On the edge of a little clearing in the centre of the wood stood a small square charcoal-burner’s cottage, built of stone. Near behind might be seen a good-sized outhouse or woodhouse; and to one side was the pile of slowly-burning charcoal. Round and about were heaps of unsightly rubbish and of blackened moss.
Nobody seemed to be within or at hand. Jean opened the cottage door without difficulty; and when they had passed through, he bolted it in their rear.
Then in the darkness he found his way to a corner, struck a light with flint and steel, made a “dip” to burn, and groped anew. The one window was closely shuttered.
Roy flung himself upon a small bench, glad to get his breath, and watched the other’s doings curiously.
“Are we to stop here?” he asked. “But if the gendarmes come?”
“We must circumvent them, M’sieu.”
“How? What are you going to do?”
Jean was too busy to reply. He produced a blouse, such as would be worn by a French labouring lad, with shirt and trousers to match, and brought them to Roy. “M’sieu must change his clothes,” he said. “Rest afterwards.”
“All right,” once more assented Roy, though the cottage was swimming and his ears were buzzing with fatigue. He stood up, and promptly divested himself of what he wore, to assume a different guise. Jean brought from the same corner a small bottle of dark liquid, which he mixed with a little water in a basin, and then dyed Roy’s hair and eyebrows, thereby altering his look to such an extent that even his mother might almost have passed him by. Roy laughed so much under this operation, as to discompose the operator.