I had advanced thus some little distance, when my further course was impeded by some object in front of me. I extended my hand, and what it touched was a cold iron bar; I moved my arm from side to side, and still it was iron bars with which my inquiring fingers came in contact. It must be an iron paling of some kind, I thought, and then began, while I lent wearily against the bars, to ask myself vaguely what kind of places are generally enclosed within such a fence.
While these questions passed through my mind, the bars suddenly began to give way before the pressure of my whole weight, which I was supporting upon them; the circumstance nearly caused me another fall, but I saved myself just in time. Then I made a discovery that sent a gleam of indistinct hope flashing through me; what I had been leaning against was an iron gate, I could feel its fastening now quite clearly, and hear the little click it made as I moved it up and down with my finger. Did not the existence of such a gate warrant the notion that some house must be near at hand? The gates into fields are not generally like this gate, I argued.
I advanced some steps, and then I became aware of another fact; I was certainly standing underneath trees; I could hear the wind in their branches, could feel the raindrops that dripped from them. I was pausing in doubt and new uncertainty, considering what I might infer from this, when, borne on the wind, there reached me a sound which was like the sound of voices. My heart gave a great leap, all my senses went into the sense of hearing; I listened as eagerly as if I had been catching the rarest notes of music; yes, voices were decidedly drawing nearer and nearer to me, and with the voices there approached a glimmer of light.
“If we can’t get in by the glass door, we shall by the store-room window.”
Such were the words that reached my ears, spoken in a man’s voice in French.
“We’ll get in quick enough if we can only reach the house,” said another man’s voice, in the same language, and a very rough, harsh voice it was this time, too.
“We must be very quiet and silent in our movements,” rejoined the first speaker.
“Not even the old dog shall catch a sound of us—no, not even if he is sleeping with one eye open,” replied the other.
“There must be a house, then, close in this neighbourhood,” I thought, “and this must be the way up to it, and surely, surely,” and now a great terror seized me, “these must be burglars who are going to break into it.”
An agony of fear, worse than any by far that I had experienced on the lonely common, now took possession of me, as I heard the steps of the two men drawing nearer and nearer. I went on one side and held my breath, hoping that, in the darkness, they would pass me unnoticed; but I must have made some sound that betrayed me, for the next instant a hand was on my arm, and I heard a voice in my ear.