Chapter Nine.
“Long after poor old Ludovic was in bed and asleep that night, the Germains sat up talking over all he had told them.
”‘To-morrow will be the twenty-first of September,’ said old Germain thoughtfully; ‘that makes nine days more to wait—’
”‘But should we wait, father,’ exclaimed Pierre. ‘I feel so certain no news will come, and every day, every hour, it is so much time lost—can we not set off at once? Father, mother, let me go! I am so young and strong—fatigue is nothing to me, and father is not so strong as he was,’ which was true, for rheumatism, that sad enemy of those whose duties force them to be out in all weather, had already more than once, for weeks at a time, crippled the forester’s active limbs.
“The father and mother looked at each other. True, they had said they would not grudge their boy in the service they had all their lives been devoted to, and the risk they did not think so great for him as it perhaps really was. But when it came to the point of his setting off on the long journey—so uncertain how to proceed, so young and inexperienced as he was?
”‘No, my son,’ said Germain. ‘It is right that I should go myself. I am an ignorant man—less taught than you—but I have the training of age, and have learnt to keep cool and quiet when your fiery young tongue would be getting you into trouble. No, stay you here and take care of your mother, and I will go where it is my duty to go. To-morrow we will talk over about when I should start. I should like to hear what Nanette Delmar thinks about it,’ and with these words he rose from his chair, but stiffly and with difficulty; his wife and Pierre both noticed it more than heretofore. He was not the man he had been.
”‘Sitting so long cramps one—and the fire is out too,’ he said.