La Montagne bit his moustache with repressed rage. It wounded his pride and his covetousness to free the prisoners who had disarmed him, and from whom he reckoned upon a ransom, before having them hanged. Moreover, he knew from a thousand precedents that he had nothing to fear from his colonel, who was utterly indifferent, as so many other seigneurs, heads of regiments, to the acts of violence committed by their soldiers upon bourgeois and peasants. But the sergeant also knew that the Marquis of Chateauvieux was a great gallant. It was impossible that he should refuse to punish an inferior officer if requested to do so by so beautiful a woman and one of such high rank as Mademoiselle Plouernel. These reflections caused the sergeant to raise his hat, and, bowing respectfully before Bertha, he said: "I shall obey the orders of mademoiselle. I shall liberate the peasants." The sergeant again bowed respectfully before Mademoiselle Plouernel, and said to himself in an undertone: "Breton brigands! You are about to triumph over my humiliation--but patience! I shall yet be revenged! Each one shall have his turn." La Montagne returned to the detachment which held Salaun, his son and Madok the miller prisoners, along with several others. When the scuffle with the soldiers began, Nominoë jumped off his horse, and leaving Tina in charge of his uncle, had disarmed one of the soldiers. Afterwards, seeing the struggle ended, he took his father's advice, and allowed himself to be pinioned. A short while after, the name of Mademoiselle Plouernel and the benedictions showered upon her by the peasants reached his ears. Nominoë grew pale; he rose on the tips of his toes and saw Bertha at a distance on horseback. His eyes filled with tears--soon his head drooped, and growing ever paler he stood as one petrified. From this spell he was awakened by the voice of a soldier, who said to him: "I am going to untie you--you are free--go to the devil!" "God be praised! You are given back to us!" murmured Tina, hardly able to restrain her joy and stepping toward her husband. "Oh! I feel reborn! A minute ago I thought I would die!" "My son, mount your horse, take your wife on the crupper, and let us depart! We have escaped a double danger," said Salaun, who was just set free, and who led by the bridle both his own mount and Nominoë's. But Nominoë, instead of obeying his father, fixed upon Tina a look of utter distress, and cried in heartrending accents: "Adieu! Adieu to you all! Never will you see me again!" With these words Nominoë leaped upon his horse with a bound, turned its head in the opposite direction, and, belaboring its flanks with his spurs, dashed up the bank at a gallop. He cleared the hedge, reached the skirt of the forest of Mezlean with mad rapidity, and disappeared within the wood. CHAPTER V. THE MYSTERY AT PLOUERNEL.