A small pine torch threw its blue and hazy light into the cave. In spite of the gloomy poetic effects which Mademoiselle de Verneuil’s imagination cast about this vaulted chamber, which was echoing to the sounds of a pitiful prayer, she was obliged to admit that the place was nothing more than an underground kitchen, evidently long abandoned. When the formless mass was distinguishable it proved to be a short and very fat man, whose limbs were carefully bound before he had been left lying on the damp stone floor of the kitchen by those who had seized him. When he saw the new-comer approach him with a torch in one hand and a fagot of sticks in the other, the captive gave a dreadful groan, which so wrought upon the sensibilities of Mademoiselle de Verneuil that she forgot her own terror and despair and the cramped position of her limbs, which were growing numb. But she made a great effort and remained still. The Chouan flung the sticks into the fireplace, after trying the strength of an old crane which was fastened to a long iron bar; then he set fire to the wood with his torch. Marie saw with terror that the man was the same Pille-Miche to whom her rival had delivered her, and whose figure, illuminated by the flame, was like that of the little boxwood men so grotesquely carved in Germany. The moans of his prisoner produced a broad grin upon features that were ribbed with wrinkles and tanned by the sun. “You see,” he said to his victim, “that we Christians keep our promises, which you don’t. That fire is going to thaw out your legs and tongue and hands. Hey! hey! I don’t see a dripping-pan to put under your feet; they are so fat the grease may put out the fire. Your house must be badly furnished if it can’t give its master all he wants to warm him.” The victim uttered a sharp cry, as if he hoped someone would hear him through the ceiling and come to his assistance. “Ho! sing away, Monsieur d’Orgemont; they are all asleep upstairs, and Marche-a-Terre is just behind me; he’ll shut the cellar door.”