He turned from the window with a shrug. Monsieur Joseph and the Prefect had been strolling about the meadow, and the Prefect now expressed a wish to walk round the woods, and to see the view of Lancilly from the high ground beyond them. Angelot went with the two men. They walked right through the wood. The Prefect stopped and talked within twenty yards of the hovel where the four conspirators lay hidden. It was a grand opportunity for old Monsieur d'Ombré's pistol-shot; but not a movement, not a sound broke the stillness of the wood. There was only the rustling of the leaves, the squeak of the squirrels as they raced and scampered in the high branches of the oaks. The two La Marinières stood on each side of Monsieur de Mauves: they were a guard to him, though he did not know it, as his eyes wandered curiously, searchingly, down the glade in which he chose to linger. A rough whitewashed corner of the hovel, the mass of its dark roof, were actually visible beyond an undergrowth of briars. "What have you there?" said the Prefect, so quietly that his companions did not even suspect him of a suspicion. "A shelter--an old hovel where wood is stored for the winter," Monsieur Joseph answered truthfully; but his cheeks and eyes brightened a little, as if prepared for something more. "Ah!" the Prefect only said, looking rather fixedly that way. "And where is this view of Lancilly?" Both the uncle and nephew breathed more freely as they led him up the hill, through higher slopes of wood, then under some great branching oaks, here allowed to grow to their full size, and out into a rugged lane, winding on through wild hedges festooned with blackberries. Here, at the top, they looked straight across the valley to Lancilly, as it lay in the sunshine. Its high roofs flashing, it looked indeed the majestic centre of the country-side. Angelot gazed at it indifferently. Again the Prefect turned to him with his kind smile. "It will be charming for you to have your cousins there. They will reconcile you to the powers that be." Angelot answered: "I have no quarrel with the powers that be, monsieur, as long as you represent them. As to life, I want no change. Give me a gun and set me on a moor with my uncle. There we are!" "If I thought your uncle was quite so easily satisfied!" the Prefect said, and his look, as he turned to Monsieur Joseph, was a little enigmatical. CHAPTER V HOW ANGELOT MADE AN ENEMY The sun was near setting when the Prefect and his companions rode away from Les Chouettes, their visit having resulted, as it seemed, in nothing worse than annoyance and anxiety.