But at this juncture, and before he had time even to utter an exclamation, the man gave one leap, and releasing Arnauld' right foot from the stirrup with a sudden movement, and throwing it roughly over the saddle, he cast the squire from his horse, fell to the ground upon him, and seized him by the throat with his knee on his chest.
All this took place in less than twenty seconds.
"Who are you? What do you want?" asked the victor of his fallen foe.
"Let me get up, I beseech you!" said the almost strangled voice of Arnauld, who felt that he had met his master. "I am a Frenchman; but I have a safe-conduct from Lord Wentworth, governor of Calais."
"If you are a Frenchman," said the man,—"and in truth you seem not to have an accent like all these demons of foreigners,—I have no need of your passport. But what made you approach me in such an extraordinary way?"
"I thought that I saw a man in the ditch," said Arnauld, as the pressure on his chest was somewhat relaxed; "and I was coming to see if it wasn't a wounded man, and if there wasn't something I could do for him."
"Your purpose was good," said the man, withdrawing his hand and taking away his knee. "Come, get up, comrade," he added, extending his hand to Arnauld, who was soon on his feet. "I gave you rather a—rather a rough welcome; but you must excuse me, because I have no mind just now to have anybody interfering with my affairs. But you are a fellow-countryman, which is a very different matter; and far from injuring me, you may do me a great service. Let us get to know each other first. My name is Martin-Guerre; and yours?"
"Mine? Mine? It's Bertrand," said Arnauld, with a start; for being alone with him at night, and in that dense forest, this man, whom he ordinarily ruled completely by virtue of his cunning and shrewdness, now quite as completely had him in his power by virtue of his strength and courage.
Fortunately for Arnauld, the darkness assured his remaining unrecognized, and he did his best to disguise his voice.
"Well, friend Bertrand," continued Martin-Guerre, "let me tell you that I am an escaped prisoner, and that I got away this morning for the second time (my captors say for the third) from these Spaniards and English and Germans and Flemings; in short, from this whole catalogue of foes who have settled down upon our poor land like a swarm of locusts. For may I be hanged if France is not at this moment another Tower of Babel! For the last month I have belonged, just as you see me now, to twenty jabberers of different nationalities; and each patois was always harsher and more outlandish to listen to than the last. I was tired to death of being harried from village to village, which was done to me so much that I began to think they were simply making sport of me, and amusing themselves by tormenting me. They were forever blackguarding me about some pretty little witch named Gudule, who was supposed to have fallen in love with me so madly apparently as to have run away with me."