But he caught me by the arm and detained me.
‘You don’t know the way,’ he said. ‘Steady, steady, Monsieur. You go too fast. They are just moving. Let us join them, and strike in when the time comes. We must let them guide us.’
‘Fool!’ I said, shaking off his hand. ‘I tell you, I know where he is! I know where they are going. Come, and we will pluck the fruit while they are on the road to it.’
His only answer was an exclamation of surprise. At that moment the lights began to move. The Lieutenant was starting. The moon was not yet up, the sky was grey and cloudy; to advance where we were was to step into a wall of blackness. But we had lost too much already, and I did not hesitate. Bidding my companion follow me and use his legs, I sprang through a low fence which rose before us; then stumbling blindly over some broken ground in the rear of the houses, I came with a fall or two to a little watercourse with steep sides. Through this I plunged recklessly and up the farther side, and, breathless and panting, gained the road, beyond the village, and fifty yards in advance of the Lieutenant’s troop.
They had only two lanthorns burning, and we were beyond the circle of light cast by these; while the steady tramp of so many footsteps covered the noise we made. We were in no danger of being noticed, and in a twinkling we turned our backs, and as fast as we could we ran down the road. Fortunately, they were thinking more of secrecy than speed, and in a minute we had doubled the distance between them and us. In two minutes their lights were mere sparks shining in the gloom behind us. We lost even the tramp of their feet. Then I began to look out and go more slowly, peering into the shadows on either side for the fernstack.
On one hand the hill rose steeply, on the other it fell away to the stream. On neither side was close wood, or my difficulties had been immensely increased; but scattered oak trees stood here and there among the bracken. This helped me, and presently, on the upper side, I came upon the dense substance of the stack looming black against the lighter hill.
My heart beat fast, but it was no time for thought. Bidding the man in a whisper to follow me and be ready to back me up, I climbed the bank softly, and, with a pistol in my hand, felt my way to the rear of the stack, thinking to find a hut there, set against the fern, and M. Cocheforet in it. But I found no hut. There was none; and, moreover, it was so dark now we were off the road, that it came upon me suddenly, as I stood between the hill and the stack, that I had undertaken a very difficult thing. The hut behind the fern stack. But how far behind? how far from it? The dark slope stretched above us, infinite, immeasurable shrouded in night. To begin to climb it in search of a tiny hut, possibly well hidden and hard to find in daylight, seemed an endeavour as hopeless as to meet with the needle in the hay! And now while I stood, chilled and doubting, almost despairing, the steps of the troop in the road began to grow audible, began to come nearer.
‘Well, Monsieur le Capitaine?’ the man beside me muttered—in wonder why I stood. ‘Which way? or they will be before us yet.’
I tried to think, to reason it out; to consider where the hut should be; while the wind sighed through the oaks, and here and there I could hear an acorn fall. But the thing pressed too close on me; my thoughts would not be hurried, and at last I said at a venture,—
‘Up the hill. Straight up from the stack.’