“Can M’sieu wait a little longer? I hope to get Monsieur out soon—after dark. It is not safe before then.” “I’ll wait, Jean. Only as soon as possible, please.” “Oui, M’sieu.” Jean disappeared anew. Roy put a question, and had no answer. He was wildly hungry, but there was nothing to be done except to endure. The wisdom of Jean’s caution became apparent. Before darkness settled down the same party of gendarmes again galloped up and sprang to the ground. They walked as before through cottage and shed, once more kicking the furniture about. This time one of them found the ladder, went up it, and stepped inside the _soupente_; but Jean had betaken himself to another hiding-place outside the cottage, and the search bore no fruit. The men entered the wood-hut again, in a perfunctory manner, knocking down a log or two carelessly, and using one to another rough language as to the escaped prisoner, which boded no gentle treatment for Roy should he fall into their clutches. Then they vanished, and silence settled down anew upon the scene. “Not likely to come again, I hope,” murmured Roy. “O I am tired of this!” One more hour he had to endure; and then came the welcome sound of Jean removing the wood-piles. “Can M’sieu stand?” asked Jean. Roy crept out slowly, made the effort, and fell flat. Jean pulled him up, and held him on his feet. “All right, I’m only stiff,” declared Roy. “They won’t come back, I suppose.” “Non, M’sieu.” “Why, it’s night, I declare! Been so dark in there, I didn’t know the difference between night and day. There, now I can walk.” Roy managed to reach the cottage on his own limbs unassisted. “What a desperately long day it has been.” “M’sieu has found it wearying, sans doute.” “But as if that mattered! As if anything mattered—only to get away safely!” Roy said energetically. “Jean, you are a good fellow! Is this for me to eat? I’m as hungry as a bear! Jean, I shall always think better of Frenchmen for your sake.” “Yet M’sieu will doubtless fight us one day.” “I shall fight Buonaparte, not the French nation. I like some of your people awfully—some at Fontainebleau, and some at Verdun. And Mademoiselle de St. Roques most of all.” “Oui, M’sieu. M’sieu had better eat.” “All right, I’m eating, and you must too. Oh, lots of French have been as good and as kind to us détenus as they possibly could be. And I only know one single lodging-house keeper who behaved like a brute. Most of them have been just the other way. Why, they have kept on lodgers month after month, out of sheer kindness, when they couldn’t pay anything because no money reached them from England. I know all that! And I like the French—only not Boney!” Jean smiled to himself. “Cependant, M’sieu, the army of the Emperor is made of French soldiers.”