“And you too?”
“Non, M’sieu. I betake myself to the soupente.”
The soupente in a French cottage is a kind of upper cupboard, a small corner cut off from the one room, near the ceiling, descending only half-way to the ground, and reached by a ladder.
“And if they find you there——”
“M’sieu, if they find me, they will not know me—see, in this dress! I am not like the Jean who chopped wood at Bitche. And I hope then to draw their attention from M’sieu! Voyez-vous?”
Roy wrung his hand. “I don’t know what makes you so good to me,” the boy said huskily. “I—I don’t think it’s fair upon you, though. And—I can’t think why!”
“It is not difficult to tell M’sieu why!” Jean looked abstractedly at the roof of the wood-hut. “It is for the sake of my mother—for the sake of that kind Monsieur le Capitaine, who would not leave her unhappy. Does M’sieu remember—how Monsieur le Capitaine regarded my mother that day?”
Roy remembered—and understood.
“Now, Monsieur! We may not lose time. The light grows fast.”
Jean pulled down and hauled aside logs and masses of wood, making a kind of little cave or hollow far back, where Roy could creep in and lie close to the wall. Jean wrapped round him an old coat, for warmth; and then, when he had laid himself down, threw light black rubbish over him as an additional security, before carefully heaping up anew the logs and faggots, till not the faintest sign remained of any human being beneath. Jean did his utmost to deface all tokens that the wood-pile had been disturbed.