"She knows it."
"Great God! 'Tis from that her fresh sorrow springs. How--how did she----?"
But ere he could finish his question there came an interruption which prevented it from ever being answered.
Across the broken flags of the farmhouse kitchen there came a man, one of the prophets, known as Le Léopard, because of his fierce staring eyes, a man in whose belt there was a long knife, the hilt of which he fingered savagely, and on whose back was strapped a long military carabine, another spoil of the enemy. And, reaching Cavalier's side, he muttered hoarsely from beneath his ragged, dishevelled mustache:
"We are betrayed. There has been no battle. Roland is not within leagues of this spot. The cannon was a snare, a lure. And--and--come forth into the moonlight and see what is without."
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH.
From that old, dismantled farmhouse, built on to the tower, there sloped down, toward where a small stream ran some four hundred yards away, a long stretch of bare land, covered sometimes in the summer heat by short, coarse grass, while in the winter time it was, if any of it were left uneaten by the sheep, frost-bound or snow-covered. It was so now on this clear, cold winter night, its surface being dotted by innumerable folds and pens into which those sheep had once been driven, but which, since the mountaineers had been forced into revolution and had raided the place, were empty. They were so on this night, of sheep. Yet not of other living things, unless the moon played strange tricks with the eyes of those regarding the pens. Instead, were being filled rapidly with human forms creeping like Indians or painted snakes toward them, wriggling their bodies beneath the hurdles they were composed of, entering by that way into the ready-found ambush--the forms of the Miquelets, the most hated by the Camisards of all the troops which had been sent against them; the men whose extermination was more vowed and determined than the extermination of either dragoon, chevau-léger, or milice.
"You see?" whispered Le Leopard to Cavalier and Montbonneux as they stood together sheltering themselves from observation behind the great stone posts of the farmhouse's antique stoop, "you see? They first, then next the cavalry. Observe, beyond the stream; look through the trunks of the trees across it. The moon sparkles on breast and back and the splints of the gorgets. You see?" Then added, "And hear?"
For from down toward where Le Léopard had directed the other's attention there rang that which told beyond all doubt that the foe was lurking there; discovered them to the surrounded, hemmed-in Camisards. The neigh of a horse, long, loud, and shrill, taken up a moment later by others in their company and answered.