"To repay the slaughter at the mill. Ho! Doubt not! That goes not unrewarded. Nîmes first, then Alais, then Montpellier. 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' It is our holy shibboleth."
"It can never be----"
"Never be! Why not?" asked the man who alone had spoken among the three. "Why not? What shall prevent the Lord's children from outrooting their persecutors? Why not? You are on our side. Is it not so?" and he looked menacingly at Martin.
"You do not know," the latter replied. "Advancing here not two hours behind me there comes a vast body of royalist soldiers in two battalions. Among them the Miquelets. And, though they may never scale your mountain passes, never reach the plateau, yet surely they will bar your way to Nîmes. Even though your full force descend, they will outnumber you."
The man, whom Martin remembered well when he was a prisoner in the caverns and whom he had heard addressed as Montbonneux, pondered a moment; then he said suddenly, with a slight laugh:
"Perhaps they will reach the plateau. Perhaps we shall not bar their way. One catches the rat by leaving the trap-door open, not by shutting it," and as he spoke his companions laughed too, while as they did so Martin again remembered the oubliettes and snares prepared for any who might wander up into the gloomy refuges of the attroupés.
Ere he could reply, however, or announce his intention of proceeding to where Urbaine might be ere setting forth with Cavalier, there rose a sound close to them. A sound borne on the night wind toward where they were, a sound that told him and them that down from their mountain home were coming the Camisards. A chant that, rising above all else; spoke of revenge decided on, of fierce unsparing retaliation:
"Quand tu te léveras, oh, notre Roi celeste!
Pour délivrer enfin les élus d'ici-bas,
Le vent de ton tonnerre à nos tyrans funeste
En Balaiera le reste
Au gouffres du trépas.
Venge--Venge----"
"'Tis he, Cavalier," the man Montbonneux exclaimed, "'tis he who comes."