The cabin stood in the midst of the bog, built on piles, as was the path leading to it. Reeds and a few tamarisks surrounded it, and made it invisible from almost every direction. On the gray, thatched roof, shaped like a hay-stack, the little cross gleamed in the moonlight, bent back as if the wind had tried to blow it down. The back of the cabin was turned to the _mistral_. They entered. Renaud took a candle from his wallet and struck a match. The light danced upon the walls. The low walls were of grayish mud, set in a rough frame-work. The floor was covered with a bed of reeds. A cotton cloth, to keep out the gnats, hung before the door. There was a stationary table against the wall at the right, near the head of the bed; it was a flat stone supported by four pieces of timber fastened to the floor. Renaud set his candle down on the stone. The gitana, already seated on the rough bed, watched him with a savage look in her eyes. She began to feel that she was a little too much in his power, that it was a little too much like being under his roof. The cabin was like all the cabins in the district. From the ceiling bunches of reed blossoms hung like waving silver plumes. The big cross-timbers of the ceiling were pinned together with wooden pegs, the large ends of which projected, and some few scraps of worn-out clothes were still hanging from them. There was a fire-place in one corner, made of large stones placed side by side, and in the roof, directly above it, was a hole for the smoke. Renaud hung his wallet on one of the pegs. "Now, wait for me," he said, with a loud laugh, "I'm going out to attend to the horse." She was surprised, but after she had glanced at him, she could think of nothing but Rampal. He went out to Blanchet, removed the saddle and laid it on the ground, then mounted him, bareback, and rode him to a pasture some distance away, where he hobbled him and left him. A quarter of an hour later, Renaud returned, with his saddle across his shoulders, to the cabin where Zinzara was awaiting him. But, as he walked along the solid path, a black ribbon covered by a sheet of shallow water, he took up the stakes that marked one edge of the path, and moved them from the right side to the left;--so that, if that beggarly Rampal, the only man likely to follow him to that lair, chose to come there, he certainly would not go far, but would remain there, buried up to his neck at least! When he had changed the position of the first twenty stakes, the only ones visible from the shore of the bog, Renaud stood up and walked swiftly toward the cabin. His heart at that moment was sad, and more filled with slime and noxious things than the waters of the swamp, which, though they glistened in the moonlight, were black beneath the surface. XXII IN THE NEST