooden crosses with imitation flowers hanging on their crossbars, covered with frozen snow; in others, huge mounds alone, to mark the spots where the dead lay.
"Not bad," said the mousquetaire, as he glanced his eye round the melancholy spot, "for an encounter, if they mean one.—Steady, mon brave," to his horse, "steady!—Ah! here comes one. Well, we have the point o' vantage. We are in the churchyard; they have to come up the rise to attack us. Peste! what can they want with two soldiers?"
St. Georges arranged his child under his arm more carefully, gathered his reins into the hand of that arm, and then, with the other, drew his long sword—it glittered in the rays of the young moon like a streak of phosphorus!—and was followed in this action by Boussac. After which he whispered: "See! All six are coming. Which is the one who, you say, followed us from Flavigny?"
"He who hangs behind all the others. The biggest of all."