The blacksmith cried: "Let us disarm the red-coats!" The cry, being repeated by the other peasants, reached the ears of the platoon of soldiers that blocked the head of the procession. These rushed back to the aid of their comrades, driving aside the women and children with the butts of their guns. The mass of people, thus pushed back and crowded closely in the middle of the road, emitted shrieks of fright. All was confusion. At the thickest of the turmoil a lackey on horseback rode up from the direction the procession was headed in, preceding by about twenty paces two other personages, also on horseback. The lackey reined in his mount, cracked his whip and cried: "Room! Room for Mademoiselle Plouernel! Room for the sister of Monseigneur Neroweg of Plouernel! Make room! Make room, there!" CHAPTER IV. DESERTED! It was, in fact, Mademoiselle Plouernel, who, coming from the manor of Mezlean, was approaching the spot of the tumult. She wore an elegant riding habit--a long skirt and closely fitting jacket of a pearl-grey material, trimmed with knots of ribbon of the same azure-blue color as her shoulder knot and the feathers in her broad-brimmed black felt hat. She rode with ease a palfrey white as snow, and richly caparisoned with a saddle-cloth of blue velvet trimmed in silver. An old equerry with grey hair and dressed, like the lackey, in the Plouernel livery--green, orange and silver--accompanied Bertha. Her beautiful, yet pale and delicate face, revealed the ravages of a protracted illness from which she was only recently recovered. The thinness of her cheeks imparted the appearance of abnormal size to her black and feverishly brilliant eyes. The melancholy of her physiognomy, coupled with a slight suggestion of despondency in her bearing, gave an irresistible charm to her person. Surprised at the cries and the clamor which she heard proceeding from the concourse ahead of her, from which she was still some hundred paces distant, she sent her equerry forward to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. He obeyed, and, arriving near a group of weeping women, was acquainted by them with the events that preceded. The equerry returned to his mistress and informed her that the bailiff of the Count of Plouernel had come to seize the teams and wagons of several peasants who were on their way to the temple in order to celebrate a wedding; that the bride's father was to be arrested for poaching; and that a quarrel had broken out between the peasants and the soldiers of the Crown Regiment who came to support the demands made by the Count's bailiff and the usher of the fisc. Seized with pity, Mademoiselle Plouernel whipped up her palfrey, and rode at a gallop towards the very center of the crowd, despite the humbly expressed apprehensions of her equerry.