"For all that, this must be Yégof's work. We must be blind not to see that it is he who led the Germans to the Blutfeld. I should be sorry if he had met his end by the blowing up of my cart. I have something better in store for him. All I desire is, that he may keep all right until we chance to meet each other somewhere in the corner of a wood. If I have to wait a year, ten, twenty years, no matter, so it comes at last. The longer I shall have waited, the better my appetite will be: tit-bits are good cold, like boar's head cooked in white wine." He said this in a laughing, good-humoured way, but those who knew him augured from it no good to Yégof. In half an hour after they had all arrived before the farm of Bois-des-Chênes. CHAPTER XXIII. Jerôme de St. Quirin had safely effected his retreat upon the farm. Since midnight he had occupied the rising ground on which it stood. "Who goes there?" was the challenge of the sentinels as the escort approached. "It is us--us from the village of Charmes," replied Marc Divès in his stentorian voice. They were recognised and allowed to pass. The farm was wrapped in silence. An armed sentinel was walking up and down before the barn, where about thirty of the mountaineers were asleep upon some straw. Catherine, at sight of those heavy gabled roofs, those old outhouses, those stables, of all that ancient dwelling-place within whose walls she had passed her youth, where her father and her grandfather had tranquilly spent their peaceful and industrious lives, and which she was about to abandon, perhaps for ever, Catherine felt a terrible oppression of the heart; but she kept the feeling to herself, and springing from the sleigh, just as in former times she used to return from market: "Well, Louise," said she, "here we are at home again, thanks be to God." Old Duchêne had come and opened the door, exclaiming: "Ah! is it you, Madame Lefévre?" "Yes, it is us! No news of Jean-Claude?" "No, Madam." Then they all went into the large kitchen. Some embers were still blazing on the hearth, and under shadow of the immense chimney-piece was sitting Jerôme de Saint-Quirin, with his large cloth hood, his sandy pointed beard, his thick stick between his knees, and his carbine resting against the wall. "Good-morrow, Jerôme," said the old farm-mistress. "Good-morrow, Catherine," answered the grave and solemn leader of the Grosmann, "you come from the Donon?" "Yes. Things are taking a bad turn, my poor Jerôme! we were obliged to leave the farm, because it was attacked by the _kaiserlicks_. There was nothing but white uniforms to be seen on every side. They were just beginning to pass the barricades." "Then you think that Hullin will be obliged to abandon the position?" "If Piorette does not come to his assistance, it is possible!" The mountaineers had drawn near the fire. Marc Divès was stooping over the ashes to light his pipe; as he raised himself up, he exclaimed: