“Wait,” he commanded once more. “Will you give me a mouthful of water, then?”
“There’s enough dripping from the trees,” I shot back at him. “Turn your face up and you’ll easily slacken your thirst.”
He growled deeper than before but he realized that I was not to be taken as lightly as he thought. I went on. There was no more interruption. The fellow with the wounded hand might have been lurking somewhere in the neighborhood. He might even be standing behind a tree. But as far as I was concerned, he did not appear and in quicker time than I had come in, I was out of the woods and on the road that led in a roundabout way to my home.
I breathed a great sigh of relief when I tramped up the gravel walk that led to the house. With no ado I pushed open the front door and entered. In the great hall there were two men, the one my brother André and the old Count of Gramont who lived in the castle on the hill. They had just finished lighting the candles. There was no fire in the open hearth and the room was cold and chilled with the damp. The old Count was pacing nervously up and down the floor muttering to himself in his deep rolling tones. My brother’s face was as white as chalk and lines of worry lay across his forehead. He was standing at the long oaken table that stood in the centre of the room winding a piece of linen about his lower arm. I did not speak for at the first glance I noticed that, as he wound, the blood kept oozing through the bandages from the place where he had been wounded.
CHAPTER III
A VISITOR IN THE NIGHT
I stood stock still in the middle of the floor. My brother looked at me from head to foot.
“Le Brun has been here, Henri,” he said calmly. And then in a low voice, “I was afraid that something had happened to you, you return so late.”
“Something has happened,” I burst forth and in shaking tones told him of my adventures in the woods.
“They are agents of the King,” cried the old Count. “They are everywhere about us. They are not satisfied that they have taken my son. They will——”