‘I might call to the nearest soldiers and tell them who you are,’ I answered coolly. ‘I might do that, but I should not. That were a clumsy way of punishing you, and I know a better way. I should go to the Captain, Mademoiselle, and tell him whose horse is locked up in the inn stable. A trooper told me—as someone had told him—that it belonged to one of his officers; but I looked through the crack, and I knew the horse again.’
She could not repress a groan. I waited; still she did not speak.
‘Shall I go to the Captain?’ I said ruthlessly.
She shook the hood back from her face and looked at me.
‘Oh, you coward! you coward!’ she hissed through her teeth. ‘If I had a knife!’
‘But you have not, Mademoiselle,’ I answered, unmoved. ‘Be good enough, therefore, to make up your mind which it is to be. Am I to go with my news to the captain, or am I to come with you?’
‘Give me the pitcher,’ she said harshly.
I did so, wondering. In a moment she flung it with a savage gesture far into the bushes.
‘Come!’ she said, ‘if you will. But some day God will punish you!’
Without another word she turned and entered the path through the trees, and I followed her. I suppose that every one of its windings, every hollow and broken place in it had been known to her from childhood, for she followed it swiftly and unerringly, barefoot as she was. I had to walk fast through the darkness to keep up with her. The wood was quiet, but the frogs were beginning to croak in the pool, and their persistent chorus reminded me of the night when I had come to the house-door, hurt and worn out, and Clon had admitted me, and she had stood under the gallery in the hall. Things had looked dark then. I had seen but a very little way ahead then. Now all was plain. The commandant might be here with all his soldiers, but it was I who held the strings.