If I am to live, thought I, oh for the whirl and excitement of war--a storm, siege, wreck, battle, anything that will lure me from myself and from thoughts that are maddening. To have loved her and have lost her thus! Every pulsation was a pang, for I endured all the keen misery of knowing that I had been loved tenderly, truly, and deeply in return, and yet had lost her. The images I drew of her endurance and death, they indeed were too much to think of long, so happily crushed by my own reflections, overcome by toil, and lulled by the ceaseless murmur of the subterranean stream that poured beneath the chaumière I fell asleep at last on the hard floor where I lay. I must have lain thus for some hours when voices roused me, and I started up to find that day had broken and several men were about me. I had a "splitting headache" (as Charters used to say), a burning thirst, and bloodshot eyes, the result of all I had undergone; but on staggering up, I recognised the Chevalier de Boisguiller, Urbain the gardener, and Bertrand, with several others, who followed the track I had pursued, and who thus succeeded in discovering the wretched chaumière which had formed the lair of Hautois, whom they clamorously inquired if I had seen. "Yes," said I; "and moreover I have seen the last of him." "How--what has happened?" they asked together, while the chevalier added-- "These pistols and this knife lying here--the blood on the floor, and the broken stool, bear evidence of a conflict. What has taken place?" I briefly related all, and Boisguiller on lifting the trap-door, gazed with a shrinking aspect on the black torrent that rushed far down below; and it would appear that for dark purposes the _chaumière_ certainly had been built immediately over one of the few open chasms in the rocks, through which this torrent of water traverses the forest of St. Aubin du Cormier. "Your vengeance has indeed been ample--only perhaps too sudden," said he, after a pause; "and now let us return, but first, Urbain, we shall set fire to this den, lest it find an occupant similar to the last. Then, monsieur, what are we to do with you?" "It matters little," said I, wearily, and sick at heart. "You are probably unaware that the British have landed again, and set fire to Cherbourg?" "Indeed, chevalier!" I exclaimed, interested in spite of myself, and remembering that the blaze I had seen in the sky to the north-west was now accounted for. "Yes; a strong force, we know not how many, have disembarked at Bay des Maries." "Under the Duke of Marlborough?" "No; the commander is a general named Bligh." "_Pardi! cet officier est un homme d'expédition!_" muttered the old grenadier, Bertrand; "he has already fired all the coast."