She sought to explain—her pains were lost! In the twinkling of an eye a cart was requisitioned, she was put in under the escort of a gendarme, and the driver whipped up his horse.
The cart rumbled joltingly over the frozen road. Poor la Bretonne heart-brokenly clutched the package of playthings in her chilled fingers.
At a turn of the highway she recognized the cross-path through the woods. Her heart leaped, and she pleaded with the gendarme to stop—she had an errand for la Fleuriotte, a woman who lived there, only a couple of steps away. She pleaded with so much earnestness that the gendarme, a good fellow at heart, allowed himself to be persuaded. They tied the horse to the tree and went up the path.
In front of her door la Fleuriotte was chopping up wood into faggots. Upon seeing her visitor back again, accompanied by a gendarme, she stood open-mouthed, her arms hanging.
“Chut!” said la Bretonne, “is the little one still asleep?”
“Yes, but——”
“Lay these playthings gently on her bed, and tell her that Saint Catherine sent them. I went back to Auberive to hunt for them, but it seems that I hadn’t the right to do so, and they are sending me to Langres.”
“Holy Mother of God!” cried la Fleuriotte.
“Pshaw!”
She drew near the bed. Followed always by her guard, la Bretonne spread over the coverlet the dolls, the ark, and the flock of sheep. Then she kissed the bare arm of the sleeping child, and, turning toward the gendarme, who stood staring: