"I am a soldier," he said; "my name is Gaspard Lefevre; I love thee a thousand times better than my life; but I must not disgrace that name."
He unclasped her arms, and Hullin tore them apart.
"Well said!" cried the old sabot-maker; "and spoken as a man should speak."
Catherine buckled the knapsack on her son's back; she did so calmly, but her brows were knitted, and she tried hard to press her quivering lips tightly together, while two great tears rolled down her wrinkled cheeks.
"Go—go—my child," she sobbed, "and take your mother's blessing with you, and if it should be the will of God that—that—"
But the poor woman's stout heart could sustain her no longer; she burst into an agony of weeping. Gaspard seized his musket, and, covering his eyes with his hand, rushed from the house.
All this while the men from the Sarre with picks and their axes were making their way up along the Valtin path. The sounds of their voices could already be heard, as they laughed and jested as if on the way to a festival, and not to privation, danger, and death.
Chapter X.
But while Hullin and his mountaineers were thus preparing for battle, where was the tin-crowned King of Diamonds—Yegof the Fool? Wandering barefoot over the snow-covered paths, his breast open to the cutting winds, cold, hungry, and companionless, save for his grim friend the raven.