“They only take back what was stolen from them,” said the rector, vehemently. The two men looked at each other in the whites of their eyes, if we may use a phrase so colloquial. Sitting back in the vehicle was a third traveller who took no part in the discussion, and preserved a deep silence. The driver and the patriot and even Gudin paid no attention to this mute individual; he was, in truth, one of those uncomfortable, unsocial travellers who are found sometimes in a stage-coach, like a patient calf that is being carried, bound, to the nearest market. Such travellers begin by filling their legal space, and end by sleeping, without the smallest respect for their fellow-beings, on a neighbor’s shoulder. The patriot, Gudin, and the driver had let him alone, thinking him asleep, after discovering that it was useless to talk to a man whose stolid face betrayed an existence spent in measuring yards of linen, and an intellect employed in selling them at a good percentage above cost. This fat little man, doubled-up in his corner, opened his porcelain-blue eyes every now and then, and looked at each speaker with a sort of terror. He appeared to be afraid of his fellow-travellers and to care very little about the Chouans. When he looked at the driver, however, they seemed to be a pair of free-masons. Just then the first volley of musketry was heard on La Pelerine. Coupiau, frightened, stopped the coach. “Oh! oh!” said the priest, as if he had some means of judging, “it is a serious engagement; there are many men.” “The trouble for us, Monsieur Gudin,” cried Coupiau, “is to know which side will win.” The faces of all became unanimously anxious. “Let us put up the coach at that inn which I see over there,” said the patriot; “we can hide it till we know the result of the fight.” The advice seemed so good that Coupiau followed it. The patriot helped him to conceal the coach behind a wood-pile; the abbe seized the occasion to pull Coupiau aside and say to him, in a low voice: “Has he really any money?” “Hey, Monsieur Gudin, if it gets into the pockets of your Reverence, they won’t be weighed down with it.” When the Blues marched by, after the encounter on La Pelerine, they were in such haste to reach Ernee that they passed the little inn without halting. At the sound of their hasty march, Gudin and the innkeeper, stirred by curiosity, went to the gate of the courtyard to watch them. Suddenly, the fat ecclesiastic rushed to a soldier who was lagging in the rear. “Gudin!” he cried, “you wrong-headed fellow, have you joined the Blues? My lad, you are surely not in earnest?” “Yes, uncle,” answered the corporal. “I’ve sworn to defend France.” “Unhappy boy! you’ll lose your soul,” said the uncle, trying to rouse his nephew to the religious sentiments which are so powerful in the Breton breast. “Uncle,” said the young man, “if the king had placed himself at the head of his armies, I don’t say but what--”