After crossing the frontier the fugitives repaired to the first hostelry they could find, a lonely inn, a league or so from the little village of Saint-Jean-de-Coche, and kept by a man named Balstain. It was past midnight when they rapped, but, despite the lateness of the hour, they were admitted, and ordered supper. Lacheneur, weak from loss of blood, and exhausted by his long tramp, went off to bed, however, without eating. He threw himself on to a pallet in an adjoining room and soon fell asleep. For the first time since meeting him, the two farmers now found an opportunity to talk in private. The same idea had occurred to both of them. They believed that by delivering Lacheneur up to the authorities, they might secure pardon for themselves. Neither of them would have consented to receive a single sou of the blood-money; but they did not consider there would be any disgrace in exchanging their own lives and liberty for Lacheneur’s, especially as he had so deceived them. Eventually they decided to go to Saint-Jean-de-Coche directly supper was over, and inform the Piedmontese guards. But they reckoned without their host. They had spoken loud enough to be overheard by Balstain, the inn-keeper, who, during the day, had been told of the magnificent reward promised for Lacheneur’s capture. On learning that the exhausted man, now quietly sleeping under his roof, was the famous conspirator, he was seized with a sudden thirst for gold, and whispering a word to his wife he darted through the window of a back room to run and fetch the carabineers, as the Italian gendarmes are termed. He had been gone half-an-hour or so when the two peasants left the house; for they had drunk heavily with the view of mustering sufficient courage to carry their purpose into effect. They closed the door so violently on going out that Lacheneur woke up. He rose from his bed and came into the front room, where he found the innkeeper’s wife alone. “Where are my friends?” he asked, anxiously. “And where is your husband?” Moved by sympathy, the woman tried to falter some excuse, but finding none, she threw herself at his feet, exclaiming: “Fly, save yourself--you are betrayed!” Lacheneur rushed back into his bedroom, trying to find a weapon with which to defend himself, or a mode of egress by which he could escape unperceived. He had thought they might abandon him, but betray him--no never! “Who has sold me?” he asked, in an agitated voice. “Your friends--the two men who supped at that table.” “That’s impossible!” he retorted: for he ignored his comrades’ designs and hopes; and could not, would not believe them capable of betraying him for lucre. “But,” pleaded the innkeeper’s wife, still on her knees before him, “they have just started for Saint-Jean-de-Coche, where they mean to denounce you. I heard them say that your life would purchase theirs. They certainly mean to fetch the carabineers; and, alas, must I also say that my own husband has gone to betray you.”