IN THE FOREST OF THE MINIÈRES
Night was falling, but Jean was still on German soil. He was sleeping, worn out with fatigue; he lay stretched upon a bed of moss and fir cones, while M. Ulrich watched, on the look out for fresh danger, still trembling from the danger he had just escaped. The two men had crept into a space between two stacks of branches left by the wood-cutters, who had been thinning the fir-tree plantation. The branches, still green, stretched from one stack to the other, making their hiding-place more secure. A storm of wind blew across the mountain, but otherwise no sound could be heard upon the heights.
Two hours must have passed since Jean and his uncle had taken refuge in their hiding-place.
When the train reached Russ-Hersbach, M. Ulrich had at once seen and said that the moment for Jean to change his uniform had passed. Even such a little thing as that would have excited too much attention in that frontier province, peopled by visible and invisible watchers, where the stones listen and the fir-trees are spies. He threw the valise to the coachman of the landau engaged three days previously at Schirmeck.
"Here's some useless luggage," he cried, "fortunately it's not heavy. Drive quickly, coachman."
The carriage crossed the poverty-stricken village, reached the town of Schirmeck, and quitting there the principal valley turned to the right into the narrow winding valley leading to Grande Fontaine. No suspicious glances followed the travellers, but witnesses of their passing increased. And this was serious. Although Jean was sitting with his back to the driver, partially hidden by the blinds and partially by the cloak which M. Ulrich had thrown over him, yet there was no doubt the uniform of the 9th Hussars had been seen by two gendarmes in the streets of Schirmeck, by workmen on the road, and by the douanier who was smoking and had continued to smoke his pipe so tranquilly, sitting under the trees on the left of the first bridge by which one entered Grande Fontaine.
Every moment M. Ulrich thought, "Now the alarm will be given! Perhaps it has been already, and one of the state's innumerable agents will come up, question us, and insist upon our following them whatever we may say."
He did not tell Jean of his anxiety, and the young man, excited by the spirit of adventure, was quite different to the Jean of yesterday.
In spite of the steepness and stoniness of the path by the mountain stream, the horses made good headway, and soon the houses of Grande Fontaine came into sight. The beech-wood of Donon, all velvety and golden and crowned with firs, rose in front of them. At 2.15 the carriage stopped in the middle of the village, in a kind of sloping square, where a spring of water flows into a huge stone trough. The travellers got out, for here the carriage road ended.
"Wait for us at the inn of Rémy Naeger," said M. Ulrich; "we will go for a walk, and return in an hour. Drink a bottle of Molsheim wine at my expense, and give the horse a double portion of oats."