"Yes, the gardener's boy: I can make him out from here."
"Where? We haven't seen him come."
"He must have taken a short cut.... He is coming up the stairs.... Quick, Henriot!... Hurry!... Do you know anything?"
She pulled open the gate and a lad of fifteen or so, his face bathed in perspiration, appeared.
He at once said:
"There's a deserter been killed ... a German deserter."
And the three women were forthwith overcome with a great sense of peace. After the rush of events that had come upon them like a tempest, it seemed to them as though nothing could touch them now. The phantom of death vanished from their minds. A man had been shot, no doubt, but that didn't matter, because the man was not one of theirs. And the gladness that revived them was such that they could almost have laughed.
And, once again, Catherine appeared. She announced that Victor was returning. And the three women saw a man spurring his horse at the mouth of the pass, at the imminent risk of breaking his neck on the steep slope of the road. It was soon apparent, when the man reached the Étang-des-Moines, that some one was following him with swift strides; and Marthe uttered cries of joy at recognizing the tall figure of her husband.
She waved her handkerchief. Philippe answered the signal.
"It's he!" she said, almost swooning. "It's he, mamma.... I am sure that he'll be able to tell us everything ... and that M. Morestal is not far off...."