“I will see you again before very long, perhaps at your home in the country that you love. Sometime I will show you my flock of sheep, and you will meet the little Jean of whom I have told you,” he said. Then he turned to the market gardener. “I know a boy who will drive your cart to-morrow, if you like. He lives in a cellar, and is in dire straits. He will be only too glad of earning even a few coins, for he has a journey before him, and a mother and sisters dependent upon him. I’d like to do him the good turn.”
Now Dian was a prime favorite with the market gardener, who was constantly wrangling with the men he knew in the city, though he cared not a fig for any of them except the seed shopman. He admired Dian’s bulk and his free, fearless ways. “There’s a man for you,” he would say. “There’s a man of France, with a broad back and broad ways. There’s a man!” He greeted Dian’s suggestion cordially.
“Bring on your boy. I want one I can trust, and these Paris brats are as sly as their fathers. I, for one, will be glad to get away from the whole dirty, quarrelsome lot of them,” he said. There was an answering mutter of agreement from the bed.
“He is a friend of the little Vivi, and a worthy lad. Where will I find the cart? I will myself see that the lad is started in good time and order,” said Dian.
“It will stand, as always, at the end of the row by the West Barricade, and I will see that it is ready. You can tell him the road and the way, as you know the country about, but it would be well for me to have a word with him. You say he knows the road? He’s not one of the city brats?” As the market gardener asked this last question, he took out his long pipe and lit it. Settling back on the stool that Dian had vacated, he drew a long puff from it, unconscious of the wry face that Raoul made as the tobacco smoke filled the room.
“He knows all the country near you, for he comes from the road east of Calais, and has been back and forth in summer weather many times,” Dian answered. Then he opened the door and went out, saying over his shoulder as he did so:
“The lad and I will be at the West Barricade to-morrow at sundown, or just before the gates close. You never go until then, I take it?”
“No, we hold on for the trade until dusk. I’ll be there by the cart. Raoul here will be his own man in a few days, and will, I hope, have learned his lesson about going slow with pigs’ feet,” answered Raoul’s master.
“Give my regards to the funny fat man in the brown cloak,” called Raoul, and Dian could hear him laughing, weak as he was, as he went down the seed shop stairs.
Dian knew that all had gone well with Marie Josephine, for he had stayed about the house and halls, and had known when she had gone up the back stairs, though no one else had seen the little grey figure slip away. He had gone out and waited, fighting the fear that almost choked him as the minutes seemed to fly by, and the door in the garden wall did not open. Then he had seen them come out and go their different ways, as they had been told to do, and so, instead of going in again to the house, to give his life if need be for them, he had gone on to the seed shop and there, as always, he had found a way.