A few minutes later the only one of the General's party left at Les Chouettes was Simon. He skulked round behind the buildings, but could not persuade himself to go away. It seemed to him that there was a good deal of danger in escaping on foot; that the country people, enraged by Monsieur Joseph's death, delighted, as they probably would be, by Monsieur Angelot's marriage, would all be his enemies. He was half terrified by General Ratoneau's desperation. Suppose he had overtaken Angelot's young bride and her companions! suppose he had swung her up on his horse and carried her away, forgetting that he was not campaigning in a foreign country, but living peaceably in France, where the law protected people from such violent doings. It might be very inconvenient, in such a case, to appear at Sonnay as a friend and follower of General Ratoneau. Any credit he still had with the Prefect, for instance, would be lost for ever. And yet, if he deserted the General entirely, washed his hands, as far as possible, of him and his doings, what chance was there of receiving the large sums of money so grudgingly promised him! "A hard master, the devil!" Simon muttered to himself. He peeped cautiously round the corner of the kitchen wall, where the silver birches had scattered their golden leaves in the wind of the night. He watched the little band of gendarmes as they started down the road towards Sonnay. It struck him that his best plan would be to slip away across the _landes_ towards the Étang des Morts, and to put himself right with the authorities by helping to capture a few Chouan gentlemen and conveying them to prison. But first--how still all the place was! The men were busy, he supposed, with their dead master. Surely those windows were not so firmly fastened but that he could make his way in, and perhaps find some evidence to prove Monsieur Joseph's complicity in the plots of the moment. He walked lightly across the sand. A dog barked in the house, and Martin Joubard looked out from an upper window. All the evil passions of his nature rose in Simon then. That was the man who knew he had arrested Angelot; that was the man who had knocked him down in the park and lost him half an hour of valuable time. As Angelot himself, in some mysterious way, was out of reach, here was this man on whom he might revenge himself. Both for his own sake and the General's, this man would be better out of the way; Simon raised his loaded carbine and fired. Martin stepped back at the instant, and he missed him. The shot grazed Tobie's cheek as he knelt inside the room, resting his long gun-barrel on the low window-sill. "Ah, Chouan-catcher, your time is come!" muttered Tobie, and his gun went off almost of itself. Simon flung up his arms in the air, and dropped upon the sand. * * * * *