For a while Leroux and the others looked on "the General" with shifty eyes wherein hatred and murder had kindled an ill-omened light. But in the mighty figure which towered above them there was not the slightest tremor of fear; in the commanding glance that met their own there was not a quiver and not the remotest sign of submission. The intrepid soldier, who at Austerlitz, bleeding, muddy, with leg shattered by a bullet, a sabre-slash across his forehead, a broken sword in his hand, had with two thousand men--some of them ex-jail-birds, as he said--held ten thousand Russians and their young Czar at bay, until the arrival of Rapp and his reinforcements, and then fell with shattered leg almost beneath the hoofs of the victorious cavalry still shouting: "Vive la France!"--he was not like to give in or to retreat before a few murderous threats from a sulky crowd of dissatisfied workmen. No, not though he knew that in the hip-pocket of more than one pair of breeches there was--always ready--the clasp-knife of the ex-jail-bird made to toil in the defence of the country which his crimes had outraged, and still at war with the authority which he had once defied. Rumour in this had not lied; it was with flails that some of these men were kept to their work--the flails of the mighty will-power of one man, of his burning patriotism and of his boundless energy. Even now his look of withering contempt, his open scorn of their threats, his appropriation of Leroux' tool and the skill and strength wherewith he wielded it, whipped them like a lash. In a moment Leroux, the leader of the malcontents, found himself alone, a hang-dog expression in his face, hatred still lurking in his narrow eyes, but subdued and held in submission by a power which he could not attack save by the united will of his mates. "I'll finish my work," he muttered after a while. "You'll do double shift at half-pay for ten days," said de Maurel, ere he handed him back his tool, "and one month in the black carbon factory for insubordination." For a moment it looked as if the men would rebel again. A murmur went round the workshop. "Another sound," said the General loudly and firmly, "and I send the lot of you back to rot in jail." He threw Leroux' tool down and quietly struggled back into his shirt and blouse. The incident was obviously closed. A minute or two later the men were back at their work, with renewed energy, perhaps, certainly in perfect silence and discipline. Mathurin, the overseer, shrugged his shoulders as he conducted Fernande and "the General" out of the workshop. "That means peace and quiet for a few weeks," he said gruffly, "but Leroux is a real malcontent, and gives me any amount of trouble. He was condemned to deportation for murder and arson--one of the worst characters we have in the place. I wouldn't trust that man, General...." "He is a good workman," was de Maurel's only comment.